In the ever-evolving world of finance, cryptocurrency has emerged as a transformative force, captivating the attention of investors and tech enthusiasts alike. In this episode of I welcome Vakul Talwar, General Manager of Australia and Head of Product at Crypto.com, to explore the fascinating realm of digital currencies, stablecoins and tokenization.
Vakul shares his journey into the cryptocurrency space, highlighting the advantages of using digital currencies for international money transfers. Unlike traditional banking methods, which can take days and involve hefty fees, cryptocurrencies offer instant transactions that transcend borders. This seamless movement of money is one of the key benefits that make cryptocurrencies appealing, especially in countries where local currencies may be unstable.
Vakul explains the fundamental differences between cryptocurrencies and traditional currencies, emphasizing that cryptocurrencies are decentralised and not controlled by central banks. This decentralization is a significant shift in how we think about money and financial systems. As he puts it, “Cryptocurrency is taking the financial infrastructure to the next level.”
Listeners are introduced to various types of cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which are pegged to the US dollar to minimize volatility. Vakul discusses how these stablecoins serve as a bridge between traditional currencies and the world of cryptocurrency, making it easier for consumers to engage with digital assets in their everyday lives.
There is a growing institutional interest in cryptocurrencies, particularly in the wake of regulatory changes that are beginning to shape the industry. This increased confidence from governments and financial institutions is paving the way for broader adoption, making cryptocurrency a viable alternative for investing.
For those curious about how to start investing in cryptocurrencies, Vakul shares insights into the user-friendly features of Crypto.com, including the ability to buy fractional amounts of Bitcoin and the convenience of a Visa card that allows users to spend their crypto seamlessly.
TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS AFTER THIS BRIEF MESSAGE
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Vakul Talwar is general manager of Australia and head of product for trading@Crypto.com, one of the world's top cryptocurrency platforms. And before we start, I just wanted to point out this is. Well, it's been a long time since we've covered crypto on the podcast and I know it's currently the elephant in the rumor, uh, especially after watching the Grand Prix the other night and seeing how many crypto, uh, dot com posters and uh, messaging there was.
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, like, listen, uh, we've been around for like nine years. One of the things we did many years ago was we wanted consumers to know we had a very reputable brand and very trusted brand. And the Formula one has been a very great partner of ours. We've been sponsoring it for many years and that's why we're alll over it.
Phil: Well, I'm glad of your support. That's one of the few sports that I actually follow. So how did you actually get involved in the crypto space?
Vakul Talwar: Originally world? I even forgotten the date. But many, many, many years ago. Right. Like I, I have family all over the world. My family, like I've got my sister in the US My parents are in India and I used to send money to them all the time, like gifts or anything. And I remember I was sending money to My sister and I was like, what's an easy and without cryptocurrency? Like, the usual way of sending money is you go to a bank, you basically do an international money transfer that takes one week to get to the recipient in the US and there are so many fees cut out in the middle. I tried out with my sister sending some cryptocrency to the and it was so simple and easy for her to basically get. It was instant. It was with her in 20 minutes and she had an account with an exchange and she could straightay withdraw it. So that's how I really got into cryptocurrency. And the power of the superpower of cryptocurrency, of being quick and seamless and boundaryless, was what attracted me to it.
Phil: For listeners who've never touched crypto, uh, can you explain in simple terms what a cryptocurrency is?
Vakul Talwar: Sure. It's a digital currency in a very simple manner. It's run by a network of computers and it's not owned by the central banks. Usually let's say there was no cryptocurrency. How is currency done is like the RBA will come up with issuing or the government will basically issue a currency that is centralized and controlled by banks. Here cryptocurcy is decentralized. It's run by like a computer network and it's boundaryless. So that is where is some of the key fundamental differences. And it's basically like, look at it. It's taking the financial infrastructure or the financial way of well being and doing things to the next level. When the Internet came, our, uh, bank branches moved into the new world of knowing Internet banking. So before Internet came in, all of us remember going to a branch with the checkbooks, basically putting in a check and saying, okay, please paye somebody $100. And that's how you basically move money through checks. But then credit cards came in, debit cards came in, and all money movement is instant and it's digital. Like who basically changes physical cash right now? After Covid special so Internet took things to the next level. Now cryptocurrencies and the way the blockchain network works is taking that Internet world into the next level of financial infrastructure where its money movement is instance, as I gave you the example, like if I want to transfer cryptocurrency to anybody globally, it's instant and it's quick. It's seamless from that perspective. So that is where the cryptocurrency landscape is basically sitting down in and taking to the next level. Of the uh, financial infrastructure which has been set up for many 50 years ago and it's not really changed.
Phil: Yeah, I was listening to another podcast the other day and
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Phil: the guest was talking about crypto as being a currency without issuer. And really it's a very important point to make, isn't it? It's not controlled by anyone and it's still very difficult for me to get my head around that it actually works. But it does work, doesn't it?
Vakul Talwar: It does, right? It's amazing. Like if you look at the first cryptocurrency really to take off offer as Bitcoin, right? That's like the, we call it the OG of cryptocurrencies. And this person who nobody knows who is he used a pseudonyms satoshi and created this way of basically enabling two people to move money between each other without a centralized person or a centralized entity in the middle, which is a grand concept. And it's through a bunch of computer networks where people are inc sentineizeds to make sure it works properly and it works seamlessly. So there is a whole bunch of volunteers and people enabling this capability globally without the CBA bank paying everybody to do it properly or MasterCard or Visa. So it's almost seamless. A bunch of computer networks and people operating those to ensure that it's secure and safe. And when you send, I send you something, it's accounted for properly. Rather than double counting that I can say I sent you money but I sent somebody else. Those kind of problems have been taken care of.
Phil: So what's the difference between Bitcoin and all of the other cryptocurrencies of which there seem to be many at the moment.
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, there are a lot and lots keep on coming. I'll say Bitcoin was basically the original cryptocurrency which solved a lot of the problems as to how cryptocurrency is in a digital non centralized way can work. And then Ethereum, uh, basically tried to take that concept to a next level of saying I'm going to create a global platform that can almost solve any problem. So Ethereum is just not a cryptocurrency, but it's also a platform like a BO machine and then there are many coins which have different purposes. I think it comes back to what is the purpose of the cryptocurrency and what is it trying to solve. That's what it really comes down to. And that's where Bitcoin is very different because its purpose of solving in the start was around payments how do you enable seamless movement of money between one entity and another entity versus other cryptocurrency which come with different purposes?
Phil: It's still uh, very difficult for people to wrap their head around that something that seems to be so ethereal to use a term, can actually have value ascribed to it. But it is becoming part of the monetary system. Very much so, isn't it?
Vakul Talwar: It is and it's going to keep on going that way. In the last one year we've seen huge movements even from a regulatory frontoint to make that into part of the system. Like in the US there was the Genius act basically passed recently, which was for stablecoins. And that was a huge move in the US to pass that and stablecoins. If you look at it, it's the same thing. It's going to be for daily usage of cryptocurrencies. One of the key things people keep on asking, what is the daily usage of cryptocurrencies? I'm seeing lots of implementations. We in crypto.com have a huge payments division and we've also enabled people to be able to buy daily goods with cryptourrencies. So that is the key reality that we want to enable for a consumers. It's just not a tool for investment purposes. But it's also a way to have daily usage day in, day out.
Phil: So what is a stablecoin? I mean I've had experience with usdt, which is tether I think is the term that's used in it as well. Just explain that for listeners please.
Vakul Talwar: Sure. So the key difference between stablecoins and other cryptocurcies, Cryptocurcies by its natures right now can be volatile. They can go up, they can go down. Stablecoins are pegged to the US dollar. Like the US stablecoin for example usdc, which is circles and USDT as you mentioned, which is tethers. They basically like If I buy one USDT, then they will go buy $1 worth of either cash and hold it or US treasuries. So it's pegged and back to one to one. So the price of the USDC and USDT will stay exactly the same. It's not going to fluctuate and become that volatile. That's the key differences between the other cryptocurrencies and stable coins.
Phil: So does it act as a kind of an interface between cryptos and normal currency that we would all use?
Vakul Talwar: Pretty much. That's some of the main use cases being followed I'll say that are a few. One Is right. Like a you many consumers we see is they've got other cryptocurrencies when they sell it, you can't sell it straight away to a aud they use it as a medium usdc. Then after that they can use it to
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Vakul Talwar: straightay buy other cryptocurrencies or they can withdraw it back into the bank accountd. The other one which we seeing a huge one circle it in IPO recently is around the whole payments landscape. Payments is a big trillions of dollars is basically moved on a yearly basis in just money moment. Right. Paying bills or paying for things. And that is one of the big use cases being sold from the stable coins. So that'be the two key ways super.
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Phil: So there's a lot of conversation around some of the silliness of meme coins and so forth. I mean I believe there's a fart coin as well. But do you think this holds back people uh, from taking cryptocurrency seriously? And why should people take cryptocurrency seriously?
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, I think that are two levels. One is the top crypto coins that created and now in a way cryptocrency is decentralized. Anybody can create a coin consumers need to do there. We basically recommend and ensure consumers are doing their investment analysis as they will do with any. Even if you take crypto out of it, if you're investing into stocks or ETFs or mutual funds or whatever, consumers are doing huge deep detailed analysis as to what they want to put their money and funds in. And that's what we recommend consumers to do for any coin from what they're putting money into. You know consumers, there are lots of coins happening and you know sometimes people just do it for the fun sake of it to see what they can do. But yeah, this is what the world is like. People have lots of choices to enable and people should do their investigations.
Phil: So I believe the figure is about 31% of Australians here in Australia own some bitcoin. That's the case, isn't it?
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, like bitcoin'really taken off and you'll see like know if you take it in a comparison to the ASX over the last one year, the growth in bitcoin is like the last number I saw was around 80 or 90% in the price of bitcoin. That's basically gone up and the ASX gone up like 10% or 15% in that same amount of time. Uh, and Australians are very tech savvy. We're very tech savvy. We're more tech savy than many other countries. We love technology and we love to be first in experimenting with new things. That's where consumers have really taken into bitcoin. Even before last year there was a huge take up of cryptocurrencies in Australia anyway, but now it's really increased since the price increases and since some of the regulatory changes that we've seen coming in, especially from the US and consumers really like it. So that's where the adoption curve has really increased.
Phil: So tell us about some of these regulatory changes and how it increases confidence in, uh, cryptocurrency and general usage.
Vakul Talwar: Yeah. Before Trump came in in the US there was like, under Biden's government, there were lots of acts basically done which were, uh, not easy for the crypto market or the crypto place, even the good place. Right. Who were playing by the rules and by all the guidelines, which was becoming very challenging to operate businesses in. But Trump came in and basically said, no, we do see the future of crypto and blockchain. We do want it incorporate to help basically step up the uh, infrastructure and the financial infrastructure we have. And since then he's basically created like a crypto task force. He's created the Genius Act. The sec, which was taking a very legal approach to governance, has basically stepped back and taken a very practical approach. Right. Where they've taken away a lot of the lawsuits like all the crypto companies are basically going through and they've taken a more pragmatic approach as to how they want to approach regulation. So we're seeing very good signs coming out from the US and we're hoping also the Australian government basically takes appropriate signience to encourage and foster innovation for Australia.
Phil: You're being very careful there about how you're talking about the Australian government.
Vakul Talwar: The fact is we haven't been very advanced in our regulation. And moving on the crypto regulation, I've had lots of chats with parliamentarians from both sides of the government. It was supposed to be passed in the previous labor government and even in the laberal government before that, but no regulation really has basically passed this year. We're hoping there'be good regulation to bring into cryptocurrencies under the AFSL regime. The treasury has come out with good Papers and we are hoping that will basically turn into a bill.
Phil: So
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Phil: you're helping to shape Crypto.com's products. What's exciting for you about it and how are you packaging the products so that they become more approachable for investors who don't have a lot of experience with, with the cryptocurrency, uh, world?
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, we've done quite a few things and we'll keep on doing quite a few things. To give you an example, one of the things we launched last year was this crypto baskets, right? So before that crypto consumers basically had the choice to buy bitcoin and they basically bought a bitcoin or fractional bitscoins. Like you can buy $10 worth of Bitcoin for example. But we were seeing quite a bit of demand rate. Consumers like listen, I just don't want to buy one coin when I'm new. I want to buy maybe a second basket of coins like an ETF. But they were no real ETFs that time. So we created this capability of consumers in one go. They can buy like 10 coins, right? Like it's like a basket of coins. So our new consumers love that. It's simple, it helps them understand what the different cryptocurrencies are. It helps them spread their money and helps them even basically from a risk profile. Then in the future I'm seeing lots of newss coming into the world of tokenization of the stock market. There's a lot of noise coming in. I like to give you some again background. Like the ASX is a great example. Today you can trade in the asx only from 9:30am M to Fourom. And everything that you buy on the SX has to be full shares. You can't buy fractional shares. If I want to buy $100 of BHP stock and if BHP is at 40 $, then I'll only be able to buy $80. I can't buy $100 worth of stock and then I have to wait two days to put money into a bank or a day and then two days for the money to come back to me and even to take the money out or not money out, the stock out. Like if I have to change brokers, I uh, have to go from say coms to ig or self. We takes two weeks. You have to fill in a paper form, you have to sign it, you have to send it to a branch. Like it's almost like you feel like what the banking world went through with the Internet, the stock market completely missed that in some way. Right. And that is where the tokenization world is taking it to. Which is like if you look at crypto trading, it's 247 regardless of where you are. It's globally available money movement is instant. And if you're unhappy with the platform that you're in, you can instantly transfer it to another platform within minutes. You don't need to fill out paper forms, you don't need to go through this complicated thing which many brokers use as they want to make it tough to move those funds so that people don't take money out of their platform, which is a way of justse servicing those consumers. And that's where the tokenization of stocks, Phil, will be a very interesting proposition globally to make more freedom and more ways for consumers to in a way retire or wealthy. Because if there are more choices then it'be better for them.
Phil: Let's just dig into that a bit more deeply. When you say tokenization and this is the concept that is all part of the cryptocurrency world, what does that actually mean? Mean how do you turn a BHP share into a token, for example?
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, so you can take a BHP share and you can put it on the Ethereum chain, for example, and you can basically issue a token out of it. Now the key underlying dynamics will be there are multiple ways to do that. When you create a token and you can do it like how Circle or Tether has done with the stablecoins. So you can say if somebody comes in and buys a token of bhp, the underlying company who's issuing that token can go and buy a stock of BHP on the asx. So they can do it in that manner. So you can create a token and then the token is one to one fulfilled. Like stablecoins with the underlying stock market. Or the ASX just advances itself also from a trading. I know they did a huge project around um, blockchain, but they spent so much money and they shelved it after that. All the underlying platforms and the exchanges basically uplift the game and make it more 24 7.
Phil: Yeah, I remember that disaster. What was it about in terms of issuing information about Chess holdings and so forth, wasn't it?
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, exactly right. And again, that's another great example, Phil. Like how the blockchain world advances that finance of the future. Today if you buy a stock, like I remember first time when I bought a stock I got this letter from Chess Holdings. I was like, who is this? Right? Like why am I getting this letter from the Chess holdings coming?
Phil: You're too young to Remember paper based stock certificates in.
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, exactly right. Like when I heard about that I was like, wow, what is this? So today
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Vakul Talwar: Chess holdings basically holds a ledger of all trades and who owns what. In the crypto world you own it. Like if you basically go in and buy Bitcoin, in the end you have a unique address that you own. Your use self custody, your holdings of any tokens until you're going through a little broker in the middle. And you don't need a letter coming in from Chess holdings to tell you that you hold it, you just do. And then you have the power to do what you want with it, to transfer it or not. You don't need to go through another central place to get approval to send it to Chess. Then Chess does something to send it to somebody else and then somehow it gets to the end party. So yeah, it's a very different world. It's much more seamless and quicker.
Phil: I know there are so many people who seem to be so committed to cryptocurrencies. I mean I have chats with a friend and he's basically got all of his superannuation and he keeps on adding to it. He's putting it into his kids accounts and all he's buying is Bitcoin and XRP I believe. And it does make you think that it really, it is a wave that is going to keep moving. It's not going anywhere, is it?
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, we don't think so. Right. There are S750 million consumers globally who have adopted cryptocurrencies. When you have that much adoption at a global setting, it's not like 10, 20 people individually doing this right now, they'like 750 million people. So the adoption rate is huge. FIL and based on each consumer's investor profiles, many consumers just like 10% into cryptocurrency and 90% into stocks or bonds or ETSF s. Everybody has a different investor profile. We basically say to everybody, look at your own circumstance and make the holdings. But you know, cryptocurcy is nowhere to go. It's getting more and more embedded into the daily life of consumers. That's basically what it's advanced into.
Phil: For me personally, I've been a little bit shy about cryptocurrencies for a while, but then I guess it's, it's like cash, it's like gold. Anything that's got value, it's because humans ascribe a value to it. And it's becoming more and more clear that humans are ascribing a value to crypto when you look at it really, what is the value of cash or what's even the value of gold? It's only what we as humans ascribed to it. If we weren't here, they wouldn't have any value totally.
Vakul Talwar: It's basically like, what is the value? Even stocks, like if you see it, it, some stocks basically go in multiples of 80 times of earnings. What is the value? Everybody basically projects like the growth rate of this company will be 100% but nobody knows about the future. It's like, what is the value that anybody'ready to ascribe to it at this point in time?
Phil: Another thing that I've read about cryptocurrencies is that it's made for certain countries around the world that don't have a stable currency of their own, um, that might be hyperinflation, whatever, that they can still trade with the rest of the world via um, the blockchain. And this is a real advantage for many poorer countries, isn't it?
Vakul Talwar: A huge advantage. Right. We're seeing great example is Argentina. Argentina has got a huge adoption of Bitcoin because there's so much inflation that has happened in Argentina and the economy has gone through so many challenges and problems itself. And it's a great example where consumers sometimes just want to get paid in cryptocurrencies because it's more stable than their normal central bank issued currencies. So it's a great advantage for many of those countries to be able to trade in cryptocurrencies and have that stability.
Phil: So how do you use Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, uh, for real world purchases?
Vakul Talwar: Yeah. Uh, to give an example, we've got two ways of doing this. One way is our crypto.come uh, Visa card and many other crypto exchanges also do this. So the Visa card is, we were the first ones to basically launch the Visa card. Consumers love it where you have cryptocurcies. You can automatically load your Visa card and sell your cryptocurrency and straightaway transfer aud to your Visa card. Then you can use it anywhere in the world that Visa has accepted. So that's one way. I know people who bought cards through that Visa card mechanism. Many of our consumers use that to even buy groceries and bullies and callals. So that's the everyday usage that is there today. And then the other way is natively you don't need to load a card with it, but you actually pay with their Bitcoin at that point in time with the retailer. We Did a huge work with on the run gas stations. They're huge in South Australia and I think in even in Queensland and New South Wales where you can buy gas, you can pay for your fuel, go and pay with their Bitcoin and consumers really like it because they're finding daily usage and people thought like paying with bitcoin in gas
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Vakul Talwar: stations. Oh my God, it takes so much time. How will consumers do it and whether consumers will like it? People do it and we've had no complaints from our consumer basically adopting it. And globally like we're talking to lots of companies to enable more and more consumers to be able to pay with that native manner.
Phil: Yeah, I know a little uh, Vietnamese cafe in Redfern in Sydney that accepts bitcoin to buy your ban me. It can be done, can't it?
Vakul Talwar: M It is and it's happening more and more right now. We're seeing more of a movement in uh, real time use cases from crypto.
Phil: And what about those ATMs which seem to be popping up everywhere where you can go and buy some bitcoin?
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, like those ATMs are an interesting one. Like I personally haven't used those ATMs itself because you know, I've got the Visa card. My view is like there are better ways to do it if the ATMs some consumers like it in everything. But I feel personally it's a bit more clunky the way to use those ATMs. But if these consumers got Visa cards or natively within merchantseping for the banme, then that's just quicker, simpler way to.
Phil: Do this and more secure take control of your investments. Shareight has you covered. It's Investopedia's number one tracking tool for DIY investors get four months free on an annual premium plan and at sharesite.com sharesforbeginners. So do you feel that because governments are now starting to take it seriously and provide regulation and legislation around it that it makes it a, ah, safer bet for the future for average everyday consumers?
Vakul Talwar: Yes, I feel like the regulation coming in will be a key part to give consumers also the confidence to basically usage and get more into cryptocurrencies. But you know your question is got two sides to it, right? One is like how do you and I know it personally deliberately? You asked that question with two sides to it. But you know, one is like how do consumers feel safe? Like hey, what I'm going into is not a rug pull for example. Right. And the second is once as a consumer you have it, how do you take steps to ensure that you keeping your financial holdings safe for me, for that world. We have invested a lot into scam prevention with even the regulators. Even within our own platforms, uh, we've implemented capabilities like you have 24 hour withdrawal locks. So anytime you're taking any crypto out, uh, it's locked for 24 hours, you get a notification to make sure that it's you and it's not unauthorized. We have abilities of you if you find any issues, you can straight away lock your account within one second. We have huge risk reviews and compliance reviews or major transfers going out. We even have scam warnings going out to consumers. Every time they do a transfer they go through a scam waring to say that hey listen, there are scams, be aware of them. Anybody telling you that they can give you 500% return over a month is most probably not true. Let's use some practical common sense in these aspects and we inform a lot of information back to our consumers. But my biggest advice to consumers is treat crypto as cash. Are you going to give your cash to raom person down the street who's giving you a 500% return? Most probably not. So treat it like assh. Because once it goes then it's tough to get it back. So just make sure you're re, uh, treating it like crash.
Phil: Let's talk for a moment about the volatility of cryptocurrencies. How does volatility of these currencies compare to say other asset classes?
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, it depends which asset classes you're comparing it to. So let's take the different levels. Uh, the top crypto coins, they'll be volatile like Bitcoin gone up by 90% for example there has the BHP stock go up by 90%? Not really. Or the CB's stock has done really well. The CB's stock has been an amazing bumper right recently and it will be more volatile than some of the other asset classes in the traditional finance world that we have because people are still understanding that okay, how do you value some of these things? It's based on demand and supply. That's what it's simply based on. Whereas some of the other ones are more established over the last 100 years. People know what they're basically expecting and people get an understanding. So it just depends on what uh, are those coins and how new or uh, whether they've been there around for a while or not.
Phil: But stocks and stock markets do go up and down, don't they? And as does Bitcoin totally Right.
Vakul Talwar: Like I remember when Covid hit and our offices got shut within one day I saw stocks go down by like 60, 70%. And then after that they basically got back all their stock prices back up. But bitcoin and cryptocurrencies by its
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Vakul Talwar: nature are more volatile than normal stocks will be.
Phil: What is driving the price action of cryptocurrencies? Who's out there buying and selling it?
Vakul Talwar: Uh, a lot of retail and institutional, like institutional is becoming huge right now. In the first wave it was a lot retail driven consumers just going and basically buying bitcoin for example. But since the ETFs have come out, the ETFs which give consumers the exposure to cryptocurrencies without holding TR cryptocurrencies, there's been a huge influx of buy moves which are happening through ETFs since they launched last year, which they got approved by the SEC. BlackRocks launched an ETF fund, MicroStrategies launched it. We many people in Australia and companies have launched in ETFs so the institutional adoption of bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies is driving a lot of the price action currently on top of what the retail demand was already strong with the things basically going up. So it's a combination of both. Right now.
Phil: Do you have any words of warning for consumers who are approaching bitcoins or cryptocurrencies for the first time? How are they going to avoid getting maybe ripped off, scammed or losing money?
Vakul Talwar: I feel do your research right. Like my biggest recommendation to anyone in any investment is make sure you're doing your research right. And if anybody's telling you that, you know they can give you a 500% return in exchange for you sending your bitcoin, be careful, do your investigative of research in everything and treat it like ash. So that'be my biggest mantra. Do anything, especially around investments.
Phil: So uh, crypto.com is not just about cryptocurrency, it's also about buying and selling ordinary stocks and shares, isn't it? Tell us about the copy trading platform that you provide.
Vakul Talwar: Yeah, we'd launched this capability in the U.S. we launched stocks in the U.S. where consumers can not just trade crypto, but now they can even trade everything in the New York stock exchange and Nasdaq, which is around 7,000 stocks and ETFs in the U.S. we plan to bring that capability globally to other countries. And on top of that, and consumers love that, they're like, hey, there's one place as a crypto consumer for Me to just not trade crypto now. But once I've said that, okay, I've made my profits, I want to diversify. I can diversify in one platform rather than go to different places. So consumers love that one stop shop. Then we launched this capability of the copy trading that you're talking about in um, July and in the US US is a very different country than we have in Australia. Like in the US a lot of politicians can basically trade on stocks which is great. But all of this information has to become public. And when that basically information becomes public you pretty much know for example what Nancy Pelosi has done for um.
Phil: There's even an etf, isn't there that follows her trades. N I believe exactly right.
Vakul Talwar: There is an E of that follows her trades. So what we've basically done is we've gone to those data sources to get information on the really influential people and what are they pretty much trading. Right. And we're exposing that back to our consumers in a very simple manner. And we basically telling them that okay, these are the trades done, um, these are the holdings and on monthly basis we even tell the consumers how they're changing. And we'even done some predictions as to what was the performance of their holdings over the last one year. And that's what we have enabled. We've enabled few politicians, few real life people like Y or Jensen Huang from Nvidia and his investments, for example Warren Buffet's holdings. So we've done a combination of politicians and uh, in very influential investment managers and we plan to keep on launching more capabilities around this and different thematics ways and consumers are really really loving it. They want to understand also how these influential people what their trading strategies are because there's so much information out there and we're trying to distill it in a very simple manner for them. So consumers are loving it right now. We've seen really strong uptick and I.
Phil: Believe there's also been ah, quite a trend recently for companies to actually buy bitcoin to have on their balance sheets to strengthen their balance sheets as well, isn't it?
Vakul Talwar: Totally. We're seeing a huge move. Many companies are basically going for it. We know MicroStrategy did a huge move around buying bitcoins but they're a huge investment fund manager and we seeing normal companies also pretty much holding bitcoin into their treasuries. So we're seeing more and more institutional adoption.
Phil: Yeah, and what's his name? MSTR Michael Sayr. You can follow him and get a lot of information about. I mean, that seems incredible how leveraged they, uh, are to bitcoin as well. Do you have any views on microstrategies?
Vakul Talwar: Listen, they'they've um, gone hard into bitcoin and their investment strategies. Like, you want exposure to bitcoin be
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Vakul Talwar: the best place to do it. They went and got a lot of bitcoin to be able to invest in it. It's proven to be a very successful strategy for them. Their investment fund is hugely up year on year. So it's been worked really well for them and consumers be finding lots of consumers going for the ETF or MicroStrategy who want exposure to bitcoin. So it's proved out.
Phil: So how can listeners find out more about crypto.com. it's a good place to start to download the app. And I don't want to make this sound like an advertorial either. You know, it's just because I haven't got that much experience with crypto. I'm leaning on you for all of the information and that, but there's no payment going on here, is there? So tell ushing. Thank you. Maybe later, maybe for the next appearance. Yeah, but what should listeners do? It'it a, uh, simple matter of downloading the app and going through the KYC process. Exactly.
Vakul Talwar: It's a very simple process. We have the app, but you can even do it online on the web. You can go to crypto.comt that's it. And you pretty much go through a very simple onboarding process, which is real time and instant. You go through a KYC process and then, uh, after that you can start trading instantly. You can trade instantly with just your debit card. So it's pretty easy. People sometimes have this misconception also about crypto trading that, oh my God, bitcoin price is $180,000. I can just buy one bitcoin. No, you don't need to. You can buy $10 worth of Bitcoin. People don't get that because that's not how the stock market works. Uh, cryptocurrency is fractional, so you can buy $10 worth of Bitcoin if you want to.
Phil: Is it confusing? I've noticed because I hold a little bit of cryptocurrency and with another platform and you sot go on the platform and it'so confusing. It really is. There'a differ with crypto.com. uh, I have just downloaded the app, but I haven't used it as yet.
Vakul Talwar: I love some feedback, Phil. When you give some, when you play around with it, like my team and we spend a lot of time to make life simple for our consumers. One of the things that we try to do is make it very simple for them to use. We give a lot of information to consumers also in a simplified manner. The feedback has been really positive from a consumers because we have simple price charts, we have background information on what the coins are, we have news information, we even have tools to tell you what's going on in the outside of the crypto.com ecosystem, what price moves or what movements have we seeing or interests that are happening. So we spen a lot of time. Our, uh, design team, our product teams, our engineering teams spend a lot of time to simplify and keep it simple. And we take simplicity and that's where we've launched crypto baskets. So Phil, when you play around with it, would love some feedback. Let me know.
Phil: Oh yeah, we'll let you know. I love playing around with a new app. Fantastic Vul. Thank you very much for joining me today. It's been a great pleasure learning more about crypto.
Vakul Talwar: Thank you, Phil. Thanks so much for having me.
Chloe: Thanks for listening to Shares for beginners. You can find more@chesforbeginners.com do if you enjoy listening, please take a moment to rate or review in your podcast player or tell a friend who might want to learn more about investing for their future.
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