Ivy is building the world trade bank — instant global payments using stablecoins stitched to local real-time rails

the price of the next iPhone? Will it be over $1,000? Uh over $1,500. Over $2,000. I think a $2,000 iPhone sounds extremely luxurious. I'd like to see one. Imagine the tech they could pack in that thing. full week battery life on the $2,000 iPhone. They got to get up there. They've been keeping the price insane.

I want a high priced iPhone today. Yeah. Come out with the Anyway, we got Ferdinand coming in the studio. We will welcome him to the stream. How are you doing? Thanks for coming here. Let's see the t-shirt. Looking great. Looking good. The World Trade Bank. Introduce yourself.

Introduce the t-shirt and then introduce the company. The t-shirt freshly printed. Um I'm excited to be here with you guys who's uh who's watching I think. Um no, good to be here. Um yeah, so I'm 30 um building IV and we're essentially building um a global global money rail, right?

I think I think I can I can kind of like briefly talk about about why we're doing this. And I I think reality the the the world has gotten a lot smaller obviously since the internet uh became a thing. So I'm I'm I'm German.

Um, so I can send him I can send a mail to the States and it's not um doesn't feel that different to sending a mail to to another German guy.

Um, and I think in reality the the money layer hasn't hasn't really changed in that way and and and the world is still quite large if if you if you think about the money layer of things, right?

So if I want to send like like $100 to states, that might already take a day and I think we're already pretty pretty plugged in. Mh. And if you're kind of like a Nigerian trade company uh wants to send money to European supplier that takes five days it cost 5%.

So it's kind of like the tariff the tariff no one's talking about in a way and I obviously I subscribe to the pover to to to full extent but I do think that's inhibiting um prosperity prosperity around the globe.

Um and we think there's an opportunity to kind of rebuild that stack right we think that there are two things happening which make it possible.

uh on one hand global roll out of real-time payments when back when I was in uni I actually worked on step by instant kind of like European real-time payment rail fiat realtime payment rail and we we thought back then and back then this was still a hot take that this was going to go global right and we're going to see every major economy rolling out their own real-time payment rail and um this is I think very much happening right we obviously the emerging market story picks Brazil UPI India and now in the states now even maybe um and we think that's that's actually only going to continue right and we're going to have this ubiquity of local realtime payments rates.

And then the second thing that's that's uh happening is is that that stable coins and digital assets kind of emerging as as a regulated interoperability asset with with the the capacity to stitch these local realtime payment rates together, right?

And we think um that's kind of like the very immediate opportunity to just build faster and cheaper global global payments and and yeah, so right now we're working with all all kinds of default global companies, right? work with big remittance companies, work with global PSPs.

We we are the de facto payments platform for for the European crypto industry, right? So like a large chunk of European crypto volume flows for us and we power um global payments for these companies. Okay.

Um, and that's Tell me more about about like the actual product you're building, where you sit in the stack because I mean like I've heard the international payments are hard and they are, but at the same time like I can pay people in other countries. Uh, most payroll providers are set up for it.

I've paid people in stable coins. It wasn't super easy, but it did exist. And you know, there are stablecoin platforms that allow you to move money around. So it seems like at this point some of the foundational layer is there. So I'm wondering like how do you figure out I got I got to call out John.

You've spent your entire life as an entrepreneur mostly paying people less getting you know paid as like a international contractor partner vendor and the lag time between when you hit pay I don't feel it you don't feel the pain because like you hit pay the money maybe leaves the account but then the person on the other end is sitting there kind of you know waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting okay and there's no reason it's like there's with the technology today there's no reason for that to be the case yeah so yeah I break break down the break swift like honestly I mean even swift works kind of well from the states to the emerging markets right sure so I think like it really gets tricky the other way around usually is I think the reality of these these flows are they not as birectionally hard as as as people think so if if you're like in an emerging market you want to send uh you want to kind of like tap into dollar supply and send send money into states that that gets really hard right and so I think there are still specific flows which are very much kind of like um excluded from from from from these trade uh trade opportunities.

And I think where we sit in the stack and why what what we think is kind of like necessary to be built is we're very bare metal on the fiat side, right?

And so we we we really believe this is very much still like a fiat problem and you got to be kind of deeply regulated and deeply connected to the fiat rates to kind of like precision engineer um essentially a bank and a banking stack around digital assets, right?

And we think this and there there are many reasons for this but this really makes it possible to kind of re rebuild that whole kind of like swift swift thing right and make make that work for both sides and on and all kinds of flows. Yeah.

Because like from like just technically if I'm in some random country and I have the resources to mine Bitcoin and swap it into stable coins like I can technically transfer it instantaneously today but there might be gas fees and all sorts of different technical and there's not any like you know interoperability with the rest of the financial system but it's like doable.

So a lot of this is about the products that you're building around the existing rails. Is that correct? Or are you or do you think you'll build like a new chain at some point? A new like L1 may maybe follow me on Twitter and stay tuned. Let's hear it. Let's go.

I think um I think in reality right now um we're building for businesses, right?

And so I think like it's it's still there's a difference of like like this rogue freelancer kind of like mining and swapping his his Bitcoin and kind of being able to to to be a new kind of correspondent bank to other financial institutions. And these are 90% of our customers, right?

Other financial institutions, PSPs, remittance companies, web free companies. Um, and being a new kind of correspond correspondent bank for these companies, I think, um, you really got to rebuild the the banking and fiat stack from ground up, right?

And got to be really metal about it and then kind of like rebuild it up from first principles with digital assets backed into it, right? And I think that's the kind of like institutional opportunity at hand here. Yeah, John, you're not thinking big enough. You're over here thinking like, how do we move 10 grand?

He's thinking, "How do I move $10 billion a second? " Yep. every second of the day. That's fair. That's fair. Uh, talk to me about the different tradeoffs between building and buying in different countries. Have you I've seen a lot of companies that go out and buy a legacy bank to get a charter?

Is that a relevant part of the strategy or is that kind of antiquated? Can you get through the regulatory hurdles to get everything you need or will you need to think about some end run around the regulation? Yeah, it can be smart, right? We actually we actually did this in Europe uh last summer.

Um so we bought like a regulated institution. Um there and and and that was a great um that was actually a great project, right? Like so that was like time to license was extremely fast, cost was extremely manageable and overall like a positive experience. Uh so um I think I can I can recommend.

Um in the states I think there there are a couple of things that are different.

So that's a whole that's a whole different story and each market is kind of like I think it's hard to generalize but but yes I still see these things happening and there's like like rather liquid M&A market for regulated institutions for that are being sold for the for the sake of being regulated and having the license transferred.

Yeah, makes sense. Anything else, Jordy? Super exciting. Fantastic. We need uh we need those shirts. We we need this service because international advertisers are trying to transfer us billions of dollars for single ad reads and yeah, we can't be playing 5%.

Yeah, we say we say send the shipping container filled with cash right now, but I would love to just have it deposited instantaneously. Where where are you based by the way? Uh you're from Germany. Are you still living there or Yeah, I'm based in Berlin. Um so it's it's getting late here. Greetings.

Thanks for staying up. And yeah, we we will we will get the we will get the t-shirt sent and we will help ramp power all of the things that they apparently are lacking for you guys. Let's go. There we go. There we go. But that being said, yeah, good to see you guys. Awesome. Congratulations. Bye. Great talking.

Uh next up, we have Juan coming in to the studio. We're excited to keep this lightning round going. We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven teal fellows left for the day. And they said it couldn't be done. They said it couldn't be done. Nobody believed. Nobody believed. Have some faith.

They said technology didn't need another podcast and yet here we are. Um, welcome to the stream. How you doing? Hey guys. How are Thank you for having me. Welcome. Of course. Uh, would you mind kicking it off with a little bit of an introduction on yourself and the company to get get us started? Absolutely.

So, I'm currently like the the founder of Phase Labs. Space Labs is a research lab that it's building that technology to regenerate complex organs directly in your body. So basically imagine imagine you lost a limb. Imagine you lost a limb for example. You were like a war fighter. You went you went to the military.

Maybe you suffer from diabetes