Zach Abrams on Bridge Open Issuance: every bank and fintech can now launch their own stablecoin in a day

And we have our first virtual guest. We have Zach from Stripe coming in to the TBP Ultradum. He's been waiting in the re room waiting room. Sorry you waiting. Thank you so much for hopping on the show. How are you? We've been wanting to make this happen for a while. Finally have you.

excited to be here and tough to uh tough to follow the puffer fish. It really is fun. I I will try. Um yeah, give us the update on stable coin news. We've covered it on the show a few times. We talked about the acquisition, but uh what's what what's the newest news in your world?

Well, today we did stripe tour in New York and we announced open issuance which is kind of been a labor of love for two years almost. You know, it was the original. When we first started Bridge, we thought that people were going to want to issue their own stable coin.

And you know, it took a little longer than we than we anticipated, but it's a platform that makes it really easy.

like in a day or two days you can launch your own stable coin and get access to all the underlying economics customize the smart contracts pick what blockchains it's deployed onto eliminate MIT burn fees and we announced that with Phantom uh we we and Hyperlid and Dakota and MetaMask and a bunch of others so really excited about what this means for the stable coin space generally congratulations what is your is the future millions of different stable stable coins that and and you know you guys and others are helping facilitate you know um transactions between each of them like what is how do you imagine this market evolving because we've been living in what will be the most simple era which was the era of you know USDC and USDT and a handful of other kind of um you know uh basically an oligopoly but it feels like we're about to exit that era.

Yeah, I mean we we certainly hope so. We we you know those folks were you know USDT and USDC were amazing. They sort of catalyzed the space. They've been like you know very much rewarded for for doing so and uh but but they are limited like you know they're they're default assets.

They don't share the underlying economics. You you can't customize the smart contracts or the stable coins themselves. And stable coins are platforms. You know, they're programmable platforms on top of which people are building money experiences. And you know, the stable coin space is like constrained as it is today.

And you know, we hope that as everyone is able to issue their own stable coin and to uh tap into all the underlying benefits of a stable coin, it grows the space very maturely. And like a quick example is like let's say you're building a neo bank and you're building it on top of stable coins.

If you're building it on top of someone else's stable coin, you have none of the economics. If you're building it on top of your own stable coin, you get 4% yield. That's like a material difference in the in the customer experience. Yeah. So what are we think? Yeah.

What what are kind of the key tradeoffs if you are let's say you're a legacy bank and a legacy bank is thinking about making their own stable coin. What do you think the trade-offs are that they're going to make? I think a legacy bank is probably going to choose to issue their own stable coin.

Uh I mean, you know, like let's say that you're Bank of America. You're you're in the business of holding deposits and so uh you would not want to hold a lot of stable coins where the underlying money the underlying deposits sit at someone else's bank. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it would be like crazy if if Bank of America, for instance, was sitting on a bunch of JP Morgan coins. Uh, like what are they really doing if that is the if that is the situation?

So, we we see this world where, you know, Bank of America has its own stable coin and JP Morgan has its own stable coin, community banks have their own stable coins, every fintech has their own stable coin.

And as money moves between those platforms, it seamlessly converts into the underlying asset tethered to to that platform. And we've built a network that makes those conversions really easy. Uh and uh you know our APIs make that possible between different fiat currencies as well.

And so for the user, we're heading quickly towards an era where if you're viewing your balance, you have no you wouldn't even you the user feels like they're sending money around accounts like they normally would except you have relatively instant transactions, maybe cheaper transactions, etc. Exactly.

So, you know, today we we announced uh launching cash with Phantom and a couple weeks ago we launched MUSD with MetaMask. And so, let's say that a Phantom cash user sends money to a MetaMask wallet. The cash will be sent seamlessly convert into MUSD and land as MUSD in in MetaMask and vice versa.

And that could be true back to back to banks.

that could be true uh to remittances companies or or wherever else and and you know ultimately the stable coin the goal is that stable coin recedes into the background because people like you know I don't think that people are like clamoring for stable coins they just want money the features yeah exactly exactly and so we just are enabling the stable coin to recede into the background and people to take full advantage of the benefits that it unlocks do you remember In 2022, we we we met briefly over a Zoom call because I was integrating stable coins into a neo bank product that I had and I ended up I ended up you ended up being like you we you had like perfect timing.

I ended up having not so great timing because you know six months later FTX crashed and every traditional NEO, you know, every every bank partner wanted nothing to do with with uh stable coins.

So I wanted to ask what that period was like that you know 2022 to to the end of 2023 just in terms of driving partnerships because it just felt like there was you went from a lot of excitement around stable coins certainly you were excited I was excited plenty of people were excited to suddenly we I remained excited in the potential and the functionality but a lot of the the traditional banking institutions you know were just saying like, "Yeah, let's hit pause on this.

" Uh, I mean, totally. We We That's so crazy because I I do remember now, but only because you triggered my memory, PTSD. What a It was It was a crazy time. And And I remember at that time I was uh you you were you were uh I don't think you you were still in stealth at the time.

And so you weren't talking very loudly about what you were doing, but uh but even then I remember you were figuring out where you were going to fit into the to the market. So it's been amazing to see. Totally. And you were probably talking to us and you probably ended that call thinking like what are these people doing?

This is a terrible idea. Well, I didn't even really know what you were doing. I just felt like you you you eloquently mined me for information about what I wanted to do and I was like, well, I don't know what to I don't know what what we could do together. But um but certainly the excitement the excitement was there.

Uh oh man. Yeah. I mean we so so we really started building in earnest in October 2022. One of our first customers was actually going to be FTX and that obviously did not go terribly well. And then we just ran through like a who's who of bank partners.

Uh we were we were working with Silvergate, we were working with Signature, we were working with Yeah. SVB. We um I mean it was it was really really bleak during that during that period of time.

I mean one of the things now and silver all three of those others that you were talking to are all all went down all all out of business. All out of business. So you know bridge the loan the lone survivor. Yeah. It was really about just it clearly was just about making it through. That's what Exactly.

It was like I mean and the week that we launched like the the week that we finally got it together and were able to move money was the week and like we first we moved our first live dollar was the week that USDC deped and SVB collapsed you know so we like we launched this thing we had been building it for a year and then Sean my co-founder and I were like on Friday I remember talking to him was like I think this is it might be over this is it is a run, have a couple drinks this weekend.

We'll see what happens on Monday. And then people showed up on Monday and still wanted to move money. And then it's kind of been all uphill from there. But but that was that was dark for sure. Yeah.

Um how uh how open is this is open issuance can if you're a if you're a a building in in finance at all, is this something people can get access to today? Yeah, everyone. It's open for everyone. We want anyone to issue issue stable coins. We want banks to issue stable coins.

We'd like other acquirers to issue stable coins. We'd like the networks to issue stable coins, you know, consumer apps to issue stable coins. We are and and we expect to have folks who issue stable coins that have like 5 million of outstanding value and folks that have billions of dollars of outstanding value.

It it works. The underlying benefits apply to regardless of someone's scale. Super. Congratulations. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Come back on again soon. We'll talk to you soon. Congrats. Have a good one. Cheers, Zach. Our next guest is from Sarah Bruss.

Poly Market puts it at a 6% chance this year that they IPO, but with today's news.