Zero Hash hits unicorn status with $104M Series D-2 led by Interactive Brokers, Morgan Stanley joins

Edward from Zero Hash. Our first guest in the Reream waiting room. Sorry for keeping you waiting, but welcome to the TVPN Ultradome. Thank you so much for hopping on the show. How are you doing? We are missing audio, but we have you on the widescreen today. We're very excited for that.

We will be working through the technical difficulties and hopefully get you live and sounding great in just a minute. Audio now. Let's try it again. I think it might be your headphones. We're still not getting you. Let's trying so much better. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Kick us off with an introduction and any news you have to share. Yeah, thanks for having me. Um so yeah, founded Zash 2017 and u we just announced our series D2 which congrat by Interactive Brokers. Thank you. Um eight years in the making and um yeah, we hit unicorn status.

Um but I think equally as important is just the groups that have participated in this round just really demonstrating the maturity of the crypto and stable coin landscape. Um investors in this round included groups like SoFi, uh Morgan Stanley, um IMC, uh Northwestern Mutual.

So really a set of top tier investors that are coming into the space, many of whom for the first time. How much did you raise? Uh we raised 104 million. So there we go. Uh congrat uh break down the different kind of eras of the company.

Uh, I remember talking with Zero Hash about some stablecoin functionality that I was building in 2021 2022 era. You guys have been at this for quite a while.

Seems like you're in a really good position now to kind of capitalize on the new regulation and just like new excitement around stable coins, but talk uh I love like kind of the quick chapter by chapter of the company, how you got here. Yeah, so I mean founded the company in 2017.

I mean it was really seen as a niche uh really niche space. Um, and often you get the questions, you know, what is crypto? Isn't that just used by uh, you know, dodgy people? And, um, you know, that that really that's really why I went into the space.

I mean, I like I like I like the industry where you're taking a massive positional band. Um, because the room it's easy it's easy to one of the smallest people in the room when there's just not many people in that room. Um, so that was 2017.

Obviously, we've gone through multiple um hikes and busts and I think that's one of the challenges of building in this space in particular is just trying to narrow your emotional bounds as much as possible um such that um you know today's news you don't get overly exuberant but also in the tough times and they have been last three years were particularly tough I think from a macro perspective.

Yeah, I remember when got revenue when Ethereum was trading at like $800. I was like, there doesn't seem to be a bottom here. Like this thing like is this thing going to go? I mean, this is like post FTX.

It was it was just like the most bearish dissolution for that post FTX was it was I really I really I really thought I was like it might be it might be completely over. Yep. Of course, I mid-curved. They're going to be giving bitcoins away for free. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to happen. Going back to free bitcoins.

Oh, it actually just traded down to the previous peak. Okay. Um, yeah, our sign on you bonuses used to be uh a bitcoin. No way. Wow. We don't do that anymore. Yeah, we we we gave away, you know, some of the cats as well. Um, that turned out to be millions of dollars.

So, yeah, if you were an early stage employee and actually held on to these things, uh, you would have done really quite well. That's amazing. Talk about the relationship with Interactive Brokers. Is there a way that you can not just take investment but actually work with them as a partner?

Are you already working with them? uh how do how do the two firms fit together in the landscape? Yeah, so Interactive Brokers led our led our last round. Um they also led this one. Um that's why technically this is considered a D2 just because it's the same docs just different valuation.

Um which I think is becoming more common. But actually today we power interactive brokers crypto product. So if you go to interactive brokers and you want to trade crypto like you do want to trade anything else um you're actually that's all being powered by zeroash.

something that they've also publicly disclosed is that you'll be able to shortly be able to fund your brokerage account anywhere anytime uh with stable coins through zero health which I think is incredibly powerful to see you know these sort of global companies realizing the power of of of crypto and a very similar kind of unlock that Morgan Stanley will also be leveraging with zeroash um that was covered today in the news on top of the announcement that Morgan Stanley's invested in us is that they will be launching crypto trading through Zohash in Q1 of next year.

Wow, it really is.

I mean, it's like so simple just going from like a three-day wire transfer to like instant transfers for things like trading, but there are so many times when you're like, I have an idea and I want to execute it now and like now if I have to move the money around, that's going to be, you know, who knows what's going to happen in the market in a couple days.

So, uh I I wouldn't be surprised. And then and then the next step from there is people being able to exit position.

You know, if you sell a position on uh you know on Morgan Stanley and being able to take that capital on chain if you want to execute a trade somewhere else like uh I'm sure they're not um talk about uh talk about next steps.

Are there any regulatory hurdles that you're monitoring or do you think that the the dust is kind of settled on regulatory and it's really just about winning on product and customer adoption and these partnerships or are there still a couple uh you know chips that need to fall in your direction?

Yeah, I mean I I think there's there's still legislation that could be passed that could further accelerate this, but there's clearly been a massive step function in the United States and Europe from a regulatory perspective.

But I I think what's really important is um to understand that these banks and very large financial institutions have not been static for the last few years. They've effectively had a moving start when they've been able to do this. Um sometimes I feel kind of like a like a confessional.

When you meet these uh execs and CEOs of these banks, they tell you all these things they're doing. Some of them super DJ. Um and so a lot of these people have actually You mean on like a personal on a on a personal level? On a personal level. Yeah.

On a personal level and then they can do this professional you went long fartcoin. It it's it's really quite incredible. I mean, this is it's it's it's it's a passion for many people. Uh sometimes people that you wouldn't expect. And and these teams have also been building out teams. They just haven't been so public.

And so that's what's allowed groups and you know, this is one of many many banks that that will be entering the space in a very very meaningful way, whether it be tokenization, whether it be crypto trading, whether it be stable coins.

And so this I think is going to be the story of the next six to 12 months in this space. Well, you should go back to the people that passed on you in 2017 when you said someday we're going to work with Morgan Stanley and Interactive Brokers. And I'm sure too too many too many to remember.

So too many water under the bridge. Well, they'll they'll remember. They'll remember today. They're going to search their email and be like, "Oh, Zero Hash. " And then be like, "Oh, brutal. " Uh, no. I say I say turn the other cheek. You know, there's it's still early iterated game.

barely just uh just uh cheers to everyone at the at the next round. Uh well, congratulations uh on all the progress. Thanks so much for coming on the Thanks for the update. Yeah, cheers. Have a good one. Really tell you about Julius. ai. What analysis do you want to run?

Chat with your data and get expert level insights in seconds. Hit that horn for Julius by over 2 million users. Give me two million honks of that horn. One for each Julius user, baby. There we go. And uh you have some break. I have some news. Sky in the in the YouTube chat says uh the Balmer Peak came from XKCD.

The Yes, that's right. But but if you trace back from XKCD, XKCD, I believe, made it up. I don't believe XKD XKCD was basing it on a Balmer Quo. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, it was it was it was a it was a comic. the original comic. I I'll We should just pull it up. Yeah, it's a great comic.

You pull that up. In the meantime, I have some other breaking news. It appears that Bobby Cosmic has migrated from Twitch over to the YouTube chat. So, shout out to Bobby Cosmic. He's now chatting in both chats. Wow. Holding it down. Bobby Cosmic never closed Twitch though. We need at least one chat holding it down.

We appreciate you in the Twitch chat. Uh we have carried no interest up next. Let's pull up this comic. The loop. It's in close it out. Uh it's from XKCD and it illustrates the Balmer peak. The idea that you um will um will perform at a improved level. Uh Tyler, you're you're not 21 yet. Yeah. I've never had alcohol.

You've never had alcohol. Do you expect uh to test this theory in your 21st birthday? Yeah. It's only in a couple months. So, you know, we'll see. We'll celebrate it. We'll give you four bottles of Don Perion. How many glasses of Don Perion do you think gets you to the Balmer Peak there? Can anyone read that?

That's too small for me to read. I'll read it off. I'll read it. Read it off. Uh, it says, "Programming skill blood alcohol concentration percentage called the Balmer Peak. It was discovered by Microsoft in the late 80s. The cause is unknown, but somehow a BAC between. 129% and. 138% confer programming ability.

However, it's a delicate effect requiring careful collabor uh uh calibration. You can't just give a team of coders a year supply of whiskey and tell them to get cracking. Has that ever happened? Remember Windows Me? I knew it. That's a good one. Uh well, without further ado,