The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below. 

00:00:03:18 – 00:00:11:22

Richard Carthon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crypto Current, your host here, Richard Carthon, and today I got a very special guest. We have a Jack with Wyre. How are you doing today? 

00:00:12:21 – 00:00:13:25

Jack Jia: Yeah doing well, nice to meet you Richard.

00:00:14:12 – 00:00:25:27

Richard Carthon: Great to meet you as well. I know that y’all been very busy. Right now Crypto is booming, a lot of great things happening. I’m excited to learn more about your company, but before we dive into that, first I want to learn a little bit about you, can you give us some background? 

00:00:27:00 – 00:00:59:18

Jack Jia: Yeah, sure. So, I’m Jack, I am currently the VP of Business at Wyre, was actually the first employee. We started in 2013, so, been around for seven, eight years now. And yeah, you know, before that I went to UC Berkeley, I had studied economics and finance there. And so, I understood a lot about just economic backgrounds in terms of framework, so, when I first heard about Bitcoin, I just kind of switched right into it and working full-time professionally. 

00:00:59:20 – 00:01:37:27

Jack Jia: But there was like a three year period between college and Bitcoin that I did other stuff in Internet of Things, as far as hydraulic equipment and kind of creating this smart hydraulic pump that you know, used AI and ML to tell the equipment operator what’s wrong with the equipment, right? And yeah, so it was fun to do stuff like that, but definitely found my calling when I first learned about Bitcoin, which was in the middle of the bull run in 2013. I think it was in October when I first heard about it and then by December I’m working at Wyre basically, so. 

00:01:37:29 – 00:02:07:04

Richard Carthon: Wow. I mean, pretty amazing that you learned about it so quickly all the way back in 2013 and the fact that Wyre’s been around that long. So, you know, you’ve been in the industry for seven, eight years roughly, and you’ve been growing and seeing how everything has been adopting and adapting. And it sounds like you’ve basically been able to build a product to meet the needs of currently like what’s going on. So, can you first explain, you know, what is Wyre and you know, what exactly y’all solve? 

00:02:07:29 – 00:03:05:16

Jack Jia: Yeah. So, you know, Wyre is now basically a payment API, kind of like Stripe or a bank as a service API that is Crypto compatible, right? So, a lot of different teams count on Wyre and different applications in the space when they need to do any Fiat on and off ramp for their users, right? If a user wants to go from US Dollar to Stablecoin or Bitcoin, right? Wyre is basically this API that helps different teams and their end users to basically come onto the Blockchain and get off the Blockchain, which we call Fiat on and off ramps. And yeah, so, you know, we service 250+ platforms currently that use our platform for things like payment collection, payment disbursements, and FX wallet management. We’re kind of like a full stack banking service API, except it’s, you know, we’re not having our partners pay $20,000 a month in licensing fees for that. Alright, we’re trying to lower the barrier of entry.

00:03:05:18 – 00:03:06:03

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:03:06:05 – 00:03:26:11

Jack Jia: For other FinTech entrepreneurs to be able to get into the space and iterate and build things fast. You know, and so, that we’re trying to remove all the barriers up front, so, that any team can come and just take our API and start building products that way. And I think that’ll help with adoption, help us, you know, just different entrepreneurs who are trying different things, you know, who are passionate about Crypto. 

00:03:27:00 – 00:03:56:06

Richard Carthon: Absolutely. And, you know, we talk about mass adoption a lot here and one of the barriers of entry for a lot of companies who come up with these concepts is being able to get to market fast, right? Usually you have to spend a lot, a lot of time to build to be able to move quickly and sounds like Wyre’s able to help you get up and running a lot faster and able to start collecting. So, for the listener out there that either has a Crypto business or knows someone that’s in it and trying to figure out how they can, you know, utilize Wyre, you know, take me through a use case of how that would work. 

00:03:57:09 – 00:04:42:19

Jack Jia: So, let’s say, you know, you’re a college students who has some friends and you are tinkering with Blockchain or Crypto, you want to get into the space and you literally, say you’ve been coding some smart contracts and doing different things and you realize, Hey, how do we actually onboard a user from the real world onto our Crypto native application? Right? You will come to Wyre, right? You can create a production account with us, onboard with us as a partner, right? You and your friends might be able to form a company now and, you know, actually onboard as a business, right? We’ll give you API keys, you’ll be able to play with a tested environment and just start building different payment flows from you know, Fiat to Crypto to Crypto to Fiat. 

00:04:42:21 – 00:05:25:02

Jack Jia: You know, there’s so many different use cases that Wyre’s API can service, it really depends on what our partners are building, right? And so, our vision statement is, We help other teams to build out their vision, right? We just provide the underlying infrastructure in the traditional Fiat world, as well as, you know, this agnostic Blockchain infrastructure, where, you know, so far, we’ve only supported Bitcoin and Ethereum. And recently we started supporting Steller because the gas is going to be high for Stablecoin, so USDC’s moving to Steller’s, so we’ll be going there as well, right? But you know, point being, we are Blockchain agnostic. So far, we’ve been concentrating our focus and liquidity around Bitcoin, Ethereum, ERC 20 tokens, and recently Stellar. 

00:05:26:19 – 00:05:56:08

Richard Carthon: That’s a really interesting point. You know, I want to stay on that topic right there for a second simply because gas fees have been eating people up. They’ve actually been getting pretty absurd and I think it’s making a lot of people upset. And one of the ways that is kind of carrying that are some of these, you know, alternatives to like an Ethereum and whether it’s a Stablecoin or whether, you know, it’s a Stellar or some of these other platforms. You know, how does either Wyre help address that or where do you think the industry is going to help address that particular issue? 

00:05:57:03 – 00:06:32:06

Jack Jia: Yeah. I mean, honestly, that’s obviously a matter of development and people, you know, teams like Wyre are all part of the same kind of cycle right now, right? And when you’re in a bull run, you’re going to see this. At some point, we’re going to go up to $50, $100 per transaction, gas fees, minor fees. That happened in 2017, this is not uncommon, right? But for actual utility of any dApps or payment flows, obviously that becomes crazy, right? Like I mean, you know, we’re trying to get away from the incumbents in terms of Visa, Master or banking systems where the traditional payment networks, you know, charge a fee, right? 

00:06:32:08 – 00:06:32:23

Richard Carthon: Yeah.

00:06:32:25 – 00:06:35:17

Jack Jia: And now you have Blockchain that charges even more fees.

00:06:35:19 – 00:06:37:22

Richard Carthon: Right, a super surcharge. 

00:06:39:08 – 00:07:32:12

Jack Jia: Right. So, you definitely have this situation where high demand causes high fees. How do you get around that? You know, you can go vertically through, you know, Eth 2 or Layer 2, you can go horizontal through, you know, Avalanche or Near or, you know, Celo and all these other Eth killer chains that have bridged over Ethereum and the tokens kind of become transmittable, right? So, you have USDT on Omni, USDT on Trom, USDT on Eth, USDT on another chain and that token itself is transmittable in such a way that it can go across different Blockchains, or side chains, or Layer 2 solutions, right? So, I think that’s good. You know, this is all just this ecosystem feedback. We’re working with each other to figure it out, you know, solving one problem after the next. And these are all good problems, right? It’s great to have high demand, as to why the fees are high, so. 

00:07:32:14 – 00:08:31:24

Richard Carthon: No doubt. And you know, it’s interesting that people are having to find more and more unique ways to make things more affordable and lower their costs to be able to engage, right? So, as you said, through each bull run and I think you know, we’re in the middle of a really nice one. For everyone listening, at the time of this recording recently, Elon Musk has come out and talked about how they just invested 1.5 billion into the billion Bitcoin and how a lot of other large companies are beginning to talk and speculate about also increasing their position in Bitcoin and greater Crypto, which I think is a telltale signal that we’re heading to a larger bull run for the rest of this year. Where do you think or how do you think Wyre’s uniquely positioned to help companies during this gigantic potential new amount of people and money that’s going to flow into this industry?

00:08:32:12 – 00:09:47:09

Jack Jia: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think on the corporate or the enterprise and institutional side of the business, you know, there are very standard best practices for that and it’s basically called OTC trading, right? So, if a corporation that has a billion dollars cash on hand, they want to convert five percent to Bitcoin, they need to buy $15,000,000 with Bitcoin, you’re not going to do that with a credit card, right? You’re dealing with accounting departments and different finance departments and obviously there’s a top down mandate to do this, that there’s already a go ahead. You know, so, it’s a very concierge service in terms of the best pricing and execution across different exchanges, but that’s on the OTC desk’s backend, right? To be able to provide really good pricing at very low slippage for this corporate treasury to be able to, you know, take out that execution and trade. But once they book the trade you know, and you know, they send this $15,000,000 wire transfer, at the settlement layer, you know, comes this question of custody and who’s the custodian? Are you doing self custody, where you’re setting up your own set up with hardware security modules and you know, NPC setups? Or are you trusting in a custodian like Coinbase custody, Gemini custody, you know, whichever custodian out there that can hold funds for you? 

00:09:47:15 – 00:10:33:08

Jack Jia: You know, and so, Wyre has a solution for this as well. We have a dashboard for corporate’s to easily come, you know, use email and password and 2FA to secure an account, right? Our approach is we think it’s still a bit early for most people to figure out how to hold their own private keys in a secure manner and so, what we’ve done is basically we’ve created what looks like a Web 2 login, you know with a phone number and password. And we are the custodian work, custodial wallet, so we can help you to execute and we can help you hold some Bitcoin that you buy for your company, right? And then the good thing about using Wyre’s kind of treasury management solution is you can also do other things once you buy and hold, right? So, you trade and you custody, so you buy and hold. 

00:10:33:16 – 00:11:42:13

Jack Jia: After you hold, you can also earn some interest with us. We have a savings wallet where you can put the Bitcoin that you just bought into the savings wallet that earns interest while you’re holding, righ? So, these are different features that I think, in the past few years have kind of come into the market, whereas enterprise grade solutions, right? We didn’t have this in 2013, right? We didn’t have this in 2015 even, right? And enterprise Blockchain 2015 meant something very different than what it means now. And, you know, back in the days, all the different teams basically set up everything in-house, right? So, now you have something like a curve or an end curve that gives you the NPC or HSN setups, before, you know, Coinbase build their own, they build their own cold storage once one hot wallet, you know, and that’s what inevitably became Coinbase’s custody. But, you know, it’s something where, you know, because Wyre was founded in 2013 as well, we have all of that stuff kind of built out in-house as well and we’re just trying to offer it to developers and to corporates in an easy to use interface, whether that means dashboard or other. 

00:11:42:19 – 00:12:12:02

Richard Carthon: Right. And I think what’s smart about that again, is meeting people where they are, so creating functionality and user facing capabilities that they’re already familiar with, so that they can start using this new technology, right? Start using some of this Web 3,  some of this Blockchain and be able to start collecting money, like you said, operate their businesses. So, you know, I think that’s really cool. I think what y’all are working on, this, you know, very timely. And obviously, I’m sure it’s keeping you extremely busy, like you were telling me before you on the show. It’s a good time to be in biz. 

00:12:13:13 – 00:12:49:18

Jack Jia: Yeah. I mean, you know, there’s this macro inflection within the, you know, kind of financial ecosystem of the world, right? There’s, you know, the Office of Currency Control allows banks to hold Bitcoin and Stablecoin and use public Blockchain networks, you know, China is creating their own, digital, you know, currency, electronic payment system and we’re at this point right now where I think you know, whether it’s banking or payments or FX or any of the traditional finance you know, securitization and how do you trade different securities. 

00:12:49:20 – 00:13:40:16

Jack Jia: And there’s so many different areas of finance that’s been disrupted by this technology. And there are you know, a handful of companies that are you know, at that inflection point. Wyre I would argue is one of them. There are other companies, Circle, you know, is doing great work. And there’s so many different teams that are tackling the problem from different angles and it all kind of comes back to adoption, right? Are you, you know, helping someone to buy Bitcoin through an ATM, through some kind of cash points and through you know, Apple Pay, Google Pay, through Visa and Master, through, you know, ACH with your bank account or wire transfer, anything from retail to institutional? You know, it’s a one way street, right? So, you’re trying to onboard the world and you know, a lot of teams are tackling this and it’s very exciting. We were in 2013, 2017, and now 2021 and it’s very, very awesome.

00:13:46:24 – 00:14:16:02

Richard Carthon: And you know, on that subject, I just kind of want to go in a different direction, is you’ve been in this space since 2013, obviously you know, you basically have eight years under your belt and you’ve seen ebbs and flows and there’s a lot that’s going on of course, with a big year of 2020 with COVID and everything else going on, it’s kind of foundationally changed how we view economics throughout the world. And even with the US currently having to print a lot of money for stimulus, the rest of the world is doing that as well. 

00:14:16:28 – 00:14:44:28

Richard Carthon: I read today that Bitcoin right now, from a currency standpoint, is the 15th most valuable currency in the world, and you know, that’s at like a 1.3 trillion dollar market cap. I think Crypto could easily get to two trillion, if not more, and continue to skyrocket in a very substantial way. You know, where do you think as an industry, as you know, Cryptocurrency, as it continues to evolve, where do you think we’re headed? And let’s just start with like the next year and then let’s talk about the next decade. 

00:14:46:11 – 00:15:44:14

Jack Jia: Yeah, yeah, I mean, just taking a step back, right? You have this kind of almost mathematically determined bull run followed by a few years of bear market and a bull run and all historical data says that that’s going to keep happening. I don’t see any data that shows otherwise, right? We went from like a dollar to 1,200 in 2013, we went from you know, 400 to 20,000 in 2017, and we’re going from like 10k to what looks to be above 100k by the end of the year and that’s just adoption. We’re going to like two percent adoption to four percent to six percent of the world are becoming active users, right? It’s like the 70s right now if you will, for the Internet. And people argue it’s the 90s or whatever, like I would argue it’s the 70s or maybe 80s, but it’s definitely very early and this next year is simply going to be a bull run, right? 

00:15:44:19 – 00:16:48:07

Jack Jia: We’re going to go into 2022. You know, Tim Draper back in 2018 I believe, predicted that Bitcoin was going to be trading at $250,000 by 2022. That was his prediction. You know, some more conservative estimates are around 120k. But I mean, you know, Bitcoin being king, that rises all the tides, while there’s, you know, there’s technical development from all these different chains and technologies. You know, Avalanche is doing pretty well right now. They went from like $2 to $60 in a matter of a month and a half, right? That’s crazy, you know. So, but, you know, that’s what happens in a bull run, right? And so, that’s this next year. So, if you think about it, you know, it’s 2013, 2017, 2021, 2025, 2029, 2033, right? So, you know, we’re approaching this point where a satire of this is going to equal a dollar, $100 per Bitcoin, you know, that’s my personal stance in terms of you know, being bullish on Bitcoin. But you know, I’m looking at everything agnostically, looking at every chain for what it is in and of itself. 

00:16:48:14 – 00:17:30:13

Jack Jia: And you know, it’s anyone’s game, but DeFi’s coming. DeFi, you know, is already here very much. DeFi has a catch 22 in that there’s no KYC for DeFi, that’s the whole point of DeFi. But then for institutions, how can they enter DeFi compliantly? That problem is an existential problem that has persisted since the beginning of DeFi. It’s a philosophical debate, it’s a compliance legal debate and it’s also a commercial problem that different teams are taking different angles at solving, right? And, you know, everything has just been tokenized onto Bitcoin, onto the Blockchain, onto you know, Ethereum, with all these different use cases that Ethereum can service. 

00:17:30:21 – 00:18:24:16

Jack Jia: But yeah. I mean, there’s only so much asset in the world that transfers over onto the Blockchain, whether in the form of Bitcoin or DeFi, or Stablecoins, you know, or securities or other asset classes, right? That’s just going to keep on happening, right? Business is pouring money in, retail is pouring money in, right? Crowd source, ICOs. And the equivalent of that right now is obviously yield farming, where they’re just cut and pasting different protocols to earn tokens on this new protocol, it looks awfully like ICO in 2017. But, you know, what? It brings capital into the space and it allows people to try things, to see what works and sticks. And that feedback loop in that macro ecosystem, there’s a net positive, right? All in all. So, yes. Just gotta keep going, I guess. 

00:18:25:01 – 00:18:25:16

Richard Carthon: No doubt.

00:18:25:18 – 00:18:26:03

Jack Jia: I’m not sure if I answered that.

00:18:26:05 – 00:19:01:16

Richard Carthon: No, no, no, no, that definitely answered. I mean, it just talks about all the cycles that is, I mean, is Crypto. I mean, you’ve been in a lot of them, right? You hear about these stories where people talk about, you know, the bull run of like 2013, it went up a couple of hundred dollars or whatever, got to 1,000 the first time then dipped right back down to like three and then next thing it shot back up. And it’s like, I tell people that, yes, it’s a high risk environment, Crypto is, but when you look at it over time, it currently wins. If you dollar cost average, if you stay for the long game, if you do all these things, typically over time, you do well. 

00:19:01:26 – 00:19:47:24

Richard Carthon: And I think too many people, especially with everything going on with the stock market, you have a lot of people who have a lot more time and they’re on like Robin Hood and some of these other ones where they’re like doing like day trading and they’re, like making some good money here or there and whatnot and there’s a lot of money to be made in that. But I also think, I mean, you could do the same thing in Crypto. But I think there’s more money to be made if you’re playing the long game in Crypto. Your returns are just going to be substantially greater because if you go back in history at any point and you pretty much use any kind of strategy and if you held on till this point, you would be up tremendously. And so, like, you know, what’s your kind of take on whether you’re trying to be like in and out of the market or like play in the long game. Like, how do you feel about that? 

00:19:48:02 – 00:20:49:09

Jack Jia: You have to know yourself, right? If you’re not a trader yesterday, you’re not a trader today, right? And there’s a difference between trading and investing, right? Trading is a day in, day out thing, there’s technical charges, you know, controlling your emotions, it’s experience, it’s having an approach, right? Like different traders have different approaches that they like to implement and they are  all relatively successful, by and large in their own strategies, right? And that’s a completely different beast than investing, right? Investing is the long term outlook. Do you believe in this company? Do you believe in this asset? And that’s why for me it was like, you know, I was working in IOT and ML and doing like, more hydraulic and mechanical engineering stuff and I was, you know, kind of CFO and COO of my own kind of startup when I found out about Bitcoin, right? I literally dropped everything and I came onto this ship because I believed in it so much, I put myself into that in 2013, right? 

00:20:49:11 – 00:21:29:04

Jack Jia: So, in the same way as you’re investing, if you think that, Hey, you know, I think this is a great technology, I understand it, intrinsically or intuitively understand why there’s value in this thing, right? And then you just, like you’re saying, put some skin in the game and set it and forget it. You’re not a trader, right? You have to humbly know that, right? Like a lot of people get caught up and then they see their portfolio go up 200 percent and they think they’re a genius. And it’s like, well, you know, that was luck, right? You don’t know how to trade, you don’t know what technical analysis is or you didn’t do homework, you just got lucky, right? You know that. I’m not saying anything bad about you, I’m just saying it it is what it is, right? 

00:21:29:22 – 00:21:54:03

Jack Jia: So, just know the difference between investing and trading. And if you really want to get into a you know, full-time working, you know, if you’re working at a company right now where you have a certain skill set, you know, that’s very much translatable into Crypto, you know, by all means, jump into, you know, start a career. I don’t think there’s a better time than now to get into Crypto from every angle, whether it’s your career, whether it’s buying some Crypto, you know, whether it’s just learning more about it. 

00:21:54:29 – 00:22:23:00

Richard Carthon: No doubt. I think that’s great advice. And, you know, our audience ranges from your brand new newbie who’s trying to learn how to get involved in the space to your Crypto OG, who’s just trying to learn about new and emerging companies and what’s going on in the space. This question’s specifically to that newbie, like they’re on the hype train, they’re trying to learn about Crypto right now, you know, if you could go all the way back and give yourself advice when you first started, what would be like some first steps or things that you wish you knew ahead of time?

00:22:24:27 – 00:23:10:16

Jack Jia: Oh, this is a tough question. So, we just talked about, you know, not selling, right? And not trading, you end up with less, that hurts, that’s one. I think that’s the big one, I think that really is the big one, because you know, when you first get in, it’s basically through investing, because right now, that’s the main use case, speculation, right? You’re starting to see other use cases like payments, remittance, you know, FX and other, you know, DeFi use cases for borrowing money and different things. But that’s still very much early compared to traditional payment rails, traditional payment networks that are being used, you know 1,000 to one in terms of ratio. 

00:23:10:18 – 00:24:28:24

Jack Jia: So, most people are coming into Crypto basically seeing it as a new kind of investment class, right? So, the first rule of thumb is invest. Buy and hope, right? Just buy and see what happens until 2025, right? Give it to somebody else or something. Let your wife hold it or somebody you trust, not you know, take it away from you, because you get caught up in emotions like, I had no experience trading and I would FOMO, I would FUDD, I would you know, get scared. There will be fear, there will be doubts and I will do stupid things. And now, I have a lot less Bitcoin than I did, right? And I’m sure, I’m humble to say, Hey, it is what it is, I’m just a full-time employee at Wyre here. But I could have been, you know, a lot of people could have been, if you just bought and hold, right? Knowing that, Hey, you know, people think it is already too late, right? When it’s $500, too late, $5,00, too, $50,000, too late. Well, if you look at where things are going, this is going to 250, 500k, 1,000,000, 10,000,000, 100,000,000. What happens when one Bitcoin cost $100,000,000 and you bought, you know, one for 50k, like what is 50k to $100,000,000 per Bitcoin? 

00:24:29:02 – 00:25:16:24

Jack Jia: And so, if you really understand that, if you look at the historical data and how things move throughout time, like I’m saying, it’s almost mathematically determined by the halving and the supply and adoption that causes the price to go up, right? And number go up, there’s a reason why this means exists. Number go up because it does, it really does. So, just buy and hold, find a secure, you know, custodial setup. If you understand non-custodial setup, you know, go to cost of Bitcoin Wallet, go to Exodus Wallet, BRD Wallet, right? There’s all of these different non-custodial wallets, self custody wallets, where you hold your own private keys. You know, and there’s custodians, where you trust somebody else to hold your coins. It’s one of the two, right? So, just educate yourself, really get some skin in the game and just educate yourself. 

00:25:17:12 – 00:25:32:15

Richard Carthon: I think that is absolute great advice, thank you for doing all that. And, you know, I think you’ve dropped a lot of great knowledge on us here today. As we wrap up, you know, what is a final thought that you want to leave with all of our listeners here today? 

00:25:33:28 – 00:26:18:21

Jack Jia: Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s a generational play. I think Crypto is here to stay, it’s already proven that. Even banks and governments are getting involved now. It’s not like 2015 and 2017 even. Institutionalization of Crypto has been progressively happening and right now, it has never been in a world where all the, you know, family offices, high net worth individuals and all the corporates and different enterprises are even getting into this. And so there’s only going to be more and more of this, right? So I think, yeah, just be patient and enjoy the ride and educate yourself and hold your coins properly. And yeah, just strap along for the ride. It’s going to be a Crypto world.

00:26:21:09 – 00:26:29:15

Richard Carthon: It’s going to be amazing. Thank you so much for that final thought and thanks again for spending some time with us today. You know, what are some ways that people can connect with you and also learn more about Wyre? 

00:26:30:13 – 00:27:02:07

Jack Jia: Yeah. So, you can find us on Twitter. @SendWyre, right? That’s S-E-N-D, like send, like receive, Wyre with a Y, you know, because we’re Silicon Valley and you change the letter, it’s like Lyft with a Y and now you’re a company. Wyre transfer, right? So, assets and payments, but yes, Send Wyre. You can also follow me on Twitter, my handle is D Monopolize with a Z, you know, decentralized D monopolize. So, that’s it, yeah. 

00:27:02:22 – 00:27:07:22

Richard Carthon: Awesome. Well, again, Jack, thank you so much for sharing some time with us today. And for everyone listening, Stay Crypto Current.