In this episode of RealVision Crypto, host Raoul Pal is joined by Peter Smith,CEO & co-founder of blockchain.com, cryptocurrency wallet & exchange, to share his vision of global financial inclusion, things that we as a space need to focus on and improve, CBDCs, stablecoins, and more.
Read our notes below to learn more.
Peter Smith Background
Got immersed in bitcoin in 2011.
In 2012 started blockchain.com as a website to explore Bitcoin transactions.
The same year launched a crypto wallet which reached 1 million signups in 2013.
Now there are 81 million signups with 33 million people verified in 2022.
Peter’s Crypto Core Thesis
Internet would become the world’s largest GDP in the late 2020s and crypto will be a main pillar of this new financial system built natively for the Internet.
Crypto gives people a choice what financial system to be part of, enables direct transactions without intermediaries, increases economic freedom. By increasing economic freedom it also increases human freedom in general.
Things That We Still Need To Improve
Make crypto easier: UX and UI in crypto are still pretty challenging for people.
Crypto services need to be seamless, instant and totally reliable at the same time.
Get custodial investing experience and DeFi experience in one app: buy your first ETH or BTC through CEX and get access to every chain within your DeFi wallet just in one swipe.
Endgame is to build an end-to-end product that takes care of all the things you need to do in your financial life, which is what Peter is trying to build.
Blockchain.com’s recent Visa card
View On Macro
Peter
Stablecoins is the most important thing that happened in crypto in the last five years, they’re also the most used crypto from a transactional standpoint.
Dollarisation of the whole world gives a huge economic advantage for U.S., but current FED policy could lead this status quo to an end.
Lack of food & energy in the world, primarily due to war in Ukraine, will drive inflation higher no matter what the FED does.
It seems crazy not to have at least a portion of your net worth in crypto currently.
Something in the world economy is going to break, and when it does crypto will give people an alternative choice, unlike in 2008 when there was no alternative to the financial system.
Raoul
Currently every country in the global trade has to use dollars to do business, but the world will one day walk away from this system.
There’s only one solution to the current problem - devalue the currency, increase the price of assets in perpetuity, save the market from implosion by inflating the debt.
What Makes Crypto Different
Peter
BTC and ETH can’t be debased; both of them are deflationary.
You can directly custody crypto which eliminates your exposure to financial institutions.
Despite also having leverage, crypto itself never failed because of it, only companies did.
Market has gone -80% twice in the last 2 years and crypto market survived it without any bailouts and government interventions.
If you had 100 BTC 3 years ago in your wallet you still have the same amount today, but you can’t say the same about the USD; Every single government intervention debased the value of USD and you couldn’t do anything about it.
What Excites Peter
Crosschain protocols: how to build a chain that connects all the other chains seamlessly?
ZK-proofs (a way for party A to proof something to a party B without leaking any additional information apart from the fact that the statement is true) and their usage in identity management.
How Crypto Companies Have Adapted
Coinbase discovered that helping U.S. consumers on iOS to buy BTC is very profitable, iOS alone is 70% of all their revenue.
Blockchain.com survived a long time without revenue, taught them how to control their spendings well & focus on their operational excellence.
Despite their size, Blockchain.com only has 400 full time employees.