PoolTogether Community Podcast #59 with Nucleus

This is the Pool Together Community Podcast. Pool Together is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit.

You're listening to Pool Together Community Podcast. Win, win, win! And I'm your host Tim, aka Hot Mike, aka Millie Yearly, because I am manifesting that PoolTogether is going to have that million-dollar prize at least once a year. And I'm here with Nucleus, the Nucleus team. We got Ani, we got Nikhil, we've got Akash here from Nucleus. Welcome, gents. Welcome, sirs. Hey, thanks, Tim. Nice to be here. It even sounds good when you all 3 talk at the same time. It's so good. They're just on a laptop mic, every listener. Can you believe it? They're just on them. This is Discord sound processing. So anyway, so we had gotten connected somewhere through the interwebs and I tried out Nucleus and it blew my mind because I could connect my Web3 wallet, my MetaMask. Hit me up now, spam podcast spam bots. I'm even scared to say MetaMask because I'm gonna get spammed. I could hook it up to Nucleus and spend my USDC out of my wallet and it was magical. And that's what crypto's all about, is the magical things. So, uh, guys, I would love to hear your stories. How'd you get into crypto? And then how'd you start this, uh, Nucleus miracle product? And then, uh, then I know you've also run into some, some hitches in your giddyups. So I'd love to hear about that. Ready, set, go.

Yeah, I can start. My name's Akash. Uh, I was building a fintech consumer app before this. I was building a direct indexing platform where people could come in and create their own ETF. And I had to connect to brokerages like Robinhood and Alpaca and basically brokerages in TradFi. And I just realized how tough it was to integrate with existing platforms. And this concept of open finance didn't really exist in traditional finance. So that just motivated me to get into DeFi and open finance, and I started looking into smart contracts and how easy it is to be interoperable in the self-custody world, whether it's payments and things like that. And I— that's when it clicked for me that, okay, this could be world-changing. And that's why, uh, we started Nucleus Cards. Um, so that's for me. Nikhil?

Yeah, hey, I'm Nikhil. I wrote my first smart contract in 2017 and thought absolutely nothing of it, thought that This was stupid. It wasn't going to go anywhere. And a couple of years later, I was wrong. Completely wrong. Started my crypto journey maybe a year and a half, 2 years ago. I was just curious, kind of interested in the tech, learning how smart contracts work, how Ethereum operates under the hood. So I started playing around with building my own simple contracts on the side and eventually built a couple of random products. One was a way to buy NFTs via a credit card so that a mainstream person didn't have to get a self-custody card. Then teamed up with Ani and Akash here to start Nucleus.

Yeah. Hey guys, I'm Ani. My journey is not that impressive. I actually have like a fully traditional like Web2 engineering background. But yeah, I actually heard about like Bitcoin in 2017 in an Uber and I was like, this is just like a bubble. I don't— I didn't think much of it. But yeah, I think like through the pandemic and the whole creator economy and how like I don't know. I really was drawn to people's ability to kind of own their audience, own their assets across platforms and stuff. Got in kind of through that and then applied my engineering background to start writing smart contracts and teamed up with Nikhil to build some of those products that he was talking about.

And then there was Nucleus. So how did it start? How'd you guys, how'd you guys come up with this?

Yeah, we were, Basically, Nikhil, Ani, myself, we left our jobs and we were motivated to build something in this space. We initially wanted to build something in the 2.5 space, like a single source of truth platform where you could connect your— if you're a DAO, you could connect your traditional bank account but also your multisig, and this would be sort of your central source of truth. And then we just started diving deeper and we realized that the toughest thing for DAOs and DAO operators is unlike unlocking their existing crypto. As in, we got into— after customer interviews, and currently we're in Y Combinator, so this is something we constantly learn, which is how to do user interviews. And when we did those, we saw that the current process of spending your crypto is to first convert it to USDC, send it to your Coinbase, and then connect your bank account to your Coinbase or whatever custody solution you use. ACH or wire money into your bank account and then use your traditional debit or credit card. And then that's when we thought, you know, there's, there's something here that we have to explore.

So did I get it right when I explained what Nucleus is? I would love to hear your, your elevator pitch for Nucleus.

Yeah, I think you got it most, mostly right. Our sort of one-liner is it's a debit card for your self-custody crypto balance. The way that it works behind the scenes is we have a smart contract deployed on Ethereum and Layer 2s where the end user will give our smart contract a permission. It's called an ERC-20 approval. So you would give our smart contract a USDC approval of, say, $1,000. Then we issue a debit card for you and you can spend up to $1,000. In the background, when you swipe your Visa debit card, we'll cross-check that permission on your smart contract. And if the ticket size of the item that you're purchasing is less than your balance and less than the permission that you gave us, then we automatically start pulling funds from your self-custody wallet to fulfill the payment. So you can almost think of it as being a regular debit card, as in it operates the same way as a regular debit card, just swipe. Don't think about it. Move on with life.

Nice. Nice. And then what we had actually talked about, um, doing this with PoolTogether. So this would be so sweet. would be because we have PTA-USDC, which is smart contractable. You can convert USDC to PTA-USDC, which is a ticket that's deposited— that's a deposit that represents chances to win in PoolTogether. And it would be really cool to not even have to convert and go in and out of PoolTogether tickets. And if you could actually just spend those. So So that's awesome, but there was a little hitch in the giddyup. Could you talk about that?

Yeah. I mean, I think right now, Tim, the banking sentiment and just the sentiment, unfortunately, in the US around banking and crypto is not great post-FTX. So for us to operate, we need to partner with a bank, essentially, and it's called a BIN sponsor. So In order to bridge the crypto and traditional rails, which is like, you know, you actually swiping your card and paying the merchant, for example, we need a bank to issue that card. So yeah, it's been kind of hard in this climate to find a bank partnership or really even talk to banks. And they're kind of like bucketizing crypto into like one thing. And I mean, we deal entirely in stablecoin. Our, you know, our smart contract is public. But it's still been tough to get that partnership going, and— but it's something we're working towards.

Yeah, and to tell everyone, we were actually live and we had active customers from all across the world. And then this one day in our Discord, our customers told us that the card was getting declined. And then we spoke to our bank to only find out that, hey, they can no longer support Crypto programs, so it was kind of not the not the best way of finding out. So we were kind of you know we got the rug pulled under us, and it wasn't the best situation. But yeah, we've been working towards finding like Ani said a different bin sponsor bank charter. And where it gets really complicated is you know this is a big compliance game because we are merging traditional rails with blockchains. And when it comes to traditional rails, you have to think about who can be a card sponsor. Been sponsored. And while it may look a certain way in the US, that could be completely different internationally. And when you look at crypto, and when we saw a waiting list for our product, users came from really like all across, from India, from Europe, from South America. And yes, even though a lot of them were from the US, it's truly a global phenomenon. So one of the challenges in this game is Also, how can you build a platform where you can issue globally? Um, so just wanted to say that.

So what's the, what's the timeframe on the, on the new banking partner? I know that banks move really slow, right? And, uh, and they're also like, there needs to be that KYC element, right? Like to be able to work with any bank, there needs to be no loophole. There's no way in a backdoor that you can get in without using KYC. So what's the timeframe there? And then how are you approaching both US? Because I think you're launching in the US, right? But then you would ideally go international. So how do you do that?

Yeah. I think this time in the last few weeks has really allowed us to rethink our strategy in terms of how we want to go about this. So yes, we've been looking for banks. We even Started applying to the Visa FinTech Fast Track program. In terms of timeline, I wish I had more clarity, but it's really more of a binary outcome. As soon as we get a BIN sponsor that is like, yes, we can do we can do your your USDC program. I'm not really sure in terms of how long that'll be. You know, maybe it will be two three months. Maybe it'll be six months. But we hope to find clarity on that as soon as possible. The second thing is what we've been seeing even from our Y Combinator batch is that a lot of the activity does come from the LATAM region. So places like Argentina, Colombia, and we kind of almost feel like if we want to go down this path, that may also be something to prioritize as in not only issue in the US, but also be able to issue in the LATAM region.

So what do you do in the meantime? Right? Because things are on pause. So are you guys playing a lot of like League of Legends or what's going on?

Adi, did you have something on this?

Yeah, on this one, Tim, I think like we're— yeah, obviously like our product is built out. We're in a tough position. Like we're trying to, you know, explore some ideas as well based on our backgrounds, but I mean, being within crypto, it's, it's tough to like kind of think about like a fully on-chain product that we can, that we can build out because our expertise is more on bridging the crypto and the fiat side of it. I don't know. Akash, did you want to share any of the current ideas that we're thinking about?

I think in the meantime, what we've been doing is talking to banks, sending them a bunch of diligence information. This is not a fun process to go through. Anytime you're applying for a partnership with a bank, you have to send them all kinds of details about your business, about the directors of your business, people on your board. And it's, it's quite time-consuming and pretty draining. So that's where a lot of our time has kind of been spent. And then thinking more about international card issuing, there's something that Mastercard and Visa do called being a principal sponsor. And this helps with international card issuing, where a banking service who acts as a principal sponsor for Mastercard or Visa can basically bypass having to partner with a local bank since they effectively act as a bank themselves. And that's super powerful for us. So it's something that we can look into because it makes international card issuing just so much easier.

Yeah, and we even thought about like, can we just become our own bank? But we even talked to someone at, you know, the San Francisco Fed actually, and they were saying, yeah, I mean, nowadays, like, the amount of bank applications has dropped by like 10x. And really our only route is to acquire a bank charter. And for that, you have to have a board of directors. You need to have a huge compliance and legal infrastructure in place. So yeah, we even explored that.

Yeah, $20, $30 million to buy a bank charter and then turn that into a crypto-friendly bank charter. But we don't have the capital to do that today.

I mean, it would also seem like you could just go buy like a bank. I don't know if banks are for sale, you know, or like, I wonder, like, I don't know how this works, but, but yeah, $20, $30 million for the bank charter. So, so this is very interesting to me because I deal with this a lot in my life of just like, there's so many opportunities out there, right? There's so many things that you can do. And, and for me, I pick all the things, right? But, but then there's this guilt in my life about like, why, why I I should have just doubled down on this one thing, you know? So, so you guys are in that spot, right? You're in this spot where it's like, okay, we built something that's great. We come into friction, some significant friction, and we're just going to keep going, keep going, keep going. But there's like, in design, there's gravity problems and there's anchor problems. So this, it's, it's like, for me, I just assume everything is a gravity problem, like something I can't change. And then I go for it or an anchor problem. is something that you totally could just change if you thought about it in a different way, right? So my question is, how do you, how do you know when to like stop pushing on something and then like iterate? Or, you know, cause there's, there's beauty to both. There's beauty to be like, no, we know the product works. We know it's, there's a market fit and we're just going to double down. We're just doing this. Or You know what? We should pivot and we should do NFT tattoos now.

Yeah. That's the, that's the really tough question that we're actually having to go through right now. And this is something we've been discussing with our Y Combinator group partners as well. Um, the, the, the calculus in our mind right now is, look, it's expensive to issue cards, uh, and to be out there as a card issuer, uh, as in Even like, for example, a bank we were speaking to the other day, for international card issuing, just the implementation fee itself is $50,000, I believe. And on top of that, there's going to be monthly fees. And this is a business where you make a fraction of the transaction volume. So for example, our revenue model was interchange revenue. So for every transaction, we probably just net 0.5%. And one of the biggest questions about the crypto landscape right now is, is there going to be enough transaction volume to make this a viable business for us? Because in the end, that's what we're here to do. And that's what, you know, we have investors, we have, um, we have a responsibility there to, you know, make a business that creates recurring revenue. So that's been our biggest hurdle in terms of Um, you know, that, that we kind of consider, um, right now. Um, but I mean, that, that's what we're kind of like looking into right now. Is there other opportunities, uh, that we can move faster in? Um, so I wish I had a better, clearer answer, but I think that's where we're at right now.

Yeah. And I, and I think like with stablecoin, like we really believe in USDC and stablecoin. But we have to look at, you know, obviously, are people on-ramping? What is the incentive for folks to use Crypto Rails? Like, one example is like in South America, like we've seen folks really want to hold the US dollar and especially in these hyperinflationary markets. And I think that really starts just like, yeah, onboarding more folks onto crypto and that pushes the whole ecosystem forward. So that's something we're looking at. And then obviously like cross-border payments as well. is huge. If I'm a freelancer in India or something and I'm working with the design agents in the US, it's a lot easier for me to just get paid in USDC than have to use SWIFT or something, which takes like a week for me to get my money. So yeah, but it's something we're looking at in terms of how is the ecosystem shaping up and how big is the market at the moment?

So You're, you're startup, like you're a startup in crypto. You're doing it. You're in Y Combinator. You're doing it. You've hit and you've, you've come upon incredible friction doing it. You're, you're, you're, you're looking at the landscape from a very unique perspective, I think. Can you give us some, as the PoolTogether community, just some like things that you're seeing and things that you're learning about crypto and where it's headed and like where the future is? I think one thing that for me that's really, that was beautiful, that is beautiful about Nucleus is just the abstracting away of things like the ability to reduce friction. And so I'm wondering like, like what are some of those things that you're seeing or that you want to see happen in the crypto space?

I think there's 2 kind of bull bull cases for crypto and stablecoin adoption worldwide. The first one is pretty obvious, which is that in countries like Argentina and Latin America, they're facing 90-plus percent inflation, and the US dollar is the most stable currency in the world. And even though stablecoins in a sense go against the sort of DeFi decentralized mentality of a lot of crypto-native people, they are super powerful, and you can see their impact to people on the ground in Argentina. Where you buy eggs today for $5 or 5 pesos, and next week it'll be 10 pesos versus holding your money in the US dollar via USDC or other stablecoins and keeping your, your basically balance sheet flat. So that's, that's bull case number one. And I think it's a pretty strong case. We're seeing a lot of companies pop up in Latin America that are doing really, really well in helping people either earn in USDC or convert pesos or whatever the local currency is to USDC. And it's really changing lives there. The second bull case is this whole idea of making finance completely decentralized. Why do banks exist? Why do they have to be middlemen? Why can't I just have peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer payment? And I think that's a bull case that'll be more applicable here in North America once we get over this sort of next 2, 3-year recessionary period and flatness in crypto markets. Because it just makes sense to be able to stake some money and pool together on Aave or Compound and wherever and earn interest. And that's entirely owned by me, as in I connect my self-custody wallet to whatever service I want. I don't have to go through a bank or some third-party financial middleman. Instead, we live in this completely decentralized open protocol world that makes everything super powerful. And this is a case that is 100% going to exist in the future. But I think it has some headwinds in the next 2, 3 years.

So what's it like in Y Combinator where I, you know, it's not necessarily Web3, right? It's, it's pretty techie. It's pretty Web2-y. Are there— how Web3 is Y Combinator?

I think there's like a small group of Web3 companies in Y Combinator that unfortunately in the last couple of months, we've also witnessed are thinking about pivoting. Because with Y Combinator, it really does put you on a time crunch. There's something called Demo Day, and you're, you're supposed to show results within a few months to investors at Demo Day so you can have a successful raise and also just, just accelerate the growth of your company. So given what Nikhil just said about this temporary sort of hard time that crypto is seeing, we've seen that a little bit in crypto companies at Y Combinator. I would say like Y Combinator really pushes like general first principles-based thinking. And that is, are you building something that people want? Right. And they don't really care if it is crypto or if it's in Web2, as long as you have customers that are saying that, hey, I would want this to exist and I want this product. That's the biggest kind of signal they go by. But at the same time, you know, they also push us to think about, hey, how big can you be? How big is this market? And those are the things that aren't really spoken of in public. But I would say in our private group office hours or in our office hours with our group partners, that's what they talk really frankly about. Yeah.

But are the Web3 people like sitting in the corner, like smoking cigarettes, like being the rebels, you know, like just like we're so And so, so that's how I feel. Like whenever I hear like web, web 2, like tech stuff, I'm just like, I'm super snooty about it, which I need to chill out about. Uh, but it makes me feel better about myself. But, um, but also like with the advice and the coaching, sure, you can get that in the startup level, but you know, in the startup environment, but aren't you, isn't it just like you have no, at some point there, the advice that you're going to get from Y Combinator is going to fall flat because they're not Web3 native, or do you think it's like, no, it's business advice is business advice. It applies to— so, you know, yeah, that's, that's my question to you is like, is it like 50% applicable? Do you teach them stuff?

I think a lot of the group partners actually have a very good idea of crypto. Um, because I mean, if you look at Y Combinator, Coinbase came out of Y Combinator. This company called CoinTracker that helps us file our crypto taxes came out of Y Combinator and also OpenSea. So some of the most prolific sort of Web3 influencers have come out of this program. So they do understand crypto very well. So I guess, but at the same time, the business principle still applies, which is When Coinbase launched, they were dealing with demand that they couldn't even control. Um, and so was the case with, I guess, OpenSea. And, um, if you look at even, you know, YouTube videos of Y Combinator partners breaking down OpenSea, they were like, um, they had a waiting list of customers. OpenSea had like people waiting for them to build this. Um, so the principles start applying everywhere.

Okay. Yeah, I've been put in my place. I've ruined my chances to get into Y Combinator. That's good to hear. And yes, totally Coinbase and OpenSea. That's awesome. Didn't know that. But also, but also they're like the behemoths, you know? So then I'm still like, I still kind of get a little bit of my crypto high horse of like, yeah, but they don't know DAOs and they don't know protocols and So one thing about PoolTogether that we're building is, uh, with VPoP 5 and Hyperstructure and all these other terms is just how do you make a bit of code that is, uh, that will last, right? How do we do— and my analogy is like, how do we create OS X where you're just doing like OS X, you know, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, you know, like something that can, is fully autonomous, it's running, it's permissionless. And it, it goes forever and no one has to touch it. And in the startup world, everybody has to touch it. Basically, startups are just run off of like Excel spreadsheets or, you know, spreadsheets and manually doing it to demonstrate product market fit. And then you automate it, right? Then you code it just to show that people will use it. So with PoolTogether, it's like, okay, this next version of PoolTogether is like, ideally it's going to be any coin, any yield source contributes to one prize pool or prize network that then distributes prizes to people and it's no loss and there's no penalty for withdrawing earlier or whatever. Right. So this is, these are the kind of the elements of PoolTogether. And now we've just released this new prizing mechanism that where you can have now prize rollover. Like, so we can start seeing as yield increases, as TVL increases, we can start seeing like a million dollar prize a year. That's the goal. So just in kind of giving you what PoolTogether is looking like, and PoolTogether is OG, like they're an OG 2019 crypto protocol and a lot of people know about it. Like I would say like 50% of people know about it. When I go to ETH Denver, that's basically, I think one out of every 2 people will know what I'm talking about. But there's like, you know, it's kind of this other thing is like we're building something and we don't know if it's going to fit, you know, like it's, it's We believe so much in this premium bond primitive. It's been proven IRL in the UK. There's billions and billions of dollars in this primitive. But with crypto, we want to see it explode and we want to see it, but it's knowing the potential of something, but not realizing it or not seeing it being realized. And like, what is wrong? How do we do this? So it's fun to like talk about it and just kind of examine and, and think about ways to grow. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on PoolTogether or advice for the PoolTogether community as they're exploring crypto, as we're going to go do, go to ETH Denver. What's your advice? What, any thoughts based on what I just said?

I think first of all, it's super inspiring and interesting how essentially you have so much more control with PoolTogether as a community, what kind of Rewards you want. And this idea, like Nikhil said, is it's only going to get more popular. As in right now, like your traditional checking or savings account is so much more boring. It's just a number. And then also like when it comes to rewards, I really don't have much say over even like when I'm using my credit card, like the kind of rewards I get. So this kind of thing actually has a very like practical, I would say, utility for everyday people. And you can see why when something like PoolTogether combined with a Nucleus card essentially becomes the future of banking, right? PoolTogether does what it does best, which is rewards and the best way to pool your money, and then you being able to spend it with Nucleus cards. I think that is honestly a deadly partnership. So that's probably what motivates us to keep looking for these banking partnerships. I think when you're Like, I guess my one question to you and the community is like, what is the what is the what do you think made it easier in a DAO setting? What makes being in a DAO easier and forming as a community than like say in the traditional world where you just get together in like a Facebook group or like would love to hear. your thoughts there. Is it that the fact that, you know, the movement of money becomes so much easier with a DAO, with a multisig, with, um, with wallets? Um, is it the fact that, you know, voting becomes so much easier rather than, you know, relying on like Facebook votes and things like that, uh, and forming a community that way? I'd love to get some thoughts on from you on that, actually.

No, I appreciate that. Let me just address the, the first part of what you said. Yeah, it's like the opposite of current credit card reward points, right? You get 1% or maybe 2% or 3% on a category, but that's it. And to get the most out of the card, you have to spend, you have to buy crap. And so same thing with Starbucks. Starbucks is one of the biggest banks in the world because they, or whatever, I don't know. They're a big bank because they have— Everybody's money is just sitting in these gift cards and they spend and you get a latte or something, but that's— they're rewarding you with your own product. But with this PoolTogether idea, with Nucleus, is the ability to— and like everybody, I mean, I would love to see this everywhere, like the ability to like get the opportunity to have these outsized gains, right? Sure. You're going to get, based on probability, some decent yield that's better than savings accounts, right? But, but also you're, you're getting the chance to win right now $5,000. Per drawing, right? You're getting this outsized, which is really great. And you keep— you actually get more points for saving. Like, you actually— it's encouraging you to save your money, but also you can spend it at will and not having to think in these 2 buckets.

Right.

Now, what you posed was an interesting question because you're basically asking like, hey, why a DAO? Why do you even have a DAO when what you could have is a protocol? You can have this this thing that's not a person or whatever. It's like lives on and it goes. And then you just have like a Facebook group, like a casual community that's like kind of, kind of, that's, that's the question, right?

Yeah.

Rather than like something that's like more, you know, formal.

Right, right. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, right now it's just the proliferation of it, right? So it's, it's, it's the whole thing pulled together works when the TVL is and the users are high, right? It works when you can get

that

milli Right. And, and so I— there right now there's PoolTogether Inc. and then there's the PoolTogether DAO, which is nascent. We're forming, we have teams and, and, and more and more PoolTogether Inc. is moving, you know, potentially over to the DAO. And so we're figuring all of that out. Um, but yes, that's the idea is that, that, that's the idea is that the thing lives on. And, and my 3 goals for growth are, um, I want to see everybody have something in PoolTogether, like it's table stakes. If you're in crypto, you should be deposited in PoolTogether. Doesn't matter the amount, but you totally should. You gotta have the chance, right? For that milli yearly. The second thing is, is that I want to see, um, the same thing with protocols. If you're building in crypto, you should integrate with PoolTogether in some way, shape, or form, because it's out there to like add value to whatever you're doing. And it's like no-loss marketing for you, especially with delegations where you can give users chances to win, but you don't lose any money because you can withdraw at any time. And then the third thing is that massive prize. Like, how do we get to— like, ideally when we get to Millie Yearly, then I'll change my name to Billy Yearly. Like, imagine, right? We want to have this billion, like this, this Mega Ball challenging prize. And so I think the formalization, the DAO, of the DAO is, is to generate that, figure out the chicken and the egg thing. Right now we're, we're, we're soaring on users, which is really fun and really cool. Mm-hmm. But the TVL needs to get up too. And I think obviously with a better market that can happen. With Treasuries, I still haven't cracked the nut on Treasuries depositing into PoolTogether. I think just because people are super tight, they don't want to— they don't want another risk vector, you know. But, but that's the idea is like, how can we make it so that it's easy for Treasuries and communities to put their money into PoolTogether and then use it to reward their people. Uh, hey, when Starbucks rewards are actually pulled together tickets, you know, like that would be sick. Who cares about a latte when you got $5,000 every day potential? So

that's crazy.

Yeah. So I think that I would love it. So I think that's the goal. I think that, I think you're right that eventually it is just like a Facebook group. Like it's people, it's like that community savings kind of thing. So, but right now I think the formal, the formality of it is just to, just to push as hard as possible towards that goal of growing users in TVL. And integrations.

Love that.

Yeah. I think we're kind of in the same position where we're a startup and we're just pushing ourselves as well to get to that position of being live and having active users again. So in the early days, the idea of being fully decentralized doesn't necessarily work. You have to have motivated centralized entities who are going to push your vision forward.

And I think another analog between us is that, um, we're building for V5 now. But that doesn't mean we stop pushing V4. Like, it doesn't mean you stop everything. And we talked about this earlier, but, um, there's this like, yes, uh, banking thing, but are you also like having— is it possible to still have partnership talks right now? Or like talk to other, uh, protocols, other platforms? Because I really think that partnership is like the new— is like, that's what marketing is in crypto. Like, who, who else are you working with? What else are you able to do? So I wonder if you're, if you're having— I mean, you've, you've, You've reached out to PoolTogether. We're talking. Who else are you talking to that, that you can at least talk about or, or even just talk about your strategy as far as partnerships and growth goes?

A lot of our strategy was based around selling our infrastructure to self-custody wallets because ultimately we think that self-custody wallets are the future of banking. They are the future of your checking account and that a checking account typically has a debit card attached to it. So why wouldn't a self-custody wallet have a debit card attached to it? So we were in partnership talks with a couple of big self-custody wallets and some in Latin America, a couple in North America. And the idea is that they don't have to go through these pains of dealing with regulation and compliance that we've had to go through. And they don't have to build the tech to off-ramp USDC or any stablecoin into fiat so that you can use your crypto in the real world. That's something that we'll take care of. That's what our strategy is moving forward, is being this infrastructure layer for basically debit cards for any crypto.

Yeah. And we've even seen some DAO operators as well, like when we were live, when they spend it with their Nucleus card, they would use whatever wallet they want, because all of their transactions are on-chain. Even if you spend at a Starbucks, the amount that you spent, it's literally an Ethereum transaction that you can see on-chain. You can pretty much use any wallet to interact with your transaction activity. And so that's why we thought like, you know, partnering with wallets would be a pretty natural fit.

Yeah, I love this. I love like thinking in spaces that I've not thought in before and then having all these ideas and then bothering the person. Oh, have you thought about this, this, this, this, this, this? And they're like, yes. And then at one point I might get one zinger where it's like, yes, I gave them an idea, you know? Um, but yeah, for sure wallets, but I'm like also thinking, I'm like, oh, so like I'm really, I've been learning a lot about lending and borrowing because I just grew up thinking that debt was bad and that you should always get out of debt. You should never have credit cards. You should never, you know, and then I get into crypto and like everything works off debt. Like a lot of it is very, uh, it's very debt heavy. And so I'm getting into NFT lending and borrowing and and seeing how it's growing. And a lot of it, I mean, it's all basically over-the-counter, still like handholding Discord chat. Anybody going to give me a loan for my CryptoPunk? You know, and it's still that, but like, but even that, like when somebody takes a loan, they can take it off-chain and use it, right? Like they might want to do that. And so anyway, just thinking about like how I see NFT loans growing, then I could totally see Like a partnership, like just the ability for a lender or a borrower to also like spend off of that. So anyway, yeah, I love just thinking about disparate possible connections. Um, so, uh, anyway, I'll pass people as I'm talking to people, I'll be like, oh, you should totally talk to Nicholas. This would be great. And then you'll be like, Tim, not yet or something. So cool. Um, anything else you guys wanted to talk about that, that we didn't break out or that I didn't bring up in my line of questioning?

I mean, I think we're still open in terms of you know connecting with anyone. So I mean, you see Nicole's Discord here. Feel free to just message us anytime, any ideas. I mean, look, like in the end, we're driven by the community, and if people you know really really want this thing, and we the more evidence we see of that, like I think it's only gonna make our convictions stronger and you know help us go faster. So I mean. Yes, please do send people our way. We'd love to still chat while we are in this zone. And I mean, you know, just share what we've learned along the way, along with, I think, just learn within each other. So, you know, very open to just connecting with anyone. We're happy to chat.

Yeah. And I think like now more than ever, like with the sentiment around exchanges being what it is, like we'd love to Like, yeah, help like bring a solution like this and partner. I think like you said, Tim, like partnerships are the way in Web3. So yeah, I mean, we're open to chat about anything.

Well, I will certainly throw some references your way as I'm talking to people and pull together community. I mean, when I first talked to Nucleus, I just pitched this idea and we just started dreaming dreams together of what would it look like to spend your PTA USDC. And they were on board. Like, they were just like, let's do it. And yes, there's friction. Yes, there's things that are roadblocks and stuff, but I'm just excited to see that happen. I'm excited to see other stuff happen. So as a Pull Together community, I'm sure we can throw some references, throw some partnerships your way, and cheer you on and support you as you're going. So Nucleus crew, be encouraged. You've got friends in the Pull Together community for sure. Thank you. Ani, Nicole, Akash, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a

Thank you, Tim. Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the PoolTogether Discord and let us know.