Dan Romero leaves Farcaster for Tempo, the Stripe/Paradigm stablecoin L1 going live in Q2

Speaker 2: And without further ado,

Speaker 7: let's bring

Speaker 2: in Dan Romero.

Speaker 1: Wait. Wait. Wait. Woah. We're now entering.

Speaker 2: Oh, we're the lightning round. The Lambda lightning round. That's right. Thank you. This is our Lambda lightning round. And we will invite Dan Romero from the recent radio room into the TV panel. Danny, good to see you. How are you doing?

Speaker 8: Good to see you guys.

Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: Great to see I like this what is this? A little sweater with

Speaker 2: a Good. Good.

Speaker 8: Yeah. Have new jobs. I'm dressing for success.

Speaker 7: What's the title?

Speaker 2: What's the role? What's the company? Break it down for us. Yeah.

Speaker 8: So we sold Farcaster Mhmm. Last month. Yeah. And, you know, it's a five year chapter. Yeah. And now I am working at Tempo, which is a purpose built l one blockchain designed for stablecoin payments.

Speaker 7: Okay.

Speaker 8: Stripe and Paradigm incubated it. And, yeah, I am working on the go to market side of things.

Speaker 1: Okay. Makes so much sense when I saw the news. The first conversation we ever had

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Was about stablecoins. This was back in in Venice in probably 2021, 2022. We were both so excited about stablecoins at that time and kind of frustrated with how little they were integrated into the actual tools that businesses and consumers could use every day, and specifically yeah. Just specifically making them valuable by integrating them with the rest of our global payment network. So Yeah. The role makes a lot of sense. Yeah. What what I mean, kind of a silly question, but, like, why why this opportunity? It's an existing business. You, you know, you proved to be a extremely formidable founder Mhmm. With with Farcaster. But I I already know the answer, but I don't Tell the audience. For you to tell the audience.

Speaker 8: Yeah. I mean, look. I've been working in crypto for twelve years, first at Coinbase and then Forecaster. And I feel like, honestly, the time spent hasn't really resulted in that much real world impact. Right? Like, crypto has been its own thing, and, obviously, the price of Bitcoin has gotten pretty high.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 8: But I I genuinely think with the Genius Act, which was a law passed last year, the opportunity for stablecoins over the next eighteen to twenty four months is is pretty massive. And, obviously, I think Stripe figured that out. They bought Bridge last year, and then they bought another company, Privy, which I think is a sponsor of TPPN.

Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8: But, yeah, I I think banks banks are taking it pretty seriously. I don't know if you guys saw that Wall Street Journal article where

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 8: Jamie Dimon had some choice words with Brian Armstrong.

Speaker 1: We hanging with Brian yesterday, and I told him, I was like, you better have printed that out and framed it immediately because

Speaker 7: It's a

Speaker 1: great one. That is I've like, it felt like he had been the whole Coinbase team had been working forever to get that kind of quote because that was the whole ethos of the entire movement from the beginning. It's like, hey, we can actually come in and be a real player in in Yeah. Finance.

Speaker 2: Well, I mean, like, I

Speaker 8: started at Coinbase in 2014, and it's it's the classic first day they laugh at you. Mhmm. You know? Or first they ignore you,

Speaker 2: then they laugh at you, then then

Speaker 8: they fight you. This is clearly the

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 8: Fight you. But I but I think generally, though, there are a lot of banks that are very excited about working with stablecoins. We're really excited about working with banks with stablecoins. I I think stablecoins are startling for money is what I've heard from someone say that I think is pretty good. And I think generally, you you have a payment rail now that is global, fast, and and cheap Yeah. That moves at the speed of of developers and and, frankly, now AI. Right? So AgenTic payments, probably have seen a bunch of the stuff with I know you guys have been talking about Cloudbot and things like that, but that that I think is gonna be on stablecoin rails. Yeah. And so the the opportunity is pretty massive.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Talk talk GTM I was gonna incredibly broad role means you're gonna be getting people to use Tempo. Yeah. What is the role gonna look like? I imagine, are you interfacing with with finding legacy financial institutions, new, you know, neo banks Fortune hundreds.

Speaker 2: Wallace. To consumers.

Speaker 1: All the way to governments, I imagine Yeah. You'd be interacting with those kind of groups as well.

Speaker 8: Yeah. Everybody and and anybody. I was meeting with a bank. I'm in New York right now, and I was meeting with a bank this morning about the one right after this. But also, neobanks, developers, any anyone who wants to do payments globally, I I think is gonna be on stablecoins. And I think Tempo is very focused on the features on payments. Right? Like, I think there are lot of blockchains out there that do a lot of different things, but Tempo's functionality is really dialed into payments. I mean, obviously, working closely with Stripe on that. And so I think, yeah, that that that's the focus for the go to market stuff.

Speaker 1: How lay out the the AI agent thesis a little bit more.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Why wouldn't I just wanna give OpenClaw or Clogbot or, you know, whatever agent I'm using just like my credit card?

Speaker 8: Well, I think one thing is the credit card itself is kind of like a private key. Yeah. And so having that get prompt injected out is maybe not the best thing in the world.

Speaker 2: Sure.

Speaker 8: And then going and giving a bunch of other agents your credit card, one of those could be malicious and then that gets popped where

Speaker 1: I promise I won't charge

Speaker 8: it again. Securely.

Speaker 2: Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8: Yeah. So I think naturally that, but to to also if if you have these agent swarms, the idea of, like, spinning up a new credit card for each individual sub agent doesn't make sense, where you could imagine wallets. You can spin up as many as you want and then be able to kind of manage programmatically the different balances for each agent.

Speaker 7: Mhmm.

Speaker 8: But you you if you think about it, like an API call to any of these frontier labs right now is a, you know, pay per call. Right? Mhmm. So if if you actually kind of break it down, you're eventually gonna get to a point where every single API call, you can just pay some amount of stable coins in the background and and keep moving. Right? So I I think that's where the world is headed, and I think it's it's on us to to kind of pull that forward a bit.

Speaker 2: Does that have a meaningful impact on the, like, the API business? Because most API companies are like, yes. I'm I'm giving you the service piece by piece, but I'll invoice you at the end of the month, and it's fine. Is there, an impact to cash flow if you pull that through or security or risk or underwriting? Like, what is the benefit if you're if you're OpenAI or Anthropic? And you're like, yeah. Technically, we offer services on a per microsecond basis, but our like, our the Fortune five hundreds who are buying our API, like, they pay their invoices on time.

Speaker 8: Yeah. Look. There's there's obviously some amount of cost to using different payment rails if Sure. With stablecoins, it's as cheap as it gets.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 8: I think that there's also some amount of fraud. So when you Sure. Don't have that because it's a bearer instrument with stablecoins, that's a settled payment. That also benefits. Mhmm. But I just also think that you just kinda have new use cases. Right? So how does an agent decide what, you know, service to use to register domain or to host a database? Mhmm. Right now, you you kind of are using Cloud Code and then it kicks you out to a web browser. And it says, hey, go set up an account over here. Fill it out. When when you're done, bring it back, and then I can continue what I'm doing. Whereas you could imagine you you have, you know, Cloud Code running and it finds a stablecoin native way of doing something.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 8: It's just gonna sign up and do it for you. Right? Yeah. And so I think I think that's the kind of future where it it just allows the agent to be unblocked, assuming the agent has some money to spend.

Speaker 1: Yeah. What are the what are your main lessons from, you know, the probably hundreds of l ones that have launched in the the last kind of decade. There's been so many that had a lot of potential, differentiated maybe approach from a technology standpoint. I think the opportunity with Tempo as you're combining, you know, these trusted brands, you know, a deeply experienced team. You guys, I imagine, are gonna be incredibly focused on, you know, actually, you know, you have the ability to, sign up one partner that could drive billions of dollars of volume, I imagine. And so you guys have feel like have all the right ingredients to be successful here. But having studied, I'm sure the last generation the multiple generation of l ones, what is it gonna take to to win?

Speaker 8: Yeah. So I I think the differentiated thing for us two things. One, the blockchain is specifically focused on payments. So there haven't been too many l ones. I think a lot of l ones tend to try to do everything, and we're really, really focused on payments. And the second thing is we have a bunch of initial partners that we've been fortunate enough to work with. And part of that is also having kind of closely been working with Stripe since the beginning. We we kind of are able to approach the payments use case specifically. And so you you have, you know, publicly, like, we're we're working with partners like DoorDash or Klarna and bringing that perspective in. Whereas I think traditionally, in my decade in crypto, most of the time you launch an l one and then you you go spend a lot of time trying to figure out if anyone wants to work with you. Whereas I think since the beginning, Tempo, because of kind of like that focus on payments, have had these concrete use cases that we're gonna be bringing to market over the next, you know, six to eight weeks. We we should be live by, you know, kind of q '2 this year, which

Speaker 1: is very cool.

Speaker 8: Start to finish in in less than a year.

Speaker 1: Has crypto sentiment ever been worse in in your time than right now?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Way, way, way, way. Yeah. This is an easy day.

Speaker 1: What what what was your first darkest hour. What was your darkest hour?

Speaker 8: I I I think the Bitcoin scaling '20 Sure. '15, '20 '16 Yeah. You know, pre pre kind of Ethereum Mhmm.

Speaker 1: It it it was it

Speaker 8: was pretty grim because everyone was assuming all the the payments was gonna you know, peer to peer electronic cash. That was Bitcoin.

Speaker 2: Right? Yeah. That was the thesis.

Speaker 8: And so the fact that things weren't going anywhere. Yeah. And then I think Ethereum in 2017 really kind of broadened the aperture from kind of just being Bitcoin. Yeah. There were a lot more choice words to describe any other blockchain at the time. And and it became crypto. Right? Yeah. And all the kind of stuff that's since come

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 8: From that. So I I I think things were way more grim in 2015

Speaker 2: Totally.

Speaker 8: Relative to now. I mean, you have Genius Act, Clarity is still kind of in play in Congress. I mean, we had we had a Super Bowl ad yesterday Yeah. Room was singing. Right? So, like, I I I think things are I mean, 2022 is also pretty bad.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8: So I I I think that the real world impact for crypto has never been closer.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 8: And so, you know, I I'm I'm really really excited. That's why I wanted to come on the show today.

Speaker 1: Either already retired Mhmm. Or or could be. But what I appreciate is the ones that could retire and are staying are staying in it again just because the the opportunity is is is is brighter than ever. So I'm yeah. I'm very excited to see this roll out. And Yeah. When when do you think the average when do you what what's your timeline for the average Internet user just consumer?

Speaker 13: I may

Speaker 1: not even know. To No. No. No. I was just gonna say, like, to to be, like, basically doing something with with Tempo.

Speaker 2: Oh, okay.

Speaker 8: I'd say a

Speaker 4: year from now.

Speaker 8: Yeah. Not maybe average Internet user might be a little extreme, but, how about how about the terminally online or Yeah. Or savvy online

Speaker 2: Okay. A year from now. I like that. Yeah. That's good. Well, congratulations on the new role. Thanks so much for stopping by the show.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's great. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 8: I'm excited for you guys to talk about France. I I was I was Oh, yeah. I know. Knocking at

Speaker 1: the bit for this story. That was amazing that How did you how did you how you process that whole exchange? Because I mean Have

Speaker 2: you ever had an entire country mad at you?

Speaker 1: I was I was actually So the real bearish case for France is that I didn't get any death threats.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1: I did not get a single

Speaker 13: You're very polite

Speaker 2: over there.

Speaker 1: I didn't get a single mean message basically saying, hey, I'm here in Saint Tropez. We actually have I have got my own cluster. Yeah. We're gonna we're gonna we're gonna win. Yeah. We're win the AI race.

Speaker 5: Alive and well.

Speaker 2: Alive and well.

Speaker 8: I'm usually a big France proponent because they're 70% nuclear, but I I I do I do think you won that exchange.

Speaker 2: Okay. Well, thank

Speaker 1: you Doug. We had Doug from Semi Analysis on. He was saying like, hey, all the energy's there. A bunch of the labs have gone over, tried to get something done Let's

Speaker 2: do it.

Speaker 1: And just walked away.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Ready

Speaker 1: to And so as I said, until LVMH is spending 100,000,000,000 a year on data center CapEx, they're not really in the game. They got a They haven't They clearly haven't read They haven't studied situational awareness yet. Yeah. So

Speaker 2: And and Louis Vuitton, hopefully on temp Dan. Well, to you soon.

Speaker 1: Congrats to the whole team.

Speaker 2: Goodbye. Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Wanna change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. And guess what? Sydney Sweeney just rang the opening bell for the stock market today at the New York Stock Exchange. Adam Aronson said it was bound to happen because what do Sydney and Sweeney have in common? NYSE. Right in the middle of the Venn diagram. She has the letters NYSE in both her first name and her last name. That is a fantastic coincidence. What an interesting what an interesting Let's

Speaker 1: go back to Friday, February 6.