Transcription
If you believe that crypto is not just about Bitcoin and altcoins, if you believe real world things can come on chain over time, if stable coin is the first step, then the question becomes where do you draw the line? It's just a question of time. And I think that's what's so exciting building our onchain. What's onchain finance like in 5 years?
I think >> Sha Ju, the president of Jupiter, >> a leading DeFi platform with over $2 trillion in volume, >> a former KKR and BCG strategist. >> What is Jupiter global? It's basically the first ever onchain QR pay that allows the small merchant in the Vietnamese jungle to accept onchain assets via QR pay with zero fees. We literally build it with a team of like four or five people and it's a global launch. You left Strati and Kar for crypto but more specifically Jupiter track record of actually building products that people just love using and you have a very loyal retail customer base very core use case around aggregation and then around which they have built a whole suite of flywheel of products.
This podcast is called When Shift Happens. What shift is happening now that most people still don't see? >> I believe tokenization can be a lot bigger. A lot of people now talk about tokenization but it will require some very radical and fundamental changes than the way tokenization are done today. Prori invested $35 million in drip token. Can you explain simply what's the logic behind that?
>> Um, yeah. Hi everyone. This is the little bit that I know none of you like that can help us make a huge difference for this show and we want to take it next. 71% of the people who regularly watch When Shift Happens have not subscribed. And so all I'd ask you if you want to make a huge difference is the following. If you've seen this show before and you like it, help me, help my team, hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to build this show for you. Thank you.
>> What's your feeling about Dubai and UAE? Personal >> personal outside of the financial tax and and so on. >> I think strategically it just makes so much more sense, right? The location is perfect. The weather is not I mean the weather is perfect, you know, half of the year, the other it's terrible the other half of the year. But being able to kind of go equal distance to London, New York too and then to Singapore is >> it's useful but it's also painful because you have to cover both, right? >> But uh >> everyone leaving the UK to go to Dubai now I mean Europe even in general I would say >> yeah, I would say >> crazy >> like when you have small kids I think like like I do it's it's uh it's good. >> I think much better than London for the kids. >> Yeah. But once they get get into like proper school, primary high school, we might reconsider. >> When is that? Many years >> away. >> Four, five years, I would say. >> Like proper consideration. Where are you? Singapore. >> Singapore. >> Yeah. >> From Switzerland, but based in Singapore. >> Okay. >> Moved out actually. I was in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Madrid, London, Geneva, >> as well. You like I was just six months in Shanghai. No, no, no. 2013. >> Oh, okay. >> Yeah. I was >> e-commerce or what did you do? >> I was uh working for I was with my university doing some work for like Shangia I mean Hermes. >> Oh okay. >> Uh and some luxury brands there. >> Oh wow. >> Yeah.
>> We got to properly sit down and have a drink etc. Yeah. >> We're having a drink here some water. Okay. >> That's what we do here. >> Right. Do I need a mug as well or like you have your famous mugs? No. Like that. But that's yours. So, >> well, I have this one, but it was used by the previous guest. So, I don't I don't >> You know what? Let's not do it. >> Finishing tonight. Finishing tomorrow. >> Uh this is just conference part, right? There's still like um uh and then from tomorrow finally then you can stay together and actually work to do some work. >> Yeah. >> Still partying. Start working. >> It's not partying. Obviously, they just keep they just they just build continue to build stuff, right? And you try to have a little bit more structure and and so on. >> How does that Yeah. There's no structure. It's like chaos. >> Yeah. But you see like I'm I'm not I'm like this delicate balance of clearly something is working and they're just doing incredible stuff. And if I apply common sense, right? Like in the sort of more traditional business sense, you would try to do a lot of things differently. >> But you have to strike a very delicate balance where it's like just a no regret like just there was zero effort and you just clearly add value versus where you try to change things and and this kind of magic just disappears. So and I have this like very you know um we have a lot of debates but uh but it's very interesting. I don't want to disrupt at all like you know the the this like magic that is still there but it's like at some point it's a scaling problem, right?
>> It's just like when when you hit a certain critical mass, I think how does that compare to your previous job at KKR digital assets, right? So same kind of industry >> but you have one side a PE private equity doing some digital asset stuff led by you and then you have like freaking chaos of Jupiter. >> Yeah. >> The the complete opposite. Complete opposite. Yeah. You know the team quite well, right? So >> I know I know Cash pretty well. I know I know Meow very well. I know how he works, how his brain works. He was a couple of times on the podcast. I uh we've been doing some work together and I know exactly how >> how you do the the dance. >> Yeah. Yeah. But uh >> I mean at the end of the day what's amazing is and what must be a a big difference for you coming from more like trfi is how everything is uh you look at pure output, right? Performance output >> and uh there's no like structure, it's just like >> just raw >> just raw power in engineering terms. I I just like I think the biggest problem is like actually how does how do the other functions catch up with this raw power, right? Like building things, you build crazy good things and the people that know about you immediately use it and they love it, right? >> But how to tell other people that are never that don't know about you and never would never try. So the whole like how to do coms, how to like it always is catching up, right? I don't know if we should talk about it, but >> yeah, marketing and coms and almost like also PD, right? Like how do they it's hard to catch up because like everything is >> just so we we launched Jupyter Global. I don't know if you heard uh on Monday payments on payment. >> Absolutely. I saw >> it's like just one of 40 announcements when stage announce >> and we hired a product lead on payments three months ago and it was an idea, there was nothing like literally no road map where 3 months later global launch. Explain what what Jupiter global is. >> It's basically pay like payment with uh Visa infinite card, the first ever onchain QR pay >> so it allows basically >> the small merchant in the Vietnamese jungle to accept onchain assets via QRP pay with zero fees, right? >> Nobody else has has done this before. And um we literally build it with a team of like four or five people in three months >> and it's like global launch like you can use it today, right? And and then there's like whole companies that just like stitch together some other vendors and raise big rounds of funding and have a big team and basically do something, right? And for us, it's just part of the super app, right? It's just increase retention and yeah, >> but another company stitching some vendors together and raising money for that might might do better because they're purely focused on that. Yeah, it's a different approach. >> Siloed point solutions versus aggregation. The power of aggregation, network effects and aggregation. Ultimately, I think it's about user experience. >> Mhm. >> Can you provide the fastest, cheapest, most convenient um experience for your needs, financial needs? And is it really a better experience to go to five different applications like having to remember I need this and for this kind of need I need to open that app and sometimes they don't have an app so it's just a desktop >> thing. I need to open a browser and remember my wallet login. I have to maybe KYC. I have to like log in, remember I see press and link. Oh, I have it's assets are on a different chain. So I have to like bridge it. So like >> you know, I don't think the target. I don't think the end state is going to be a bunch of point solutions and we leave it to users to remember and decide for every use case what to do. I think there will be some necessary aggregation, right? And today their aggregation is left to fully centralized players that take custody of your >> assets and it's intransparent what they do with it. >> Um, and I think yeah, we're trying to build an alternative system. >> Yeah.
>> Who are you? >> Are we already rolling or >> rolling? >> Oh, really? Um, who am I? I I'm Sha Sha. I This question I think the answer to the question changes every few years. I've um I was born in Beijing, communist China. Um, lived the first seven, eight years of my life there. Uh, had my first McDonald's when I was six. was like mind-blowing experience. Everything, all life was on bicycles. There were not a lot of cars uh back then and uh yeah, and then my parents moved to Germany when I was eight. Um, they did their PhDs uh there. Um, they come from academic, you know, artistic background. So I grew up my whole life not thinking really about finance because in communism wasn't, you know, didn't matter too much. Uh, and then also like when we moved to Germany, you know, it was all about reading books and, you know, doing doing arts, doing music.
Quick one, I want to thank our partners who help us make this show possible. I'd like to thank our friends at Jupiter, the DeFi super app. Anything you want to do on chain, from trading to earning yield, you can just use Jupiter. Personally, I'd recommend getting the Jupiter wallet on either your laptop or your phone. 10 times faster and 10 times cheaper than the competition. You're going to love it. Thank you to the awesome team at Castcard, my go-to card to spend my stable coins directly with my Apple Pay to buy anything, food, coffee, hotel night, or plane tickets without having to use a bank ever again. To support this show, please check the sponsor links in the description down below.
Tell me more about the music part. You were a concert pianist. >> I was. Yeah. Most of my childhood and early adult life, I was a professional concert pianist. Um, you know, I think how it started was I moved as a kid that grew up in communist China to Germany. There were not no other Asians basically in Germany when I grew up and so and my German, I didn't speak German. So, um, one way for me to connect with my new surroundings and the new culture was to essentially find something where I could express myself without the language, but that was received, you know, extremely well. I realized I had a talent um, uh, expressing myself through music and um, and that was a way for me to kind of overcome the language barrier. And um, Germans love culture and and music. They have high high respect for their own cultural heritage. And that was a way for me to, you know, connect. I I, you know, won a lot of competitions when I was um very young, like national champions in music competitions in Germany. And then yeah, I was invited to play around the country, around Europe, around the world. um played for George Bush senior and Gorbachev and Egon Krenz, you know, they were in Berlin, played in a >> presidential palace in in Germany. I had my debut at the Philharmonie in Berlin when I was 21 >> um, so yeah, that was sort of my life and u playing piano for George Bush when you were less than 20 years old >> yeah, yeah, I was a teenager, yeah >> wow >> yeah um >> how did that feel >> good. I mean, validation, of course, uh, positive reinforcement. Um, yeah, it seemed very obvious to me at that time that that was what I should do, what I >> interesting >> was talented at, but it was also an echo chamber because, you know, I got a lot of inputs from my family and from the surrounding, positive reinforcement, but I didn't think too much when I was young because it was obviously what I was good at and therefore I spent more time getting better at it. And so most musicians, you know, who are professional successful start this way, right? And then very quickly you end up in a very path dependent situation where you basically this is your clear skill set and expertise and therefore you just keep doing it, right? For the rest of your life. And I think what changed for me was like in my early 20s, I I realized I wanted more from the world, from my life, you know, I had a lot of joy bringing, you know, joy to others through music, but uh, I realized it's only a small part of actually what's happening in in society and that's why I I wanted to uh, yeah, learn more, study more, um, and um, and do other things. And so yeah, I guess um, yeah, if you the first seven, eight years I was based in communist China. The next seven, eight years I was in Germany learning and then the following seven years I was playing around the world and then basically early 20s I decided to basically do other things and try other things. Studied philosophy, economics, management, did different degrees. I didn't quite know what it was, but I knew it was something else. And uh, yeah, and then I moved to London and that's, you know, when I started my business career at the Boston Consulting Group and uh, yeah, that led me down the whole path around, you know, how businesses work, what strategy looks like. Um, and then I also had the luck, right? Uh, BCG was incredible training at at business, but it also like back in 2016, uh, I I was lucky to sort of lead one of the first blockchain projects that BCG did at the time. Uh >> what was that about? >> It was actually with De Beers, the biggest diamond producer in the world um at the time. And um, we essentially the goal was to build a blockchain based diamond asset tracking platform that allowed them to prove end-to-end provenance of natural diamonds um to protect against claims of blood diamonds and synthetic diamonds. Oh, >> and at the time Ethereum didn't even quite work and um, so we had to basically look at, you know, different solutions like permissioned private blockchains and we actually came up with something and and build it and, you know, went to Antwerp and, you know, the team flew out to Africa and sort of create a system that allowed them to create this end-to-end provenance solution that I think they still until today use. Um, but that led me to kind of research more and and and sort of fall down the rabbit hole. But it still took many years because, you know, as you know, at these kind of very big blue chip >> um, trfi institutions, you know, when markets are hot, there's a lot of attention. When bare markets come again, like you you go back to sort of the >> less business. >> It's attention less business. >> Exactly. And so yeah, I I kept staying in trfi for a long time and progressed there and and went went down sort of the also the private equity path um at KKR. We can talk about a bit more about that. Um, and then yeah, so that's that's that that that was sort of the direction and uh only recently it's like I went really full-time, took the leap into into onchain.
What's your big crypto aha moment working in trfy or maybe consulting? I don't know when it was like and you realize holy [ __ ] like this is gamechanging. >> I think it was when we had to explain blockchain to big corporates at the time and really seeing, you know, how nodes worked, how smart contracts worked, really demonstrating that um in an actual way was was very powerful. Um, and then I think I don't think there was like a single aha moment in crypto. I think every few years you've seen essentially a step change in what the technology can and cannot enable. And we always had these kind of cycles of something is technically possible and then the narratives and and and sort of the the VC sort of narratives and categories just became way larger than the technology can actually support. >> And then and then there was like a big phase of disappointment and and then and then you have new narratives and new technological advancements which makes new things possible. And I think yeah, we went through obviously quite a few of those and there were how moments throughout the way. Um, but I think what really has changed uh in the last 12 to 24 months, I think there was an inflection point um which probably led me also to down this path of really considering going all in um leaving TRFire and going all in to crypto and and onchain. Um, and then there was it's not a single thing, but it's just very clearly when you start to see that, you know, the lines between trai and and crypto or onchain finance are really um blurring. Uh, Bitcoin being adopted by by nation states and and corporate treasuries, right? Um, stable coins really becoming a a rails for payment and remittance, you know, flows. Um, and then on the other hand side, I think the big second I think trend in the last 12 to 24 months is that, you know, blockchain L1 L2 performance is simply not an issue anymore, right? It was always a bottleneck, performance, scalability, latency, but we're really getting to a point where it's there is enough of that and uh, and you can actually build fully onchain >> protocols and businesses and serve markets at scale. That has really changed in the last 12 to 24 months and the best evidence are protocols and companies like Jupiter and Hyperliquid and, you know, um, these kind of new generation of fully onchain businesses that can serve millions of users potentially, you know, already and generate a lot of fees and and and revenues and really like have product market fit and yet they're not centralized in a way where it's like you have to go from market to market and spin up entities in each of these markets. You ship code that is global from day one and you basically anyone in the world permissionlessly can create the self-custodial wallets and and then you can start doing financial activities on chain. So this kind of like acceleration and this like inflation inflection of adoption stratfi onchain sort of blurring and, you know, technology not being or infrastructure not being the broker anymore and really starting to have to think about application layer development. Um, I think that that was probably the the the the slow realization that, you know, this is this is this is real. Not in a narrative sense or in a PC sense, but really this is this is about business building.
You led the digital assets at KKR. Did you build the division yourself? Did you start it? How did it how did it happen? I'm trying to understand you're there like are you the one who's like we need to push for this thing. It's really important like because in crypto we we don't understand what's going on and we don't understand how serious people take this thing versus >> as you said before there is this market cycle. So like is it a serious long-term thing or is it like oh it's hot now we need to do something. Oh now it's less hot we do a bit less of that. It's hot again. We need to do something. What happens in a big firm like KKR in terms of digital assets since a couple of years? >> I think there's difference. Um, if you are at a management consulting company like BCG, it's literally like service provision, right? Like very high top level service, but strategy is kind of it's thinking, right? Very high level thinking, but ultimately it's like where the client demand is you go. If there's client demand on the corporate side, Fortune 500 about blockchain technology, well, you you spend a lot of time, right? >> It's very different at private equity. KKR obviously, you know, is one of the large is the pioneer of private equity. The founders actually invented the whole 8020, I don't know, you know, like the >> the two plus 20 right fee model >> um, but yeah, I I I think private equity works very differently because ultimately you are you're you're stewards of capital um, very KKR essentially owns majority shares of um, a lot of the biggest private companies in in the world and now increasingly also infrastructure and and and and credit, but um, but there you you actually take a view on markets over over decades and but you're not early stage to kind of place bets on different things in the hope that one of the many things work out, but rather you have to form a view of like real markets that are really scalable and you have to be able to um prove that with almost like data and evidence. Um, and yeah, when I when I joined my my role was actually to kind of work with the biggest, I would say, web two digital companies, very large, you know, organizations, sometimes hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of revenues um, and once we owned them or we invested in them to actually work with the management and the board to kind of set the agenda, uh, drive forward the strategy and improve the the business performance essentially, both topline and efficiency. But as soon as I joined, you know, it was 2020, 2021, like crypto just blew up, DeFi just started. And it was still very small if you look at the market size back then, but it the growth was frightening enough uh for the firm leadership to basically say like, okay, we don't understand it. >> Interesting. >> It's it's quite scary. It it definitely has adoption, right? And it makes a lot of noise. So let's figure out what we should do about it. Should we stay away? Should we have build some small bets that are that gives us optionality or should we go all in? Right. And then >> and they picked you. >> Well, we we created a task force um because clearly it's not it needs to be multi-geography, multi-strategy. So we had like a task force with many senior members of uh of KKR to kind of basically put our heads together and think, you know, what we should do and um, and then because I had relevant experience at at BCG and I had basically, you know, I've done also angel investments outside and, you know, I was just very interested in this, clearly I was like the most knowledgeable at the firm um, that I yeah, I sort of had sort of a kind of a role to kind of drive the topics there forward and and helped define and shape what we would do. And so over time we we took basically the middle path, right? Definitely going all in was seemed way too risky. We we dodged investments like FDX, all of the big >> so going all in, what would that look like? I would have been just making really big, you know, >> investment decisions in >> directly from our funds which >> which would have been outside capital >> into >> into big businesses which at the time were, you know, centralized exchanges, market makers.
Did you feel FOMO when there was this crazy in 2021-22 FTX going to $30 billion? Do you feel like oh [ __ ] we should do that or or did the manage like the boss founders feel the FOMO or like actually because we manage this external capital we want to see kind of what's happening tip our toes but not do too much because it's too risky >> both, right? Clearly. >> Yeah. I I always say generally in in investing, you it's always that dance between FOMO and fear, right? Greed and fear, and uh, and actually making judgment and decisions that are substantiated by data is the kind of a way probably the only way to find a balance. Um, but yeah, if there's no FOMO, there is no investments, right? But if there's no fear, you just you were out of your job very quickly, right? And so >> um >> yeah, I think ultimately it was clear that the market structures at the time were still so volatile that a lot of thesis that you would form at the time could go to zero quickly. Um, and I would say there was still a lot of uncertainty about the technology being scalable enough. Regulations was obviously one of the biggest um um question marks and uh at the time and uh, and then yeah, basically sustainability of of of metrics of adoption, right? Like re whether it's just users or volume or um revenues. Um, but it was clear that it was something that we needed to build optionality around and that's why, you know, we made some investments from the balance sheet. I still say we, but KKR made some investments um into into leading early stage funds um in the space. >> Okay, so the path is we don't invest, I mean, probably we invest less money than going all in, but also we don't invest directly in companies, we invest in funds. >> We do both. We invest. Yeah, we backed um companies like um Anchorage um who led the last round, KKR led the last round. >> Um, but then also in in in funds where, you know, we didn't have to sort of make the directional bets ourselves directly, but we would have diversified exposure into into them, like firms like Dragonfly or Parafi or um Bitcraft. Yeah, we um, but it was a great way for me to get to know a lot of the, you know, most interesting people in crypto. I had many, >> you know, the access was unparalleled obviously with with a name like like KKR. Um, but I always did a lot more than, you know, I had my day job, which is, you know, dealing with operating very large traffic businesses. M >> um, but I always like, yeah, I spend spend time doing research, meeting people, finding angles and um, yeah, also going to going to conferences and making friends in the space and I think all of this over time helped me build the conviction that um, it's not, yeah, to really affect change and have impact, it's probably faster to do directly on chain than to wait for corporate decisions to to get there. But once of course, once the corporate decisions are really there and in some instances, we're seeing that already >> very large amounts can be moved, very large impact can be created, but it takes a long time to get there and um, yeah, I have two questions. I'm not sure which one I want to focus on first. >> Sure. The whole upbringing is we're fine, right? >> Oh, fine, fine, fine. We have enough. >> I mean, we just go like wherever the conversation leads us. >> That's I was wondering what you're doing on your phone now. I know. Like maybe it's playing Candy Crush. >> Um, how advanced is this institutional adoption? If you can give an insight to crypto people who are all feeling kind of now probably down because of prices, it's not moving fast enough. How seriously is crypto being taken by institutions? But in terms of size in the business and people employed just to do digital assets, amount being investors or spend in crypto versus what you think it's going to be in the future? Are we 5% there, 10% there, 50% there? >> I think as a with everything, there's a bell curve, right? Um, I think we're still at the very early stages >> of institutional adoption. I know there's a lot of press releases and a lot of I'm actually surprised. I I I spoke at a lot of conferences, right, where people wanted to, you know, put me on stage with the head of digital assets at Goldman and all of these other big bit big uh big institutions. And I was very surprised talking to some of my peers back then, huge banks, right? Like some of the biggest banks or financial institutions in the world. Some of them just, you know, if they are not interested or don't care or just clearly pivoted away, they wouldn't even show up, right? But those that show up, sometimes I was really surprised that they had hundreds of people globally, like not even business, like even product engineering people, like building stuff, right? And uh, and I always wondered like back then it was like three, four, five years ago. It was like, how do you, you know, what type of businesses can you build in corporate that would sustain even the cost base or something like that? But it's probably depending on, yeah, b depending on the the view of each company and and team, ultimately, how long the payback and the sort of what's the view on the timeline is of of of real adoption. And I think there's a very wide spectrum, right? You have you have the likes of maybe BlackRock that just accelerated very quickly, very heavily into into things. And then you have on the other spectrum still, I would say majority of institutions >> being very careful and not really leaning in. And then you have probably a decent chunk of early adopters that are now experimenting with tokenization, especially um RWA um onchain credit um and then and then of course you have a whole bunch of, you know, trading and market making firms that are it's just very clear, right? This is just another market that is very inefficient, very large, now increasingly large, and I think more the sort on the high frequency side, you you see just very clearly it's close to the core >> to what they anyway do and so they spin up very relevant business units to kind of like, you know, drive towards a market share in this market. And then I would say for the more slower moving assets that are hard to tokenize um etc, that will take much longer, right? Ultimately, the way I, if you think if you believe that crypto is not just about Bitcoin and altcoins, right, that are basically digitally cryptonative issued things that are not backed by non crypto or like offchain things, then you kind of if you believe real world things can come on chain over time, then the question very quickly becomes where do you draw where do you draw the line? Right? If you believe that clearly stable coins are working, right? Clearly they are providing real world benefits to a lot of participants in the world. Um, which doesn't just require you to believe in whether Bitcoin retains value or or whatever. But if stable coin is the first step, right? Like where do you put the where do you draw the line, right? Because stable coin is essentially tokenizing US dollar, right? You can very, very easily like a lot of people are working on different other currencies and then you think about, okay, what are the assets that are very, very standardized, very liquid, and you don't have to have a lot of customization and then you kind of go down very quickly all of the different markets, right? Around credit, probably easier than private equity, right? Obviously, public stuff is is probably easier than private stuff. You have to change less things and so you go down the whole like public equity, public credit, private credit, private equity, and then what will be much harder is like stuff like um real estate and and and and other sort of luxury goods because it's much more unique, right? Each asset. Um, but if you believe that things will come on chain and there are benefits on it and we're clearly seeing signs of that happening and really having value, then there's almost like no limit to the time you can put on it, right? It's just a question of time and um, and I think that's what's so exciting in sort of building out onchain financial infrastructure and um, building out these kind of early proof points of um, what is possible and demonstrating that value um, in a in a real fashion is is is very exciting.
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You said before there's no investment if there's no FOMO. >> When you start personally FOMOing into I need to or when do you start fantasizing about going all in crypto with your job? It's probably something that you start to think some time ago, maybe like, oh, like this is like I have this itch, like this is the next thing I need to go >> but because it's kind of intimidating, it's weird because it is weird, it's so different >> I'm not really ready yet, but like you've been started to thinking about that. Yeah, I've had many, many times the fantasy. Yeah, I've had uh, yeah, I mean throughout the times, right? When consensus started, I had many conversations with companies who, you know, um, gave me the potential opportunity to kind of make the leap >> um, centralized exchanges, early DeFi um um >> of course >> but ultimately, yeah, I think I I had I had I had a very fulfilling role at KKR and it was real impact. I was dealing with some landmark deals that KKR was doing in TMT. So I think like if you're in finance, right, it doesn't get a lot better than doing private equity in in in at KKR. Ultimately, I realized I wanted to take more risk and and and create potentially bigger outcomes. And um, and yeah, as as I mentioned, the the timing was was right when, you know, it was just it was not like value creation in crypto. Now, I think it's not just about this early stage narrative and proof of concept and big visions and uh, and then trying to make it happen. But it's now increasingly about, yeah, not the infrastructure narrative anymore. It's about the application layer value creation and we're dealing now more with, you know, adoption and metrics that are fully on chain. I think that's that that was the time for me to kind of go all in.
You left Stratfi and Kar for crypto but more specifically Jupiter. >> Why? I think the first step I think we talked about, right? That the macro trends I think were inflecting in a way where lines between traffic and and and onchain were blurring and then now you start to have this application layer on top of just infrastructure. Specifically Jupiter, I think, you know, um, I've met and Cash um, you know, one or two years before. We've been friends. We never talked too much about business, but we were highly interested. He was very interested in what I was doing at KKR, you know, how to kind of acquire businesses and build businesses and make them better. And I was very obviously very interested in what he was building with with Jupiter. And throughout the time I I kind of just we chatted and I just observed what they were building was clearly something different. Um, and I would say that it's kind of a couple things. The track record of actually building products that people just love using and every day and you have a very loyal retail customer base, which reminds me frankly, you know, Robin Hood pre was like >> longtail assets, meme stocks, right? >> very loyal customer base and then around that essentially building a financial super app, right? To to basically generate more utility and more value for people in the ecosystem and and Jupiter kind of almost like did the same, right? Um, very core use case around Dex aggregation, very loyal customer base and then around which they have built a whole suite of or flywheel of product things. I think the second thing is um that the market itself is, and I define market not as crypto, but really what I'd like to sort of now say is actually onchain finance, right? Onchain finance is probably a subset of crypto, but I believe onchain finance, the way we understand it >> is the way how crypto is supposed to be, not what crypto is today. We're still most of the digital assets or crypto assets people own of probably 4, 500 million, you know, people who own crypto, most of that are frankly in trify like entities, right? They're centralized. You hand over the custody of your assets. It's not transparent what happens. >> They keep their customer records um and and um, yeah, it's not permissionless, right? And um, and all of these things, I think are leading to a lot of problems in the way or basically the problems that we're facing, right? Um, crypto today and we simply believe there is a better way to to build products and, you know, structure the way things should be done because the technology is now makes it possible and the market is still tiny, right? Um, I think what only dealing with a couple million of real regular onchain users globally. If you compare that to Robin Hood, Robin Hood has probably 30 million monthly active users. Binance probably 300 million. So roughly roughly. >> So it's like a 10 to 100x growth opportunity just from a market size perspective. I believe if you believe that onchain is the better way, then the question is like, you know, what share should it have? And you already see today that dexes are steadily taking share from cexes, right? More and more activities are going on chain. A lot of the centralized exchanges are incubating their own dexes, right? Trying to disrupt themselves before they get disrupted um, and so I think market potential, so track record of the team. Um, market opportunity. The third one is integrity because I just felt most crypto projects and founders I've met, right, you have this very quick boom and bust cycles of narrative getting very hot, launch a token and then things don't work out and founders or team basically lose uh move on doing something else. Um, but I felt that the Jupiter team really just consistently shipped and built things, products that people needed and wanted to use throughout bare market and bull market. They started actually at probably the worst time in Solana history, right? And sort of rebuilt kind of infrastructure, right? How to aggregate liquidity and and demand out of the ashes of FTX almost um stitching together the very fragmented liquidity pools and dexes throughout Solana and very quickly finding problematic fit. And I think the other thing is also just what was tremendous is that Jupiter never raised funding, which is very, very rare to see not only in crypto but in tech, right? Um, bootstrapped companies that grows into nine digit fees revenue range. It's pretty crazy. Um >> but I think it was done in a way that was just like in the right way, right? Onchain, >> permissionless, self-custodial um, and and global global access, right? Um, almost like giving the underbanked and bank unbanked around the world a way to transfer value, financial value in less than a second, right? Um, doing doing things in a way that that are supposed that how it actually should be and really showing that there is a better way than a traditional finance or like centralized way ways of doing finance how it can be. I think that that sort of integrity of staying true to that vision and just keep shipping and adding new things to the way despite what happens in the altcoin markets has always been I think the one of the core teners and then the last thing I would say is complementarity because I think the team is extremely strong on the product and engineering side. The both co-founders are >> very, very, very focused on product, user experience and and engineering. But where I think I'm bringing a lot of complementarity is like the connectivity into, you know, the world outside of, you know, crypto Twitter and Solana trenches and I think that's ultimately the the bigger market and and finding a voice and having an interface towards that word, engaging them um, telling the story, generating the awareness, reaching out, right? Is something that I think we just realized it's it's very complimentary was maybe needed. We still debate how we sort of do it, but >> probably needed in every crypto project >> in every relevant one, once, yeah >> absolutely >> what are you trying to personally prove with this Jupiter chapter of your life? >> I think every few years I've pivoted. I always started something, I dived into something completely new and started almost from zero and um, and um, probably was able to grow quickly into this new markets, new societies, new cultures and I feel now I'm really diving into this completely new culture. It's almost like going from communist China to Germany, but the other way, probably. You're going from a very established, extremely well-working, efficient machine that kind of is the apex of, you know, private capital to almost like the the the Star Wars Jedi Rebellion, right? With the Ewoks. And uh, we're like, but I like it. It's it's like we're we're Yeah, but very capable, very talented and capable, you know, and just like running around and building great things and having a super engaged community and uh, yeah, and I just felt like there is actually a lot more a lot more a lot more like upside opportunity, right? Having impact and and generating something that really proves others uh wrong. I I think that that creates the I think the the fire now and obviously I realize I'm I'm not fully cryptonated, but I've been around for a long time as a participant. Um, but now having the ability to really like help shape, find a voice, making the right statements um is is quite exciting. For the first time, you know, in the history of Jupiter, we you know, took on outside investment. um Parafi um made a $35 million investment into the into the troop token. I think this is just an example of like where these worlds are really emerging, right? Even though Jupiter was like bootstrapped and um profitable throughout, we felt it was necessary to have strategic allies, right? In this quest to reach out and bridge from onchain crypto finance towards the wider world of like institutions, real world assets, organizations. And we needed we need to have these allies to kind of like almost like push forward the greater good, right? Of like rebuilding crypto in a way it was supposed to be. So indirectly KKR invested in in Jupiter because you said before KKR invested in some funds >> Dragonfly, Parafi and now you're telling me Parafi invested in Jupiter. >> Well, it's >> Are you one of the reason why this happened? >> Well, >> or are you the reason this happened? Not the only reason, but I would say definitely a a catalyst like at all of like, you know, because it's not we didn't need to um, but actually coming to a decision that it was helpful in a way to have other voices in the room and having this strategic partnership and this is just an example. We obviously we we are integrated with Coinbase and, you know, Robin Hood already, right? And and I think there's a lot more there to come. Um, because we are the main distribution layer, the customer layer on Solana, we're just Jupiter is just becoming more and more relevant, right? As a >> you know, product company >> and um, and bringing that utility and that's this product value towards the current audience, right? Core audience. You need to have partnerships, integrations, you need to yeah, have allies, right? That believe in the long-term vision and not not just there to sort of make a quick buck, but uh are really long-term aligned on building out the best possible version of chain finance. >> So, Profi
invested $35 million in Drip token. Can you explain simply what's the logic behind that very concretely? What's the thought process of saying we don't need money because we generate so much money every year but we want to do this. These are the three, four, five things that taking an investment from Parfi can bring to Jupiter as a whole, Drip token, Jupiter holders, etc. What's the logic that goes into that?
I think first and foremost, we wanted to send a signal to the market that because we are today in a very depressed, you know, token market, there's a lot of debates ongoing about, you know, fundamentals, you know, buybacks, and, you know, how. And the reality is, like, when you look at investments and deals being done into tokens, um, a lot of what the activity actually happens via discounted OTC deals, which is very intransparent, and we frankly believe are not long-term aligned for projects and investors, right? Because if the token price actually stays constant or flat, and even declines slightly, investors can still make money, right? If the discount is large enough.
So, what's the deal with Parfi on that front? It's essentially a deal that, um, is basically at no discount to the spot price, and, um, with an extended lock-up compared to market standard. And in addition, um, RFI gets warrants to purchase, um, the Drip token at much higher prices than the current, to really align the long-term incentives. And basically, RFI would just do well when Jupiter does very, very well. And basically, not a short-term trade, but a long-term holding.
Why would they do that? What's the incentive for Parfi to invest $35 million in the Drip token when markets are pretty depressed? Jupiter is an incredible business with an incredible team. They ship like pretty much no one else. They make crazy money, but the token performance is bad. I cannot speak for RFI directly. I think it's worth maybe having a chat with, uh, with them directly. But yeah, I believe they're very much aligned on the long term, and maybe that's the sort of coming back the KKR DNA, right? Um, not being traders, but being long-term investors. Seeing something that has a lot of growth potential over the next five years as opposed to the next six months, and forming conviction around that. Seeing proof points, very clear sort of proof points around product, around numbers, around adoption, and forming that thesis, and, and, yeah, making that strategic investment is, is probably what's going. I cannot, you know, I can only guess, but, uh, but it was, it was very constructive throughout the, the, the process, and, yeah, I like, we, at Jupiter, we like people. Yeah. We like to do things that no one else does.
We like to come up with things that are just unexpected, that are unique. But I think the, the vision alignment is the, is the key, the mission alignment long term, right? As soon as we felt the long-term, how we saw the world of on-chain finance forming, and how we wanted to build towards that, we just got a lot of, we found a lot of alignment, and it, that was the, I, I guess, foundation of the things. And the timing, we were not in any rush, right? But, um, yeah, we want to send a signal while the markets are depressed, I guess.
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What's on-chain finance like in five years? Very good question. I think the way, I think it's a very big question, right? Um, if I may, just think from the Jupiter product strategy, uh, perspective, the way we think about how we want to sort of build out that vision of on-chain finance, how it's supposed to be, right? Whether it's in three or five years, we see broadly three pillars right now. The first one is, um, the on-chain super app. Right now, Solana. Right? We are, you know, one of the largest, um, applications on Solana, and that will just continue because we will continue to build out the supply. We will add new products, should know, prediction markets, stablecoin, um, offer peer-to-peer lending, a lot of different products will continue to be added to that product flywheel, but it's all like within on-chain. So, you are already on-chain users, how do I get more value, right? While doing my everyday on-chain activities?
The second pillar is what we call the global. Um, it's essentially a payment, um, on-chain payment stack or solution, which, um, enables you to, you know, pay with a stablecoin-based Visa card around the globe, um, in the fancy restaurant in New York, as well as in the, in the, in the jungle in Vietnam, Vietnam, as we discussed, with the first ever on-chain QR pay, which we're very proud of and really differentiated. Because we want to also target those that don't have the same level of banking access in emerging markets. Um, the QR pay, I was really, you know, staggering fact that the, the QR, QR pay market is like a $5 trillion market today already, right? It's a significant portion of global cards volumes, actually.
Concretely, concretely, what does that mean? Does that mean that I go to Vietnam, I want to pay for pho or whatever food, or there's a QR code? Yeah, imagine you're like, I can pay with my stablecoins or whatever, and it's going to convert that into Vietnamese Dong and be received in Vietnamese Dong by the shop. Yeah, zero fees. What does zero fees mean? It's that there's no intermediary like credit card networks, payment processors that charge a traditional sort of debit. So, zero fees for the restaurant, zero fees for the user, zero exchange rate fees. Probably there's some money made somewhere. Yeah, there's a little bit. Yeah, but at the, we want to kind of push out always the best for the user and the merchant to really drive adoption. And, and the, and the, and the crazy thing is that the QR pay market, most of the adoption today, happens in emerging markets like Southeast Asia and, and Latin America, because the traditional financial infrastructure is not as developed, and, uh, and merchants simply don't have the same level of, you know, POS terminal access and banking access. And, um, and so, yeah, that just from a philosophical perspective, we're very excited about like, you know, bringing the adoption to these parts of the world, and, um, and enable, right? And, and I think the product philosoph.
Sorry, you have. No, so the shop will never know there is crypto involved, right? They already have their QR, they, they don't have to do anything additional. I mean, you've been a lot in Asia, right? QR payment is like, they, the merchants just print out the, the QR code on a paper and they hang it on the food stall or whatever. You don't need a, you don't need. I can go to my massage in Singapore, seems this thing called PayNow, right? That you can pay with a, with a, with a Singapore bank account QR code. Boom. But this could be, I mean, this is basically now I can pay with my stablecoins, whatever, and no one will know it's crypto, right? No fees. Yeah.
The, the, I think the product philosophy around that for me is like bringing everyday finance on-chain. And you have two parts of a flywheel, which is, you have on the on-chain side, we bring more financial utility and value to the existing on-chain assets that our existing on-chain users have. So instead of just doing your swaps and your yield through lending and and looping strategies or whatever, like all of the DeFi strategies that, you know, existing on-chain users kind of deploy to make more money, essentially, that finally you have a way to kind of apply to your everyday, you know, payment needs. The, the worlds historically were like completely separate, right? On-chain finance and everyday finance. And this is, I think we're excited to build these kind of first links where with the rest of Jupiter, right? You already on-chain super app, you already have a lot of your on-chain assets on that stack, and now being able to kind of use that in everyday, that is exciting. But that's sort of an retention, um, mechanism, um, or value increase, um, mechanism for existing users and existing assets.
The other part of the flywheel is actually bringing, making it much more easier to bring in non-on-chain users to on-chain finance. Right? So if you have something like Jup Global, you can actually, you know, pay QR via on QR pays. Um, it just makes it more relatable, right? To people, more useful, right? To also like start using that simply because it's faster, it's cheaper, it's more convenient, right? Uh, and once you try that out, there are then know all kinds of other financial things you can also do on-chain, whether you want to do it or not, right? But that's sort of the flywheel that, that we envision, where like you constantly drive more utility through the super app to anyone who is on-chain, and then through Jupiter Global, provide that window towards everyday finance, and then in turn, sort of bring in more people on-chain, and then that sort should self-reinforce itself, this, this flywheel. Anyway, that's the, that's the theory. Very, very keen to see where we can go with that.
Um, and then I think the third pillar is, is actually omni-chain execution. So, because the question was, where do we see on-chain finance in five years? I believe if you think really about the best possible user experience on-chain, you have to abstract away the biggest problems. And I think one of the biggest problems and adoption blockers is simply having to deal with multiple assets on multiple chains, right? Digital assets, most digital are just on one chain. If you're just on Solana or Near or whatever, right? Ethereum, you only have assets of that chain available. And the whole bridging process is extremely difficult, I think for, um, non-crypto users. And, um, and I think in the future, a lot of that needs to be abstracted away. And this is, I think, what the, what the Jupiter team is attempting with the DrupNet, um, you know, effort. And, uh, so, yeah, I think these three things added together, the best possible on-chain super app with anything you could do on-chain, um, in one place. Having the window towards everyday utility, everyday finance payments, and then having omni-chain execution, or a layer that just abstracts away frictions around bridging and having different parts of your digital assets portfolio and different chains and just make it as seamlessly as possible, as seamlessly as possible to have everything in one place. This is ultimately the, I think, the vision, right? Giant unified markets, how Meow likes to call it. But, uh, yeah, I think these are ultimately the elements I believe of on-chain finance in the next three to five years. I don't know how, how long it will take for us, for other champions of on-chain finance to get there, but we are very committed and dedicated and excited to, you know, with work with anyone pushing in the same direction to kind of make the market for on-chain finance much larger and, uh, bringing crypto to a place which is how it's supposed to be. Yeah.
If you had to think and choose one thing that you are absolutely most excited about at Jupiter, and that makes you proud to go out there as the president of Jupiter, pitch and represent Jupiter towards institutions, what is that one thing that you choose? It's very hard to choose. I need to choose out of 60 different things. I have to show you a slide that we, we present. It's, I don't know. We can cut it. I, I mean, numbers, we, yeah, we don't have to talk about numbers, but, I mean, maybe that thing is probably one of the, to be honest, one of the, the reason why I'm the proudest to have to have Jupiter. I mean, you can maybe show that to the camera there. What is this? I don't know. Can you zoom in? What is this? This is like, we don't really have like a, you know, how many companies have like a product roadmap that they draw? Okay, for this year, this is, you know, roughly the five things we want to do, right? We actually don't have a product roadmap, but in hindsight, it's like 2025. This is our recap of everything we shipped. Everything we shipped, right? And this is probably only half of the things because we couldn't fit the other onto the slide. But I think the takeaway is just nobody ships like Jupiter. And somehow our team is able to kind of just continuously ship things every day, every week. And that's probably the most consistent thing I would say because it's very hard to choose from that to to basically say, okay, this is the one thing that I'm most proud of because the culture is extremely experimental in a way. Like, I think one of the superpowers, probably of, um, of Jupiter is just this like extreme culture of encouraging experiments and accepting failure. Um, and extreme autonomy, almost like to the product teams to say, well, these are clearly like, there's a use case here, there's customer demand. Let's ship something as quickly as possible, get it out and see if it sticks, right? If it doesn't, we move on very quickly into something else. But that sort of just generates this extreme speed of execution and and shipping. Uh, and I think in the, in this sort of very early market structures where things are not clear what really works, right? Like stuff like Pump Fun coming out, like surprised everyone, right? Hyperlid, doing the way Jupiter coming out the way it did also like surprised everyone. And so there are no preconceived sort of playbooks that you can follow to kind of say, oh, these are the, this is the market structure, this is these are the segment, this is profitable or not, let's go after that's sort of the KKR playbook, right? In crypto, you cannot do that. So you need to have this extreme culture of innovation and experimentation, and I think ultimately that's what compounds over time. We call it synergistic compounding, um, and, and that's ultimately what we are trying to cultivate, right?
Well, the, the Jupiter itself, the Jupiter idea was made in a ramen shop when, uh, just now was like, "Fuck it, let's do it." But literally the whole thing, right? And I, you were showing this this kind of like, "Hey, all this all what we shipped last year." I remember a year ago at the Jupiter event, they had bought some businesses and they had shipped all these products and they, they even some of the businesses they bought, the acquisition, some of them they choose on purpose to not talk about it during the event because that would be too, too much information for people to take. Like, okay, well, we'll talk about this acquisition, this one, this one, but this one we're going to keep for later because people cannot take that. It's too much. It's too much, too much, too much information, TMI. Um, so basically, and so you said, right, I asked you what is the one thing that you're proud of, etc. I would say for the podcast, one of the, one thing that I'm so proud that Jupiter is a long-term partner is is exactly what you said, is these people, and now you're one of them, are machines. Like, and no matter what the crypto markets do, no matter what the token does, right? The, the, the level of shipping is so insane. It's crazy. And you're like, this can, the likelihood that this thing doesn't do well or doesn't do better is so low because of the amount of innovation and shipping and non-stop and 24/7 and, and like the hunger, but also the right ethos. It's all one thing together that you're like, I'm actually proud to be, okay, maybe there's this meme going launch and it's a [ __ ] or maybe some people, this some crazy drama, whatever. But it's part of this whole experimentation thing. And, I mean, how can you not be fully supportive and behind the team that is like so amazing? It's like literally impossible, right? I think important thing is like, it's one is the capability of shipping quickly and, and this culture of like innovating and, okay, being okay to fail that leads to more innovation and productivity ultimately. But I think a very important, you know, undercurrent is actually you need to have the best intentions as well. Absolutely. And, and that is maybe what, what I talked earlier about, you know, integrity. But despite all of the creative chaos, um, that leads to a lot of great things and, and maybe some, some failures along the way. Um, as long as the intention is really to build, you know, the basis of a new on-chain financial infrastructure that brings more access to the world, that makes things faster and cheaper for everyone who wants to participate. As long as the mission is like good intentions, I think all of this can be, you know, leading to a better outcome. Um, but if the intention is extraction, you can also have great productivity and, you know, experimentation, but ultimately then the outcome is, is I think net negative to the industry. And, um, and I think that's ultimately almost like the, the most, the most important, one of the most important decision, you know, factors for.
This podcast is called When Shift Happens. What shift is happening now that most people still don't see? I think we think a lot about, um, market trends and shifts that are worth experimenting and innovating into. But because everything is so early, we never quite know which ones will work out and how big each of these different streams could become. That's why we're doing so many things at the same time because we know some of these markets may become huge, some others will collapse. I think longer term, a lot of people now talk about tokenization. We have talked about it here today. I believe tokenization can be a lot bigger than people think it could be, but it will require some very radical and fundamental changes than the way tokenization RWR are done today. Um, I think one of the things that I'm, you know, maybe two examples of things that that we're very excited about that frankly, like there is no solution to it today, but over the next five years, I think could become very large. One is just fully end-to-end capital formation, which basically, like today, tokenized equity and a lot of the tokenized assets, you, you create that on-chain derivative of something that works very well in the real world, and you replicate that in a way that is subpar, in a way, right? You don't have the same governance rights, you don't have dividends, you don't have, you know, the, the same structures. You have some other benefits, but like clearly the liquidity of something that is subpar will never be, can never rival the, the primary liquidity pool and venue. And ultimately, if you really want to create things that are superior on-chain, you actually have to rethink the capital formation process and actually potentially bring businesses that are not yet IPOed in a traditional equity market to really take the same business, fully essentially IPO on-chain, right? And really like tokenize the rights around it, the dividends, all of the sort of things that make an equity into what it is, but fully on-chain. And that will require not only Jupiter, but a lot of automatic market participants to kind of build different parts of the infrastructure. But I believe that's probably the main way to really realize the full potential of on-chain capital formation.
And then the, the second thing, I think that, you know, we're also very excited about is just, I think FX, you know, it's, it's something that's everyone deals with every day, and, um, huge frictions around it. And if you think about like, just currencies around the world, in the end, they're kind of like swaps, right? Like you basically have, uh, currencies that have different qualities and, and values and inflations and, uh, uh, and when you travel, when you have to kind of like go to different cultures and experience different things, you need to swap essentially asset one's asset into the other. And there is just too much friction and costs that are today associated with with FX. And, uh, I think that that's also one of the directions we're thinking about how we can leverage some of the infrastructure we have already built and what else needs to be built to kind of like, yeah, address some of these sort of much bigger markets that that are today. I think like on-chain is not, not fully there yet.
Amazing. Thank you so much, Asha, for doing that. Thank you for joining the crypto space to help us become and look more serious towards the outside world. We definitely need a lot of help on that, and I hope, uh, your work, you, and this podcast will inspire more serious stratfire people to join us to help the other big projects out there and the other important and serious projects to get out of this echo chamber because of the big problem that we're having right now. Agree. Fully agree. Excited to be part and help drive things forward. Thank you for doing this podcast. Pleasure. That was awesome. Thank you.
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