EXODUS CEO AMA: How a wallet is solving crypto fundraising | by Exodus

Today we're doing a live AMA with the CEO of Exodus, jp. Jp, how's it going?

Doing great, Rachel. Thanks for having me on the show.

Yeah, of course. Thanks for joining us. So, before we get into Exodus Wallet, I just want to know a little bit about your background, how you got involved with crypto, because I know you've got some interesting insights there. So we'll start off with that.

Absolutely. So my background is that of a software engineer. I discovered Bitcoin around 2011, and it was the first time where I felt like, wow, this is a way to empower people to control and hold and own their wealth. But at that moment in time, there was only one service to really manage your bitcoin and buy bitcoin, and that was Mount Gox. And most of your viewers know how that story turns out. And in 2014, when Mount Gox was hacked and lost a lot of money, it was half a billion dollars. At that moment in time, I recognized that I wanted to contribute something to this space to prevent something like that from happening in the future. That's what I set off to do.

That's awesome. You're an OG then, in the space.

Yeah. I like to brag that. My Bitcoin Talk account was actually registered in 2011, but unfortunately, I didn't buy until I think it was late 2012, early 2013. But I didn't buy because it was so difficult to buy on Mount Gox. But, yes, I started in 2011.

Awesome. Very cool. Okay, so on that note, let's hear about Exodus Wallet. I guess just briefly explain what it is, how it's different from other crypto wallets and all that. Good stuff.

Yeah. So Exodus is the most beautiful, easy to use wallet to send, receive, and manage a portfolio of cryptocurrency. 1.3 million people trust Exodus to keep their crypto safe. And, yeah, the company was founded in 2015, and we've been religiously releasing new updates since December 9, 2015.

Awesome. Cool. I just want to remind our audience to be sure to subscribe to Cointelegraph's YouTube, and we're doing a live AMA, so ask your questions, drop that below, and JP will answer those. Okay, so next question. So can we talk a little bit about the security and those features that Exodus offers? Just the things that make it unique from other crypto wallets.

I think what a lot of people, first of all, really love about Exodus, again, is the ease of use and how beautiful it is. But in addition to that of being on both the mobile and the desktop and allowing people to sync Exodus on both platforms. People love the ability of integrating with the Trezor hardware wallet. And so the Trezor hardware wallet is what we would refer to as cold storage. In other words, your keys are on the Trezor device itself and they are not on your computer. And so you don't have to worry about things like viruses from taking your money. And so people really love the Trezor and the Trezor integration and Exodus. And that's something that we recommend today for people to store large amounts of money is to do it on the Trezor. Now, long term, we are working on solutions, two factor authentication solutions where you can take your phone and you can take Exodus on your desktop and you can require authentication from both devices to secure your funds. And then that has the added advantage that, you know, if you're out and about and you know you're in a supermarket in a line, you're looking at your Doge gains and you know somebody, you, you leave the supermarket and you're like, yeah, you're really excited that you're maybe a Doge millionaire or something now. And someone puts a gun to your head because they oversaw that you're a Doge millionaire and they've got to get some Doge. So two factor authentication would prevent something like that from happening. Or conversely, right on your computer getting malware or virus, Two factor authentication could prevent that. So we're working on those sorts of solutions to really ensure that we create a secure environment because we don't want to see another Mt. Gox like situation or some of the hacks like the Kucoin hack that happened recently. There's so many hacks that have happened. Don't want to see that. We want people to have their money protected.

Right. And I mean, two fa, I feel like that's critical, like that's crucial. That should definitely be done as soon as you set up a wallet. The two fa. What I also like about Exodus is that you mentioned there's a desktop version which, you know, in terms of user friendliness and accessibility, I love desktop versions as well as the app. I think that's really important because it's so easy to get on your computer, log into your account, and it's just like you're looking at like a traditional financial bank account or something on your computer.

Absolutely. And it's kind of funny that you say all this because back in, when we started, I remember I was at a conference in 2016 and we actually started with the desktop version first, and I remember talking to a potential investor at that moment in time. He flat out told me, he said, I'm not even going to look at your company because you don't have a mobile product. You have a desktop only product at that moment in time. A lot of people, I don't think, recognize that most of the trading happens on the desktop or happened on the desktop. Now it is shifting towards mobile. But at that Moment in time, 2016, it was on the desktop.

Right. I mean, for me, that's a really important feature. I only like to do things with the desktop because if it's just the mobile app, it's just, it's frustrating. It's like you don't want to do everything on your phone.

Right, right, right. It's like you want to look at your phone and you want to see, you want to see your prices, maybe you make a market move or two, but you're not going to sit down and do deep market research on your phone when you're at the grocery store. You just want to, again, you want to look at your Doge gains. Yeah, I'm making money there with Doge, but that's about it.

Exactly. Yeah. So I'm going to take a question from an audience member real quick. So, Frank, Hugh is asking, he's saying, ask him why they charge such high fees to exchange crypto and also ask them what's going on with the Spark airdrop.

Okay, so let's, let's start with the fees. There's a lot of, a lot here. Okay. So there's multiple aspects. We're going to start with just talking about the exchange first, because that's most likely what Frank is talking about here. So with the exchange, we ourselves charge 2% to actually do the exchange and that's what helps to provide the product to be a free product on its own. But we charge 2%. Now, in addition to that, what a lot of people are recognizing here is that because the exchange is 100%, it's an on chain exchange. So if you're going to exchange, let's say Doge for Link, and if you go to a traditional exchange, you're not going to see a market for Doge to link, you'll see a market for Doge to Bitcoin and then Bitcoin to Link. And plus on top of that, on a traditional centralized exchange, you have to send your money to that exchange and then you have to exchange Doge to Bitcoin, wait for that to happen and then you have your Bitcoin and then you exchange your Bitcoin to link and then you have to pull it out of the exchange. Whereas in Exodus it provides the convenience. That's the big key here, is this ease of use and convenience. So if you see market moves happening, you're going to, you might want to press the exchange button. The prices are locked in and the price that you see is because all of those moves are happening behind the scenes. So that's with the exchange. Now, a lot of people don't know this. Number two is that when you send Crypto and Exodus, specifically Bitcoin and Ethereum, you can actually set a custom fee. A lot of people aren't aware of this. We introduced this, I think it was about six months ago. And you can set a custom fee. And if you end up setting the custom fee too low, we actually, in Bitcoin we provide what's referred to as RBF support or replace by fee support. And that. And there's a nice little button that shows up if your transaction isn't confirmed and you can increase that fee to get that transaction confirmed. So we do that. So that can help you as a customer save money in your day to day transactions. If you feel that the fee that we've chosen is too high, you can slide it down and pick something that might be more friendly for you. And again, if it ends up being too low and is not confirmed, you can press a button and that'll fix that. So that's number two. And then number three, when it comes to fees, Exodus. And I can say this confidently, that when it comes to purchasing Bitcoin with Apple pay, a lot of people don't know that we support Apple pay in Nexus with our partners Wyre. And we don't unfortunately support the state of New York and Texas, but we support purchasing Bitcoin with Apple payments. And it is the cheapest way to buy bitcoin. The rates are cheap. And I can say this because we actually subsidize every purchase that you make. We pay anywhere from 5 to $15, depending upon the market, for every purchase that you make. And you only have to pay $1. So if you're buying $500 worth of Bitcoin, you only have to. The fee is only $1 and you get $499 worth of Bitcoin. And so we're really cheap there. And the reason we do this is we want people to come into this ecosystem, start learning, start actually holding bitcoin. It's so important. So that's how we're thinking about things with fees, we understand. So back to the exchange. We understand that the convenience there may. The convenience and the fee for the convenience may not be something that everybody's comfortable with. We are very aware that we are looking at other ways to really bring these fees down. There's a couple interesting things that we're thinking about with working with actual other exchanges themselves to hook up and connect to those exchanges and decentralized exchanges. And so these are things that we are definitely considering.

So before we talk about the airdrop, I'm just curious, because it seems like Apple Pay is a really easy way to buy bitcoin. Is there a max limit to that? Because let's say I want to buy $10,000 worth of Bitcoin. Is that feeling going to be $1?

Yeah. So great question. The max limit per day is $500. It's $500. And we are working with Wyre to try to raise that. But we'll have to do some additional things. They have some fraud engines in place to really dial this in, so we're going to work with wire to make that so we can raise it from $500 a day. But today, it is only $500 per day that a person can purchase Bitcoin. But again, if you're talking to your neighbor and your neighbor's like, hey, I really want to get in Bitcoin, you can just be like, hey, download Exodus, get bitcoin in less than two minutes.

Yeah, I like that. And I'm also going to say that's awesome, because you could go back and every day buy a little bit of Bitcoin and just increase the amount you have day after day.

But.

But what's really great is, like, PayPal also makes buying bitcoin easy, but you can't do much with it. And so in this case, you have the Bitcoin, you have it in the Exodus wallet, and then you can do more with it, as opposed to PayPal, where you buy the bitcoin and you can either, you know, keep it in PayPal, which, you know. Okay.

Yes, that's such an important point, is that we wholly subscribe to the. Not your keys, not your coins. And that with Exodus, you hold your keys, and so therefore, you hold your coins. And that's absolutely right. It's all about you as a person having control of your assets, of your wealth. Super important. And a platform like PayPal, it's great that they added support for cryptocurrency. It gets more exposure. I think everybody was happy when PayPal had announced that they were supporting Bitcoin. But yeah, a person's going to have to transition from an environment like PayPal where, as you've mentioned, you can't take your money out of it. But with Exodus, where it's self custody, you can take your money. If you're not happy with Exodus, you don't like our fees, you can just take your money and you can move to another platform if you're not happy. And that's what we want, because we want everybody to have that control. And then one final point with this Apple Pay thing is that as we were talking before this call, a lot of people believe that you have to. When they see the price of Bitcoin, 50,000 or 49,000, they think, I don't have 49,000 to go buy one whole bitcoin. And so this is a really easy solution to be like, look, you can buy $50 if you want and you can just get started that way. And it works really well for people.

Yeah, I think that's a really important point that you make. And that's what I tell people that want to get started, don't buy one whole bitcoin, just buy a bit of the bitcoin and then you own Bitcoin.

Yeah.

What about the Airdrop question that I mentioned earlier?

Right. So I'm assuming that Frank is asking about Spark, our actual support of Spark in the wallet and the software. So for those of you who don't know, the Spark airdrop was if you have Ripple or if you had Ripple at a certain point in time, the. I think it was Flare or Spark, they did a snapshot and then you would get these tokens later. And so we allow people to have the snapshot. Now, as far as whether we're going to support it or not, that still remains to be unknown. But typically when it comes to supporting assets, we like to see them get at least enter into the top 100 so it's on our radar and then get into the top 50 and then the top 25. Once an asset hits the top 25, in almost all situations, we will support that asset. There are some exceptions. We can talk about that later if somebody asks that question. But most of the time, if it's in the top 25, we will support that asset.

Awesome. Okay, cool. So I'm going to ask you another question that's on a different topic. So this was exciting news. Exodus recently raised almost 60 million in crypto for a regulated offering. Can you discuss the details here and what the process was like, yeah, so.

We made history in what we did. And what we did is that we. And this is actually still live right now. This offering, this regulated SEC qualified offering, is still live. And so what this means is that we have a public offering today. It's the United States. Only 47 states, unfortunately, without Texas, Florida or Arizona. We're working on those two. But it's 47 states in the United States where you can go inside of Exodus. You can purchase Exodus stock with Bitcoin, Ethereum or usdc. And this is all within the wallet. You have to register with an account with our partner Securitize, and Exodus will walk you through that. But the offering is all inside Exodus software. And so the vision here is that we are trying to create the new interface to the stock market that's going to be on the blockchain. And we see that as an inevitable future, is that all traditional assets, whether it's stocks, bonds, mortgages, currencies, are you seeing that now, Will make their way to the blockchain. And so we thought, why don't we be the ones here, the trailblazers to go out there and make this a reality ourselves? So our stock will be digitally represented on the blockchain. And so people are going to be able to trade their stock inside of Exodus as simple as people can trade Bitcoin or Ethereum or other crypto assets. And that's the vision we have here is you saw what happened with GameStop and Robinhood and how with Robinhood you felt trapped. You're like, I want to make moves with Gamestop and we want to create a future where you as a person have full control over your assets that you can send stock, as simple as sending Bitcoin and Ethereum. And so, yeah, this offering has been live now for just a little over two weeks, and we're making great progress on it.

Yeah, that's really interesting. That's awesome. I'm wondering, do you think that we're going to start seeing more crypto companies do the same? And also, is it a difficult process to do that?

So what we did with the SEC Regulation A offering, yes, it is difficult. It's very similar to actually doing an IPO and actually going through the whole process. So you have to go find a law firm. And we found one of the greatest law firms out there to help us with this. Wilson Sonsini. We found them and they are the same firm that did something similar with YouNow and Blockstack. And so we got Wilson Cincini on board and we Started this process in the summer of 2020.

Okay.

And then we submitted so that we created a 200 page offering document called an offering circular. And you can. You can actually see that live on our website, Exodus.com you'll see a big banner for it. You click it and you'll see this document that is on the SEC's website. And so we had to create this document throughout the course of the summer of 2020. And then we. And it describes the business and kind of the mechanics of everything. And then we submitted this offer, this document to the SCC in September of 2020. And you submit in kind of a confidential filing is what they call that. So nobody knows other than the sec. And so we submitted it confidentially. And with the market moves that happened around that moment in time, I don't know if you guys recall, but it was. Michael Saylor had just came out around that time saying that he bought Bitcoin to put in the microstrategy balance sheet. And then PayPal, I think, in October. That's about the time when they announced cryptocurrency. And then you saw online Michael Saylor and Elon Musk on Twitter. What a time to be alive to witness Michael Saylor and Elon Musk on Twitter talking about putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet. We were talking with Wilson Sonsini and they said we got to put the pedal to the metal here and get going on making sure that we're all ready, because again, we're building the technology for the offering inside of Exodus. So we rallied the entire company up. At this moment, we were at 70 employees. So we rallied the entire company up and we said, okay, this is our number one focus. We're gonna get this out into the world by end of March, early April. That's the rough timeframe. And so that's what we did. We rallied the company up and we actually doubled the size of the company. Now we're. I think the actual number is 147 people. And we got this offering out live. And I think that the actual date was April 8th. And the cool thing is, is you can buy. You can buy legal stock. You can buy it at nighttime, you can buy it on Saturday or Sunday. Just like the Internet. The Internet never sleeps. Our stock never sleeps. And that's how it should be. Yeah.

No, that's awesome. That's amazing. Really exciting news. Take another question from the audience real quick, because I know we've got people asking questions. So let's see here. Okay, so this question is from Adyal osfi. Can't pronounce the last name. Sorry. So he's asking, do you plan on enabling 2fa for logging into the desktop application?

Yes, absolutely. We are going to create a 2fa experience. But the tricky part is that modern 2fa that you use to log into a service like Coinbase or Binance, it requires the authentication from that service because they hold your keys. And so the trick is that since in Exodus you hold your keys, we have to create an experience that kind of blends multiple devices together and use something like, similar to, like multisig and allow people to have that control from both devices. So that's how we would solve a problem like that. And that will come at some point in time. But there's still so much work and research that's going into this to make sure that it's not only safe and secure, but that it's usable. I mean, that's the key. It's gotta be usable, right?

Definitely. So since Exodus is a crypto wallet, I think this is really interesting and really like a good topic to discuss right now because obviously we all know bitcoin is going down. So what are your thoughts on that? Do you have any advice for people? I'm sure people ask you all the time, oh, no, it's going down. What do I do? So I just want to get your thoughts on the price of bitcoin and all that.

Yeah, look, bitcoin, I can say a number of things to this, but first of all, I think it's really important that for people to have a bit of perspective, as we were chatting about a little bit is that, what was it a week or two ago? The price was in the 50s or so. So we're back to just two or three weeks ago and having that perspective. And I think that's really important. And look, I understand Exodus holds most of our assets. Our treasury is in bitcoin. We pay 100% of our salaries in bitcoin to every 147 employees. It's all in bitcoin. So all the employees are excited that it's going down so they can get a bigger payout and they want it to go back up. I understand how that can cause people anxiety, but I think, look, we've had so much bullish news leading up to this moment, and I think one of the biggest ones is that Elon Musk buying bitcoin for Tesla. It doesn't get any more bullish than an S&P 500 company holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet. And now if you're buying Tesla stock, you're exposed to bitcoin. Or if you buy an index fund that tracks the S&P 500, you have a little bit of exposure to bitcoin. And so to beat that bullish news, it's going to be really tough. It's really tough. And so I don't know, maybe Apple has to support or has to put bitcoin on their balance sheet. I don't know. But I think people just have to have some perspective. I'm going to make a prediction here too, that I think ETFs are coming this year. Bitcoin ETFs. And so that's going to be a huge exciting thing when that happens. I mean, there was two approved in Canada and I think one recently in Brazil. And so the sec, again, I'm purely speculating here. The SEC is probably seeing this and being like, we've got to move on approving a bitcoin etf. Which one's the right one, who knows? But I think more good stuff is on the way. And then finally the Federal Reserve is not going to stop printing money. We know that to be true. And so the long term outlook, I think is always bullish.

Yeah, definitely. And you made such an important point that I just want to point out again, it's like Bitcoin's at 40,000 something now, I think, and it's like a few months ago or maybe, who knows when that would have been considered amazing. And now we're thinking like, oh, 40,000 ish. It's so low. Disaster. It's all about perspective, like you said.

Oh, totally. Look, I remember there was kind of this ongoing kind of joke that in December the price point kind of matched the day. And I remember it was roughly on Christmas Day where we were kind of, I think, toying with $25,000 Bitcoin. And Christmas wasn't that long ago. Right. And we're talking about $25,000 Bitcoin. And now, I don't know, with the price of what, 49,000 or so or 50, it's around there. And so to 2x in a matter of just four or five months. It's just perspective really matters.

Yeah, totally. I mean, I remember last June or July, I was so excited that it was at 12K. 12K, you know, to be excited about that, like, it's insane to think about it.

Oh yeah, and you're so right because what was it? It was March. It was March 12th where we fell. We fell to what it was like a little over $3,000.

Yeah.

And that was. And that was such a scary moment because we as a ecosystem, we rose up to like, I was like maybe 10,000 and then it just fell to 3,000. And who would have guessed. Who would have guessed that over a year later we would be approximately $50,000? Bitcoin, I bet if you'd ask anybody to make that prediction, there's nobody that would have made that prediction. Or if they did, they just bought an island somewhere and living large, drinking margaritas right now and laughing at us.

Yeah. Well, the lesson learned from all of this, I think, is like, hodl, hodl for life. Because we know bitcoin. I'm a big believer that bitcoin is going to keep going up and up and up. And if you don't hodl, you're going to really regret that decision.

Oh, absolutely. I love the messages of guys like Michael Saylor and Robert Breedlove where they're talking about how bitcoin is the ultimate way to store money that transcends both time and space. And then we haven't seen that before. And that's why this is the best store of value that the world has ever seen. And I agree. Just, just hodl hang out, get comfortable with the ups and downs. And over time, long term, I think we're going to be looking. Okay.

Yeah, exactly. Cool. Okay, I'm going to take another question from an audience member. So I think this one is coming from Raj Kumar. He's saying Defi has really taken off recently and proven to be an important investment vehicle for crypto traders during bear markets. Does Exodus plan on adding Defi staking pools?

Yes. So it was in the summer of 2020 where we just got really. Actually leading up, it was early 2020, we got really into Defi and you can still see some of this in Exodus Desktop. So if you download Exodus Desktop, you will see that there is a vision for creating an apps platform that makes Defi very simple. And so we started with Compound, our friends over at Compound Finance, and we integrated Compound Finance directly inside of Exodus. And the vision was exactly that. Just one click. If you have dai the dollar stablecoin, you can just deposit and you can earn a high interest rate without messing around with any browser, plugins or anything complicated. And that was the early vision. And then after that, after Compound, we went to our friends over at SportX and Sport X, for a lot of people that don't know, is a service where you can wager on live sports and esports. And we thought, what a cool, amazing use case for the mainstream, average mainstream person to be able to come in and then those that like sports to actually participate and use cryptocurrency in a fun way. So we brought in SportX into Exodus. Then the summer of 2020 with Ethereum. The rise of Ethereum and the rise of the gas fees caused us to reconsider everything. Because to place a simple wager, if you're going to place like a $25 wager on a game, it costs at that moment in time, it may have been like $50 or so to just place a wager in the SportX smart contracts. And so SportX saw that this is a problem and they migrated over to a layer two on Ethereum. And then with compound or compound integration is still there today. But to withdraw or deposit the price is about $100 to $200 or so, depending upon where the Ethereum, the price of Ethereum in the gas fees. And so for us, we're thinking, not only can we make this easy for people, how do we make it? Part of making it easy is making it affordable for people. I spent some time, just a few weeks back, I spent some time on OpenSea and Rarible. And for those that don't know, OpenSea is a platform where and you can buy and sell NFTs. And I was like, I know that we're going to build an NFT experience. And so I'm like, I got to figure out and learn how to use these things. So I go to OpenSea, connect my browser plugin, and I'm starting to buy. You know, I think I found like an Oprah meme or something like that. And I'm like, I'm going to buy this nft. Oh, no, no. I created the Oprah meme to sell and Rarible. I bought like some 3D hologram on OpenSea. And I bought it. It was like, I don't know what the price was, maybe 50 or 100 bucks or whatever, but the gas cost was like $75. And then I went to Rarible. I'm like, okay, I got a mint, an NFT. And to actually mint one was like, I don't know, $75 to $100 in that range. And so I'm thinking, okay, is Ethereum really going to be that platform to scale with. To scale defi. Now, I know that there's liquidity pools on Ethereum and I know that a lot of other chains are working on integration with Ethereum and making that really easy, and that's super exciting. But we really have got to make an experience where not only, like I said, not only is it easy, but it's affordable for the mainstream to come in and start using these things. So to answer the question, yes, we will sometime, but that's the key. We got to do those two things, right?

Yeah, and you bring up a good point. It's like those gas fees are crazy. I mean, I know people that don't want to send Ethereum just because of the gas fees. It really needs to be. It's a challenge. It's a huge challenge.

Right. Look, I'm sympathetic towards Ethereum. They were the trailblazers here back in, let's see, the Ethereum crowdfunding was that, I think in 2014 or 2015, around that timeframe. And so they had this broad vision of creating a world computer. And they didn't know at that moment in time how much traffic they would really get. A lot of people have heard the old, you know, kind of the old adage or something like, nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it's so busy. That's kind of how it is with Ethereum. It's like, you know, it's so busy that, you know, people don't want to use this sort of thing. And so. But, you know, people are using it, so I think they'll figure some of these things out. The problem is, I don't know that they're going to figure it out fast enough. And the pace of what's at this, the way this ecosystem moves. Wow. Ethereum's got to find a way to move faster.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's just like the early days of the Internet and obviously it's going to be solved at some point, but like you said, they've got to solve it asap, like, as fast as they can to keep up with the space. Because, yeah, things are changing the space every single day, every single second.

Absolutely. It's like out of nowhere, all of a sudden, like the Binance smart chain just rises up and I start hearing about pancake swap. Like I said, a family. I was at a family gathering and my sister's significant other asked me about pancake swap. And he's talking to me about pancake swap. I'm like, wow, this is making all over the place. And it's moving so quick. And he asked me, he's like, dude, what do you think about pancake swap? I'm like, dude, I haven't even used pancake swap yet. I think it Just was invented yesterday. I haven't used it.

You know what's funny, though, jp? It's like I feel like I can. I mean, not people asking you about pancake swap, but it's like when people find out you're in the crypto space, especially family members and, like, friends that aren't in. Every single time something happens in the space, they come to you. Like, it's just you're getting probably so many messages from random people you haven't even spoke to in five years. Like, hey, should I buy Bitcoin? Or, what's pancake swap? Or, like, should I buy this? Like, altcoin, you know? What about Doge?

Oh, yeah. Oh. Oh, my gosh. When Doge was pumping, even the first time around, I don't know, a month or two ago, I got a text message from somebody that an old friend who I hadn't seen for a while, and he asked me that. He's like, should I buy Doge? And I said, I always. I don't like to tell people what to do. I like to tell them about my behavior. And I said, look, man, I'm not going to tell you to buy or not buy, but I can tell you I don't own any Doge, so you do what you want. And then I think it was like an hour later when Doge had pumped even another hundred percent or so, I think I got another text message from him, and he's like, dude, should I buy Doge? I'm like, oh, man, come on. Come on. Definitely get those messages.

It doesn't stop. And people asked me about. They were asking about Doge also. I'm like, I don't have that. And. And, like, quite frankly, it was created as a joke, and I think it's a joke. I mean, I don't want to sound mean or harsh or whatever, but it's like, it really was created as a joke.

But isn't that wild, that. Okay, like. Like, Elon Musk, you know, he. I think he tweeted any tweet, something about he actually is experimenting with Doge miners with his children, and they're kind of getting into Doge mining a little bit. I know he tweets a lot about Doge, but I think I saw something like that. But who knows? Is Elon Musk buying Doge? Maybe he is, because he thinks it's funny. If I'm the world's wealthiest guy, am I buying a meme coin, maybe? I probably think it's funny. Just be like, yeah, why not? A billion Dollars in Doge is hilarious. Like, they see that puppy staring at you and you're like, it's funny, right? And you're probably telling your friends, like, I'm a Doge billionaire. And everybody's laughing at you and having fun. And then you have Mark Cuban, here he is, he's done the Mavs, he has his merchandise, and he's like, we're going to take Doge. And then he goes one step further. Not only are they going to take it, he says, we're not going to liquidate Doge, we're going to actually hold our Doge. He's like, I'm going to be a Doge Hodler. But they're billionaires, so they're having fun with it. But I can't blame him. If I'm in their shoes, I'd probably be doing the same thing.

Yeah, yeah. And also, it is a cute. Like, the dog is really cute.

It is fun. I had another neighbor of mine, actually, when. This is another one. Doge was pumping. He hadn't used Exodus yet, but he downloaded Exodus, he bought bitcoin, and then he exchanged for Doge just to get Doge. That was the easiest way he could get Doge. That moment in time, I'm like, but do you have any bitcoin? No, but I got Doge. But the cool thing is he bought Doge. To his credit, he bought Doge. I don't know, it's like a penny or two or something like that. And I text them the other day, I'm like, you still got your Doge. She's like, I still got it, man. I still got it. So, I don't know. People are having fun with it, and I think to have fun with cryptocurrency, it matters. I mean, it matters. It's like, we got Doge, you got Pancake Swap. You got yams, right? You have all these. Got sushi, right? There's a person named. Yeah, like Chef Nomi, I think is what his name is. Making sushi swap. It's like, so this ecosystem, I love it. It's like we are looking at traditional Fanch, the traditional financial system, and we're saying we're going to do things different in a fun way.

Yeah, got it. Very cool. Okay, so I'm going to take another question from the audience. And by the way, guys, just want to remind you, subscribe to our channel and keep sending your questions. JP has a lot of knowledge here, so send them our way. Okay? So actually, this is a really good question that I wanted to know about myself. It's coming from Oconmix22. He's asking, or they're asking win interest for BTC.

Oh, okay. That would be incredible to have. And so there's a few things that we can do there. So we can partner up with a service like BlockFi or there's other services out there that are like blockchain.com. they have earned service. We can partner up with partner services like that and potentially allow people to earn a return on their bitcoin. That's one exciting way that we're thinking about. Another way that we're thinking about this is actually creating a decentralized mechanism to take bitcoin, convert it into TBTC, which is an Ethereum token, or RenBTC, one of the two, and then move it into an ethereum liquidity pool and allow people to earn, earn interest there. And then finally another potential is I have interest in the stacks token. And the stacks token actually allows you to earn a payout with bitcoin. I don't fully understand the mechanics just yet, but it's something that I have my eyes on because I think that would be the holy grail to have bitcoin in your Exodus wallet. Press one button like how we do with a lot of other staking in Exodus 1 button, and then you're just earning interest and yield on that bitcoin. That would be incredible. And so it's something we're thinking about and doing. We don't have any formal plans just yet.

Yeah, awesome. Well, that's good to know because I always like it because I hodl obviously. So to earn interest is a really good feature. I like BlockFi a lot because they offer that. So hopefully I'm going to see that from you guys too soon.

Cool.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about where wallets fall into the future of crypto. I think, you know, crypto wallets are so important in terms of the future. Where do you see wallets, you know, looking or heading into or, you know, all that?

I don't think people see how important wallets are yet because it is the gateway to how a person experiences crypto. Right. Like today, people will go to exchanges and that's fine. But I think as we see more and more distrust from the mainstream to big centralized institutions, I think that distrust will be applied to exchanges. So platforms like Coinbase, Binance, there's going to be more distrust there. And let's be honest, hacks on exchanges are never going to stop. Right. Exchange the servers with Exchanges, they're always not going to be up 100% of the time. That's just impossible. Right? They're going to go down from time to time. And so I believe people over time will seek out solutions to actually be in control. But the key is for people to actually feel like they don't have to have the responsibility. So as I mentioned before, if you're holding your doge and your doge gains, you don't really have to want to worry that if you do go to the supermarket, say you drop your phone or you just lose your phone, which is a very normal occurrence. Now you drop it or whatever and you get in the car and you're like, oh no, I think I dropped my phone in the supermarket. They're running there and get it. And you run in there and you're panicking, looking around. And then you start in your mind, you start thinking like, oh my gosh, did I just lose all of my crypto too? That's a problem. So we've got to solve those problems. We've got to make it feel as a person like you have the control and ownership, but you don't have the technology is so good that it doesn't feel like you have the responsibility. And so that's a very key and important aspect. That's one of the number one things that we're thinking about. In addition to that. So our mission is to help half of the world exit the traditional financial system. And so to do that, we have to make it so that anybody in the world can buy Bitcoin or cryptocurrency easy, in a very easy way. And we've achieved that with Apple pay great. But we haven't achieved that on Android yet and we haven't achieved that on the desktop yet. And most of the world owns an Android phone. I think recent statistic was anywhere from 70 to 80%. Don't know the exact number. But a majority of the world owns an Android phone. And when you think of people in developing nations, most of those people own Android phones. And so we've got to make an experience for people where you can buy Bitcoin easy, whether it's with a credit card, whether it's with bank, whether it's with cash. These things are just kind of like the must haves. But really to where it's going is that we've got to make access, like all these cool defi things that are happening, these liquidity pools that are happening. It's going to make it so simple that your grandma or Somebody that's just starting out on their crypto journey can take $100 from bank account, move it all the way into a service like Compound or aave and start earning interest and not have any fear whatsoever. But for us, it always centers around ease of use and security, and that's how we're definitely thinking about these things.

Yeah, you make really good points. And for me, I mean, as a journalist in the space, I know a lot of the people behind the wallets. So like, obviously right now you and I are talking, but a lot of people don't. And so with, you know, if you have an issue with your crypto, one thing I that makes me sleep well at night is knowing the fact that I could literally contact the founder or CEO of that company and say, hey, I've got an issue with my crypto, help me. Rather than going through their support, it's like, I just want to know. So anyways, I think it's important for people to understand that X is and other wallets also offer great customer support, where it's like, if you've got a problem with your Fiat, you can call your bank and say, hey, there's an issue, help me. I just, you know, can you elaborate on that? Like, how's the customer support?

So customer support. So I'm going to have to do a confession moment too here in just a moment, but customer support is. Or the company was founded with the notion that we will never get to the mainstream if we don't have good customer support because we believe that people that are just starting out on their journey are going to need a trusted friend to email and contact and talk to and talk these things. And in fact, in the early days we had our phone number right on the website and it was actually, you talk to me, you call up, you'd be like, I'm having a problem, you know, with my dash or whatever. And I'd talk them through it. I wasn't like, hey, jp, CEO speaking. I did not say that. I was just like, you know, thank you for calling Exodus, how can I help you? And you know, just talking through and helping people out. And over time we learned the hard way that the phone support isn't going to scale. And I think that was about November ish timeframe of 2017, when literally it was phone. I mean my phone just did not stop ringing, like, okay, this is not going to scale. So we went into like, let's just have the best email support. So we went down that path. We went down that path and we Were really proud. We were really proud of ourselves up until I think it was earlier this year where we just got smacked in the face. We thought we were prepared. We thought we were ready for the bull market. We thought we were ready. We weren't. We were not ready for the bull market, unfortunately. I hate to say that, but that's the true reality. We're not ready for the bull market. And so what we did is we doubled the size of our customer support, then we did it again. Right. We're growing our customer support. We're still not at the point that we want to be at, but our team, our customer support team is working super hard to answer everybody's questions. People that have written us, they will get answers. That's going to happen. But just know that we are going to continue to grow our customer support, because for my co founder, Daniel and I, it is critical, critical, critical, critical for customer support to be great. It's one story I love to tell about this with a company that I want to really emulate is Zappos. A lot of people know about the story of Zappos, and one of the stories that their CEO told is that he was out with his friends one night and they had some beers or whatever, and they asked him like, hey, do you think I could call Zappos and order a pizza? And he's like, I don't know. Try it. And so the person calls Zappos and sure enough, they help him order pizza.

Wow.

We want to get to that level. And in the past, we have had things like that. People have. They've emailed us and they say, hey, I'm having problems with this exchange. Can you help me out? And we've done that, and we want to do that. We want to be that trusted friend, no matter what it is or whatever the problem it is that you have. And that's the aspiration that we have. And we will get there. We will get there.

Awesome. Yeah. That's so important. I love that attitude. Okay. Taking another question or two from the audience. Okay. This is actually a great question because we touched on this, but we didn't really go into the details, and I think it's important. So Elle Millen is asking, what are your plans? Please tell me more about the partnership with Trezor.

Yeah. So right now what we're doing is on our roadmap is we are going to add more asset support. That's the biggest thing, is that nobody that is holding assets doesn't want more asset support in the trade source. So we have so all the assets that Exit supports, we want to get to that level with the trade source. So we're going to add more assets. And the reason that this is so cool and important is that a lot of people have gotten really interested in staking. Right. Whether it's Cardano, Cosmos, Tezo, Solana, whatever it is. And so how cool would it be if you have those, like say you have a large amount of those assets and you move them on your tracer and then you can press one button and you can stake and you can earn interest with those assets on your tracer. And so we want to get to that point. We're not quite there yet, but that is on the roadmap to do that because again, it's all about security and we want people to have a safe experience while using Exodus.

What are your thoughts on. Because I think beginners, and this is my personal opinion, I think if you're a beginner user to crypto and you're new to stay away from hardware wallets, go with the wallets on your phone or stay away from the hardware wallets. But what are your thoughts on that?

I think that hardware wallets are great for people that are more tech savvy or are going to hold a large amount of money. But for the mainstream, whether you're starting out or even just mainstream down the line, fast forward three to five years from now, I don't think that a lot of people are going to be using hardware wallets. I think there will always be people that will use them and that will demand them and we're going to support those use cases for those people. But I agree with you, for someone that's just starting out, I think they just have to start playing with cryptocurrency. And whether that's with like Bitcoin or Doge or whatever, people just have to start playing with it. So I 100% agree with you that for people starting out should probably avoid hardware wallets to start.

Yeah. But I like the fact that Exodus has that partnership and you also have the option with Apple Pay. Like you're making it easy for beginners and you're making it easy for advanced users who have a lot of money in crypto and just want to make sure it's safe. And that's a feature that not a lot of wallets offer. Right.

I'm pretty certain we're the only wallet that has both Trezor Desktop and then the mobile. Yeah, I don't know that there's any other wallet that has all three of those, right?

Yeah. So that's important. Okay, cool. Another question from an audience member. Kubwayo Keegan is asking crypto credit card, is that an Exodus future?

We get this question a lot. And this, I don't know, I might have to start considering this more because this question comes up way more than I would expect. And to answer the question, no, not currently, we don't have any formal plans for it, but we're watching how this is playing out. It seems that a lot of companies are going down this path of issuing a crypto credit card. I think BlockFi recently just announced their support for a crypto credit card. And that's awesome. So we want to see how these other companies are going to do this and make these crypto credit cards work well, or how they're going to make them work. And then we'll come in and we'll say, like, oh, okay, here's how we make them work. Well, for most things, we like to kind of sit back, observe, and then do a fast follow and come in and just make it work really well. So that's kind of how we think about things.

Right. What are your thoughts in general on crypto credit cards? Like, I'm just curious.

I think they're cool. I think they're really cool. In fact, early days, Exodus, all we had was Bitcoin. We didn't have accounts or anything. We just had Bitcoin. And so we actually signed up for a personal account for BitPay, and we used the BitPay card early on, in the early days of the company to be able to purchase things like servers or whatever and use Bitcoin to do that. So I think they're amazing innovations. And so it's just, again, we're just going to watch and see how it plays out.

Yeah, definitely. Okay, so here's a question that I wanted to ask you about. Is it true that Exodus wants to build out a fundraising platform for other companies?

Yes, great question. Yes. So with our offering right now, the point of our offering is more or less for a proof of concept to show the world that this is possible. And so when we show the world that this is possible and. And we build in all the components from the actual offering itself to the issuance of the stock, to the actual secondary trading. Once we have all that bundled up into one package and we make it easy, then we will go to other companies, we'll say, come on in. You can do a stock public offering right inside the exitus platform. So absolutely.

Cool. Very Cool. Are you able to discuss other plans for the future? I mean, obviously we've talked about the credit cards and interest and all that, but is there anything else that we didn't mention that we can look forward to?

I think one of the things that I'm really excited to figure out is how to make a usable NFT experience. I know we touched on this and talked about it, but still figuring out, like, how can you have an NFT experience where you're looking at it and it's just very immersive, Right? And then you have your mobile phone synced up with your desktop wallet, you have it both and you can see the NFT on both and you can start interacting with the nft and maybe you have something where you have an augmented reality experience with your NFTs, where you're kind of seeing it and you see. And it's a very immersive experience. So we're thinking about that and it's something that's on our considerations on a roadmap to figure out, but we haven't quite figured out yet how to make it work. Well, in addition to that, we need to have the chain work for us too, because again, NFT fees with Ethereum, it's not going to work. So we got to look at other blockchains to make that a reality.

Yeah, definitely. What are your thoughts on NFTs in general? Do you think they're cool? Do you think that this is a boom and then all of a sudden they're not going to be cool? Do you think they're here to stay?

They are here to stay. I am personally not an NFT crazy person. Like, I know some people. Like, I actually, there's a person in our company that I love him to death and he keeps telling me, it's like, you gotta buy a crypto punk. You gotta buy a crypto punk. And I look at him like, oh, my gosh, these crypto punks, the cheapest one is like $40,000. Wow. But I think there's something there to NFTs. Like, people love to collect things. I mean, Metakovan, they bought that $69 million NFT, the Beeple 5000 Days NFT for $69 million. So people love to collect things. That's not going to ever end. So I think that's interesting. I think it's interesting how some of these NFTs reward early artists so you can be a digital creator, whether it's with music or art, and you can get paid on the royalties later to sell when you sell the NFTs and the next person sells it, you get a royalty back. I think that's really cool for people. And I think there are some use cases that make a lot of sense, like tickets and things like that, to events where it makes a lot of sense there. So I'd say I describe myself probably as a curious observer, but outside of the little 3D hologram thing they bought in the Oprah meme NFT, I own no other NFTs today. But I am looking forward to creating an experience where I do own NFTs because it's such a great experience.

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.

Cool.

Okay, so just to let the audience know, we've got a few minutes. Keep dropping your questions. I'm going to take another question from the audience real quick. So Jeffrey is asking, will Exodus add Zilliqa staking?

Yes, at some point in time we will do that. We want to add staking for all assets that support port staking. If I recall, there was an issue with, I don't know if it was some, some hardware requirements or whatever. I, I don't want to speculate too much on what the issues were with Zilliqa Staking, but it is something that we will do because I know this is not the first time I've gotten this question either. So we want to make it so easy for somebody to own the asset and earn interest on that asset. So we will support it at some point.

Got it.

Cool.

Okay, so while I wait for a few more questions to come in, I just want to know, because we only have a few minutes, any additional comments, anything we didn't cover that you want the audience to know about?

Yes, I think that, as I mentioned, our mission is to help half of the world exit the traditional financial system by 2030. So if you are a person out there that you like what we're doing, you want to come work for Remote only company that pays 100% of our salaries in Bitcoin. And that excites you and doesn't scare you. We are hiring so many people. So go to exodus.comcareers and come join us. Come join this, this movement that we're doing here and we would love to have you.

Did they get an Exodus hoodie like the one you're wearing? I like, it's really cool. I've been looking. I'm like, that's an awesome hoodie.

And I'll tell you what, it's actually really comfortable too. It is. I, I, it's, it's, it's kind of funny. I have. I think I have 10 of these. And so I wear like, I. You look at my closet and it's all. It is Exodus hoodies and sweatshirts and stuff. So it makes it real easy. But yes, they're very comfortable. And whoever joins us will definitely get an Exodus hood.

Okay, cool. Okay, I'm going to take one more question from the audience and then going to be out of time. So okonomics22 is saying, win Theta.

Yes. We are working on Theta right now. We are working on Theta right now. It's been on the roadmap. We are working on Theta right now. Theta snuck up fast into. I don't think it's Quite a top 10 app, but I think it's like top 15 now. And so Theta snuck up fast. So we were working on Theta. Now I anticipate Q2 for a theta release. Cool.

Okay. And before we end, I just want to remind everybody, just subscribe to our channel. And jp, do you use Twitter or is Exodus active on Twitter? Because crypto Twitter is huge. So what's the handle?

Yes, you go to. My handle is JP Richardson. Or you could follow exoduscidusio.

Perfect.

Cool.

Thanks, JP it's been a real pleasure. It's been fun.

It's been a lot of fun. Thank you for having me on.