Episode 10: The Future of Crypto: Law, Prediction Markets, and Stablecoin Cards

00:00

Hey, welcome back to another episode. This is JR, founder and CEO of Social Market, and this is my partner, Leon Hitchens, CMO of Social Market, and this is Social Asia Report. We’ve got  some cool stories this week and  there’s still a ton of stuff happening in crypto. I don’t think it’ll stop, but  good and bad for us.  Yeah, well, this is why we’re here, to help you  understand what’s been happening with the state of the markets and with crypto  on a weekly basis.

00:25

We’re changing things up a little this week, so for the first time we’re going to try to release a video on Monday instead of our Friday schedule because we’re still trying to figure things out, make sure what we’re producing for you is to your liking. So if you have any suggestions, things that you’d like to see, please let us know in the comments.  And before  we continue with this video, please subscribe to our channel if you find it of any interest, if you want to stay up to date on the weekly news that are happening in the markets,  subscribe to the channel for that.

00:54

But with that said, you know, I actually want to demo what social market is I think it’s a good time right now to demo the app or to show you kind of what we’re doing State of the market for the last week is as follows It’s pretty much Bitcoin season instead of altcoin season meaning, you know, a lot of people are a lot more people are buying Bitcoin or use it more Fear and greed index is about 6 % So it’s about greed. How’s Bitcoin Bitcoin for the last week has been going up and down

01:23

I know earlier this week there was that whole conflict with Israel and Iran. I’m not an expert so I can make comments beyond that, but it did affect the markets. So it was reaching about 110, 112 and now it’s at, it went down to closer to 100 and now it’s back at 105,000. So Bitcoin is jumping up and down. that’s as far as this.

01:51

I think that’s the key part.  is pretty good considering it’s been  holding steady above 103 roughly for the most part.  Yeah, absolutely. you  know, I think  earlier this year  everyone was concerned that Bitcoin wasn’t going to go back  to 100,000 again because of the state of the economy and  price of eggs and everything,  whatever concern it was back then.

02:16

But it’s remained strong. It’s remaining still over 100. So I think this is strong for everyone strong for the  space. So overall, it’s pretty exciting to be here. But that’s pretty much as far as it goes for the markets.  On to our first story. We’re to be talking about the state of the crypto regulation  HR 1747 blockchain regulatory  certainty act and the clarity act that has made significant progress in the Senate floor or I think in Congress. So

02:45

We’re going to talk more about that here in a moment. And then next we’re going to talk about Polymarket joining X  as both brands partner so they can leverage each other’s data sets  and database and  code base to enhance their overall products. So they partnered and that’s kind of big. Everyone was talking about it on Twitter.  I still call it Twitter at least.  Maybe we all do.  Right.  So  and in our last story, we will talk about the state of crypto summit by Coinbase.

03:15

A  lot of interesting stuff happened there and I actually put together a couple of things that I want to talk about with how credit cards  are starting to adopt Bitcoin. You know, we’ve seen this with  the Gemini credit card, but now we’re going to see that  to some level with the new Coinbase card, which we’ll talk about more here in a moment. The house introduced digital asset market structure legislation building on discussion draft. So what this means and we’ll leave a link to this article below  on May 5th.

03:44

2025 several house committees jointly introduced a discussion draft for a bill that would establish regulatory framework for digital assets  on May 29th house financial service committee chairman French Hill Republican for Arkansas or Arkansas  Introduced an updated version of this bill named  the digital asset market clarity act or clarity act. So  I’m not gonna go through everything here. You can look at it again on your own. But what all of this talks about is

04:13

why it’s important to have this bill.  As some of you who have been in crypto space long enough, you will see that some businesses were being classified  as money transmitters or some sort of bank by the previous administration with the SEC and Gary Gensler. So this is kind of what the Clarity Act is trying to do, actually  interpret the law because with the SEC before,  they were saying they were breaking the law, even though there was no law to be broken.

04:43

there was no certainty or clarity to how this law was. So this is kind of like the story again. So this bill was first introduced on May 29th. I think the big part two of this is like the key. The key part of it is it’s infrastructure that it’s protecting. before you had software developers, had node operators, validators, miners, any like the multi-service providers were being classified as money transmitters. So

05:12

It’s really protecting the infrastructure layer that  people building on it.  So it helps the scale legally and  gives everybody like  some clarity on  what’s happening. know, even with social market, like that was one of the conversations you had early on is,  think with a lawyer that we, you you needed to get  very specific  licensing because  you could be  considered a financial middleman  in the end. it’s just,

05:41

It’s helping so much  give  a stable environment for Web3 founders. It’s promoting  good actors and then it’s giving the United States  a place to regain global leadership in  building Web3 products. Because for the most part,  feel like  China’s banned Bitcoin,  crypto, left and right, back and forth. But  most people that were building Web3 products were

06:08

Southeast Asia, I saw some Europe, like there were some people in the United States, but  the United States had a big gaping question of just regulatory frameworks.  Yeah, actually Japan, not to mention Asia or Southeast Asia, Japan is actually one  of the early Asian countries that adopted Bitcoin and  crypto regulation. Like they were charging less taxes than any other countries as far as capital gains taxes. So yeah, I mean, to your point.

06:39

Yeah, so going back to the story real quick here. So even though this bill was introduced in May 29th, it was actually making progress just early this week. So Senate Majority Leader  John Thune, I think I pronounced his name right, John Thune. He  was the one who was making progress. This is from Tom Emmer. But  this is him back in May 21st talking about the bill. But then  at a later time, he quotes his tweet.

07:08

Earlier this week saying if you do not custody consumer funds you aren’t a money transmitter plain and simple  our non-partisan blockchain regulatory certainty act which codifies this simple concept has been added to the clarity act  and He thanks representative French Hill Brian stale  Richie for their support. So they’re all part of the same committee who kind of came together  Saying hey, you know, this has actually been making progress here in the Senate. So

07:36

Brian Armstrong later came out this week saying thank you to leader John Thune for moving the genies act to the Senate for getting closer. So  this is him.  This is Brian Armstrong  responding to Kara clovered or  retweeting it saying where her original post said, Hey, I’m grateful to the senators on both sides of the aisle who have burned to  who have burned the midnight oil for weeks to find a bipartisan path  forward on the genies act. Huge thanks to leader John Thune.

08:05

for bringing the finish line within reach.  at the end of the day,  I think a lot of this progress was  made because of the John Thune, the majority leader for the Republican side. So it’s always great to see. It was cross,  it was a,  there’s a word for it,  bipartisan. Yeah. There we go. There’s bipartisan support for the bill. And then also when you get industry leaders like Brian Armstrong, like,

08:32

Rarely do you have industry leaders and lawmakers aligned.  It’s a big signal to  kind of get this over the hump and actually into law. Brian Armstrong is a very passionate founder. He’s from YC  for those of you who may or may not know. So I think when you have founders who come from such a, I want to say prestigious  accelerator and they have that kind of caliber,  they’re very  particular about the kind of people that get into that accelerator.

09:00

This is kind like what you get. get leaders who  are very high caliber representing people. I think that’s where a lot of major progress can be made because right now, know, crypto is updating the financial system as we know it, which is part of the reason why we’re building a startup on crypto. We believe in that mission. And I think Brian has been doing an incredible job at passing that message for everyone. And I believe has helped a lot to transform the crypto  or the industry to be more.

09:29

adopted be more trusted because of people like brian armstrong to your point leo and like you need a face to a movement like you need somebody to go to congress to represent you need somebody to advocate on the internet and two parts here is twitter you know between everything twitter is a really big sign of like things still happen on this platform even though everyone says that it’s kind of died but brian armstrong

09:57

pushing it along. think he worked at IBM.  I forget where else he worked.  worked at Airbnb at one point.  Okay, yes. Airbnb as an  engineer. And then  he used that YC money to found Coinbase. Like huge investment for  YC and seeing it  in the future.  Massive, massive play on their part.  Yeah, so he actually worked in IBM, like you said, and Deloitte. Deloitte is a pretty big  software consulting company.

10:26

So pretty big companies that you worked in. So but yeah, I think this is pretty much as far as we have to cover for this story. We’ll keep you guys updated next week if any changes happen with Senate floor as far as the genius act or the Crypto Clarity Act. You might see it HR 1747 too. So a few names to this one. It’s a little confusing. Yeah, everyone. Every bill almost starts with an HR I believe in some four digits. So we’ll keep you guys up to date with it.

10:54

Okay, so on to our next story. We will talk about Polymarket joining with X  or Twitter, whatever you call it. They both  are well, Polymarket came out this week saying they are leveraging Twitter’s Grok to do market analysis on their platform. This is a post from XAI and it says XAI partners with Polymarket to blend market predictions with X data and Grok’s analysis. Hardcore Truth Engine, see the shapes.

11:23

See what shapes the world. This is just a state of our partnership with Polymarket and more to come. Sometimes I feel like the way this tweet was made is it came from someone who talks like Elon. I see some other texts, some of their phrases kind of be the same. So I don’t know if it’s just Elon who uses the X account Maybe they feathered into a crock was like, hey, write this like Elon would write it. Yeah, that’s also a very possibility.

11:50

So this is actually a great  post because it kind of does a demo on how the platform would do or what this new partnership  manifests  in the Polymarket platform.  So if you have not used Polymarket before,  just a very  brief TLDR.  Polymarket, it’s an actual on-chain or on the blockchain prediction  website where you can make money by trading.

12:18

shares for yes or no predictions so you can buy a yes for a quote you’re actually buying a position  and when that position resolves you actually cash out or you lose money if you lose so it actually tells you how much money you would win if you bet x amount of money i think it’s a very clean very intuitive platform especially at being on the blockchain so you can always verify in real time what happens kind of like being able to blockchain i’m sorry being able to

12:47

verified transactions on the blockchain with Bitcoin, instance. in any case… still not available in the United States, right? Like it’s just a… You have to VPN to do it. Because that’s an interesting part for me is that AIX is objectively an American market thing, but you know, the polymarket is still not available in the United States because of gambling regulations or crypto regulations. I’m unclear on why it’s not available here.

13:15

Yeah, so very quick TLDR. So by the way, Polymarket is backed by Peter Thiel. So Polymarket’s pretty big in that sense too.  Yeah. So Peter Thiel backed  Polymarket.  I don’t know what that deal looked like, how much money he got, but  in 2021, I believe they actually had to pay a fine to the SEC for like somewhere in the realm of a million point 15 or something.  Because what they were doing was not to the standard of the previous SEC administration.

13:45

I mean, big surprise.  So as a result, they don’t allow people to use Polymarket in the US, but people still use it with a VPN. So, I mean, that’s just the data. And you can find this kind of data on the internet. you know, you can always verify that.  But in any case, if you look at the video here, I’m not going to play any audio, but I’m going to mute the audio on my end. But this is generally how the platform looks like.

14:11

Here you can see the timeline and you can actually see a  Twitter feed and you can use grok in the platform to do like an analysis on the situation. So I haven’t used Polymarket yet like today or with this update. So I can’t tell you how it is from firsthand, but based on this demo,  I don’t know if it’s something that is going to be rolling out soon if it already hasn’t.

14:36

But I think it’s amazing. Like I’ve used Polymarket before and it’s very clean, very, it’s a very clean experience. It tells you what you’re getting yourself into. And I like that. I think this is going to improve user experience and just the overall amount of traction for the platform. People are gonna. It’s like Bloomberg meets or Bloomberg terminal meets Chachi PT meets Vegas. Like it’s open. It’s decentralized. part that I, again,  I find really interesting. It’s using.

15:06

data from Twitter, which is  with all of Twitter’s problems, all of Ex’s problems, it’s still the watering hole for news and information. Like  even as people flocked away,  more and more people are coming back to it because  it does provide it. like,  you know,  could you imagine, you know, like as the Trump,  um, like we’ll Trump win the elections. Like if it had this market data and it could kind of say, Hey, what’s happening and  you know, adjust, adjust that, give people all this data. Like

15:35

You know, Robin Hood, think if you pay for Robin Hood gold, you get Morningstar data for, pay Robin Hood golden. Yeah. I think you do. You just need to configure it somewhere in the app. Yeah. So you get like data there, like for prediction markets right now, there’s been nothing. So having a prediction market that’s on chain that also has, um, not just a static source of data. You can kind of go and read all the sentiment that’s happening now.

16:01

I think the one problem that you’re going to have is Twitter is leaning much more  conservative  in recent years.  So could it  dilute the data and you kind of get the wrong thing? Now,  right now Twitter has not been wrong as a place. It  kind of predicted  Trump. It kind of predicted a bunch of stuff happening.  So  it  seems  to be right now the right source of data. But at some point it could be the wrong source when things kind of flip the other way.

16:32

I agree. So I think now that you mentioned  predicting Trump’s victory,  I think that’s what you said, right? Like Twitter being able to predict it. It actually also was in par with Polymarket because you would look at, if you guys remember the state of the elections in November this last year, you would see on traditional media saying that Kamala was actually the prospective winner. They had all this data. They had all these charts and percentage numbers saying that she was actually going to win by a landslide.

17:01

You look at Polymarket and it’s actually just not only in Polymarket, but you will see the kind of  feed and FUD you would  just coverage on Twitter. And it was a lot more leaning towards Trump, even Polymarket made it so Trump would win at a very close margin that was similar to the actual outcome of the elections.  So Polymarket,  its reputation increased tenfold since then. And I actually have some numbers  for you guys today. So this is Shane Copeland. He’s the founder.

17:30

and CEO of Polymarket. And this is a post he made back in December 3rd, 2024 saying, Polymarket not so niche anymore. And this is similar web saying, or kind of just highlighting some of the visitors over the last 28 days from as of November 22nd of 2024. They had almost 50 million visitors, which I know you and I were talking about similar web previously at some point saying how not knowing how much

17:59

how they get their data exactly. Yeah, like I think a lot of their data is kind of like how Alexa used to do it before Alexa was an Amazon product. You they use aggregate like upstream providers level three, 18 T stuff like that. But I did do a search and we’ve talked about this a little bit before is like, yep. Polymarket and size comparative to a Robin Hood, a Coinbase, like even a DraftKings, Caulsey, all of them. It’s like relatively small like Robin Hood.

18:29

you know, 14.9, so practically 15 million monthly active users. DraftKings has about 4.8 million active users, whereas Polymarket reports about 314,000 active monthly users. They’re the only platform that actually provides daily active users, and this is, think, an interesting metric, is there’s 55,000 active daily users, which…

18:56

really signals a high usage of the platform.  For 314,000, that’s monthly active, and then  you have 55,000. You’ve got a really big  early adopter kind of bundle.  But then when you look at total registered users, and this is like,  these are all estimates, I’m sure, based on like earnings and everything. But  Robin has 25.2 million funded accounts.

19:23

DraftKings has 10.1 million active bettors  and Polymarket has 4.1 registered wallets.  So  there’s a big difference between 25.2 to the Robinhood’s 15 million active users.  Small margin there.  DraftKings 10 million  active bettors, only five million of them roughly  active every month.

19:49

1 million wallets to only 314,000 active users. It kind of shows like there’s probably a portion of that people out there that sign up just don’t really use it. And then there’s a really big tech adopter. I think if Polymarket could get regulatory approval in the United States again, they could be massive, but also everyone’s Sherlock them. Robinhood has a predictions market. I think it’s run by Kalshi too.

20:19

Robin Hood.  Yeah, actually they did roll it out around the same time  of the elections because I think it was Polymarket and then Kalshi, the ones that were…  Well, Polymarket was mostly just promoting it on Twitter and then outside like  on fucking fucked news, anything you would watch, it was Kalshi. And then Robin Hood came out.  And they’re using  Kalshi, right?

20:43

Yeah, so most people here in the US use either Kalash or Robin Hood. I had some friends who were making bets on the elections with  Robin Hood actually. So it was like dollar bits or something. yeah.  But it just like even though polymarket is a large draw, I think most people are using it for the  like  market prediction to kind of go see sentiment  out there versus  like  actually betting. And I think that’s going to be their hardest part.

21:12

in the end is like  they’re  like Reddit. Reddit was the front page of the internet, but most  people weren’t actually redditing. There was a small portion of people that actually did,  and then everybody else just kind  of came in and was like, oh yeah, I’m just gonna read it, use it as information, it’s great.  Polymarket, having all their stuff publicly accessible, I think is their draw, because it is pretty good market data  of sentiments, what’s happening,  but.

21:40

How do you get more people active? How do you grow that? Because  even though they’re the biggest on the list, they’re relatively small comparative to Coinbase and Robinhood,  Draft Kings and Call Shees and everything. I’m kind of surprised the Economist popped up  on there. And then I’ve never visited Real Clear Politics at all.  Me neither. I hardly even know any of these. Like, Predict It, The Economist, Betfair, I’ve never heard of them.  Or I have heard of The Economist, but Real Clear Politics I haven’t.

22:09

I’m surprised, you know,  I think Polymarket is the first  and only  on chain prediction marketplace right now, as far as we know. So maybe someone else is building a Polymarket competitor. don’t know.  But  so this is the data as of December 3rd, 2024.  he actually,  came out  early this week, actually doing a comparison.  So, you know, this is from June 13th.

22:36

It’s surreal just how big Polymarket has gotten  and even  on May as of  you know  Not a very trendy month May has been it looks like they have  about 15.9 million  visits  And Robinhood having 37.1 and Coinbase 34.7. So Polymarket is number three in this chart  And then number four is DraftKings and then FanDuel, Betfair, Kraken

23:06

and so on so  crypto seems to be kind of trending I wonder what the prompt or what kind of  lists he curated I don’t know if it’s like  as far as crypto based websites that had the  this kind of visits or what  I’m how she predicted them lump them into any sort of  I don’t know that’s really that’s really interesting  yeah like I wonder what similar web is grouping these together because  they don’t really

23:35

group unless you just put them together on a list because like fun 5.5 million is it’s it’s kind of small like I would have thought it was bigger also cracking you know going public and only being at 7.4 million like that’s you know that they’re they’re small you know granted they’re European initially but small for that it like man even Kashi like being 1.4 like

24:04

You know, some of these have apps and stuff like is coin, you know, is this aggregating coin bases  traffic for the  app? Does it have all that? It brings a lot of questions into there. Like I’m not doubting  that again, you know, polymarket is  a destination for people to view.  I just don’t know if usage  is  representing visits. Like  I think  there’s a lot of people that go, Hey, let’s check polymarket, see what that is.  Because it’s easier than being like, Hey, do you have Robin hood or this? Not you can just go to polymarket.

24:33

unsigned in, look at what’s happening and see what bets that people are making  and then you dip.  Whereas  Robinhood, you you sign up, you’re like in the app, you’re, you’re,  you’re registered account to actually have to see all of that.  Yeah,  I actually like how Polymarket has, if you go into their website, you can actually view like any trend, any, any predictions that are trending, you go into one of them, you can actually see like a social feed where people are talking about it.

25:03

they’re just anonymous accounts because you don’t need to put your actual information there like your name and stuff. You can just create an account, start leaving comments. A lot of people use actually Twitter interchangeably by leaving like links or they use some news outlet like New York Times, Washington Post, you name it. As far as leaving relevant content or real time news that is happening according to whatever prediction.

25:31

So  it’s really fascinating.  Shane Copeland is trying to position this as a new kind of media where it is  a neo kind of leap media.  know, people are no longer using traditional media like Fox News, CNN, NBC, you name it.  They they’re now going online on certain things like, I guess, in this case, Polymarket to see what’s actually trending, what what are people’s views.  People  oftentimes put their money where their mouths are. So.

26:00

And I think that’s a powerful  tool. Yeah.  I think that’s really right. You can kind of see what’s happening out there.  I don’t love this rise of gambling and betting that’s normalized. think  there’s a portion to it that’s a  very dangerous game that we’re playing with markets  and just world politics and  social contracts that we’ve always done. If you can bet on it, only a small portion of people that actually bet in the world.

26:28

really end up making money.  So  like the sports betting, find worse than the  market betting,  but  it is a really interesting thing because Polymarket was right about elections. They were right about a lot of stuff  and they like,  know,  people’s sentiment and also as you get closer, people’s sentiment, like  they all consolidate to one area. So as people start to talk about it,  like it’s huge. Like if they can use the data from

26:58

X to actually feed  the prediction market and like not only  put it in there, put  a marker of like, what does  X think?  Like is X leaning towards this is right or is this wrong? That would be really interesting to see because  again, so far, Polymarket has been relatively right in a lot of stuff. And then there is some like high profile cases where it was just like totally wrong.  Yeah, I predict my theory is that a lot of inside traders also use Polymarket. So that actually gives us

27:28

sometimes a glance at what actually is happening in the inside. So, you know, we’ve seen that happen. Polymarket even uses it as some of their ads  where some guy just joined their account, made a one million dollar bet and then they walked out with two million dollars or something. So  they knew something because nobody just goes in there and leaves a big bet like that,  you know,  expecting to come out with a and,  you know,  come out on the other side of the tunnel with a

27:58

Big return so that was very much intentional. So I think it’s really interesting we get to see that at first hand. But yeah, I’m not surprised that now Twitter and Polymarket are coming together in a partnership. Yeah, I’m excited to see it. Yeah, we’ll see what happens in the future. We’ll cover here at Social Edge report. But with that said though, our last story for today, we’re going to be talking about the state of crypto summit with Coinbase. So this happened earlier this week, Q2.

28:26

2025 state of crypto report just dropped TLDR the world loves stable coins. This has been from coinbase on Twitter  We’ll leave the link as well  Most links will be on description as far as relevance to what we’re covering today So we’ll leave this post because they’re actually covers. It’s a thread talking about you know Well, they leave a link  talking  about more  on what what actually happened at the state of crypto you can also see some of the comments for relevance to

28:55

how people are reacting.  I like how in their story here for the  thread, talked about, or they showcase 161 million stable coin holders. Like a lot of people individually are holding  stable coins, which is more than the,  I’m sorry, which is more than the 10 largest cities in the world combined. That’s kind of amazing. Yeah. Like, and then  like the other things that they really mentioned, know, stable coins is a big, big thing. It’s like,

29:25

It’s a  stable coins and I finally understand it after  we went to consensus because I didn’t quite understand it then.  It’s  stable point  stable coin payments are going to become invisible. They’re going to be embedded platforms that like everyone trusts. It’s going to be infrastructure and the technology upgrade for  the  the financial system that’s largely been built in the  50s.  Yeah.  You know, Stripe.

29:50

Stripe is looking at stable coins. Coinbase has their base stuff. an L2. You know, it offers instant settlements near fees near zero. Shopify now accepts stable coins and their options now, which is huge. They’re the biggest like e-commerce platform on the internet right now. I think they take up like three, 4 % of all e-commerce or all internet traffic. I’m not sure what percentage of e-commerce they take, but

30:18

It’s going to be a huge shift because  I’m going to be able to instantly transfer money to you. And really it’s going to be a stable coin that probably does the instant transfer. We won’t notice that it’s anything different than regular money at some point.  But it’s going to be a huge thing. There’s also like,  you know, the fact that you’ve got  the financial innovation technology act, all that stuff passing, you’ve got regulatory clarity,  more  companies are jumping into Bitcoin. And then the other cool facts here is that

30:47

Coinbase did a lot of polling. Three in five Americans believe the current financial system is outdated. No, duh, like you can’t transfer money to somebody without using Zelle or Venmo or PayPal. It’s dumb. 51 million Americans own crypto. And to kind of frame that, I believe there’s like 320 million Americans, like 150 are adults that are able to work, pay taxes, all that. So a third of Americans that are working that are adults own.

31:17

own crypto.  And then  it’s not a political ideation, like ideological line. Democrats and Republican voters agree we need more financial innovation. So it’s not a partisan issue. It’s a generational one. The stats skew way younger  when you look at it.  again, like this is just like huge,  huge thing. Like you see  convergence on AI and on chain data. You know,  we just talked about it.

31:45

AIX and Polymarket,  NFTs  are becoming a thing. Their identity, their credentials, their access. You buy a car,  your title is an NFT that’s unique to you.  And then prediction markets are integrated into financial forecasting. It’s like  crypto isn’t a sidecar,  it’s part of the engine. like AI  is a feature on there.  And then what was the stat? There was a stat that like…

32:13

54 % of all Fortune 500 companies are adding crypto into their stack or something, right? Yeah, yeah. So if you follow this, we’ll leave this link again. There’s a link in the thread here that covers the full story in Coinbase website and it’s called the state of crypto, the future of money is here. And they actually, what I like about Coinbase, they’re actually really good at kind of portraying and interpreting data like the…

32:43

Well, for context,  in Coinbase,  in consensus, mean, we covered how Coinbase actually got adopted into the S &P 500. So my theory  is this is actually impacting a little bit, maybe influencing some of the other Fortune 500 companies with  blockchain adoption. But to your point, Leon, so you were asking earlier, like, what,  how does that data chart metric look like for Fortune 500  companies? Yeah. So.

33:12

This is again from the same website article I mean. So Coinbase highlights how nearly one in five of Fortune 500 companies or executives say on-chain initiatives are a key part of their company strategy moving forward up to 47 % year over year. So it is becoming a lot more rapid as far as the adoption and the conversations about adoption.

33:39

It brings me back to 2021 where a lot of this was just speculative. was becoming just trending because before 2021 or even 2020, a lot of people who knew about Bitcoin in general were like niche crowds. high. Very early adopters. Like geeks and stuff. were very, it’s just like, you know, Minecraft, Minecraft when it was just a Java game.

34:07

Yeah, beta like the early adopters there took it on like  the early adopters the internet when  you know  You didn’t have Google search or anything You just kind of found stuff  based on rent random  people or even when  Bitcoin you couldn’t buy it online You have to go meet somebody in person and they would get to you  like  they’re always very early adopters  Yeah, so I don’t know

34:31

Quick side story here, but  I’m sure Leon, we’ve worked together at Geekdom, that’s where we met.  John Chodwell from Pack-A-Pit.  Him and I went through an incubator and accelerator, or should I say pre-accelerator at Geekdom. He was telling me how, before he started the product that is Pack-A-Pit,  he actually worked at a restaurant, I believe in New York.

34:58

so my bad, he actually owned a restaurant. He also worked at Apple, so he’s a very smart guy.  He was telling me how in that same restaurant that he owned, there was a guy who would go on a weekly or maybe daily basis. He would have lunch  there and then he would meet with random people. would come in there and then just talk to him, sit down at a booth and then leave. Well, they were actually making Bitcoin transfers.

35:26

like transactions and back when Bitcoin was like worth a couple of dollars too. So  John had the opportunity to buy Bitcoin at like a couple of dollars and you know when we talk Bitcoin was like at 50,000 at the time so  it’s gone up since you know over a hundred so.

35:45

It’s kind crazy how the world circles. There’s so many stories of people like that, like how I didn’t want to  buy it. was, you know, I believe John told me that it was like $13  at the time and he’s like, don’t, you know, like, you know, he’s running a restaurant. He’s like, I raise a thought  of thin margins. I don’t need to spend it on  some,  you know, weird digital currency  that he didn’t quite understand. And  yeah, I think that’s what it is.

36:10

you know it is a weird thing to think of and you know i still have a hard time wrapping my head around this sometimes like you’re stable coins i was like what what is it like you know why do need a stable coin

36:20

But in the view of it being like, an upgrade to the old infrastructure that some banks still use FTP files to transfer money between each other. They put it in a file and they’re like, oh, this is what it is. It’s crazy to think stable coins could solve a majority of things. It’s also Big Brother in many ways. They’re able to audit it. They’re able to stop fraud. They’re able to stop charge backs. We’ll talk about that a little bit in even the credit card world.

36:51

The crypto stuff and coinbase is going to be the center of all of it. It’s you know Yeah, it’s just like when you think Apple you you think the modern cell phone and you think Steve Jobs I think at some point 20 30 later years later when this is a just a common thing We’re gonna think coinbase and Brian Armstrong. He’s gonna be the person who shepherded all of this along Yeah, I think it

37:18

Whenever you look at any interviews or press with Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, always goes back to  referring to the Bitcoin white paper  as part of what influenced him to start Coinbase, as well as to change his worldviews on the way the financial system works, which goes on par with him starting Coinbase. So  very smart guy, very, very interesting stuff. All of this,  you know, the way Bitcoin came up to be.

37:48

and to see where we are now. more into the story, so you can read this article as well, we’ll leave it in the description again. Three things that it covers that I think kind of highlight a lot of what was talked about here in the state of crypto summit. First, it talked about stablecoins are facilitating faster money movement, updating outdated financial systems, which is kind of something that you mentioned earlier as far as moving money.

38:17

And then crypto helps address the top financial pain points facing SMBs.  80 % of  SMBs say crypto can help solve at least one of the pain points their business faces  up from 68 % a year ago in 20, a year ago in 2024. You  can read more on this. And then it also highlighted the Gini SAC, which we already did earlier, where, you know, crypto is becoming the talking point in the Senate floor and

38:46

our representatives in the US are actually putting in some work as far as creating some much needed clarity as far as where the regulations go.  interesting stuff. Two big other things that came out of this  state of crypto summit.  First  is the Shopify partnership with Coinbase. Also Coinbase partner with Stripe as well for just incorporating

39:16

stable coin payments. So if you have some USDC, maybe some Tether, some USDT  on your coin based wallet, you’re going to be able to use it now to buy goods and services  on Shopify. So that’s pretty huge.  and it’s like the first mass adoption of  stable coins. I think that  a majority of people will see like,  and  I believe like

39:41

everybody in the world at some point touches a Shopify site within a month. Like if you buy something online, you’re going to touch Shopify site. Like you’re now going to see stable coin as an option to pay and everyone’s going to be conditioned as like, hey, this is a payment method. And I think that’s the first step to mass adoption. Yeah. So I just did a query here or, or I mean, prompt on chat GPT and I asked it how many stores online use Shopify today?

40:11

And as of quarter to 2025, built with basin analysis, estimate around 2.58 million live Shopify stores currently operating, representing a 6 % year over year increase. So I’m not sure what it looked like every other year, but it seems to be by a 6 % increase. I think they take like three, 4 % of the internet. And yeah, was looking for a number like that portion of the internet. Shit. I mean,

40:40

We’re like what, almost if not a billion people worldwide. you know. Yeah, I don’t know how many people are online, but I know like WordPress powers about 50 % of all websites. Like, 34 % is huge.

40:53

Yeah, so Shopify, know, everyone is going to be able to pay with USDC. So I think this is a step in the right direction  as far as  allowing normal normies for like a better word to  to at least be aware of what crypto is if they already aren’t. So that’s pretty much it as far as Shopify goes with Coinbase.  One more thing I want to show here before I go into the last point for Coinbase crypto summit is  there’s this  video that

41:21

I’ll share as well. will show here in the link below as a link below in the description.  I  feel like I’ve been talking a lot and sometimes my  brain just stops functioning as far as  talking,  but  it’s actually the entire live video that covers the state of crypto summit.  And there’s a couple of segments here where, well,  as of this recording here, we’re seeing  the founder and CEO of Circle, the provider of USDC.

41:51

I forgot what his name is, but he’s right here and he’s right next with Brian Armstrong. And a lot of what they’re talking about is, you know, kind of reminiscing when they started when when the founder of Circle started Circle in 2013. And, know, they were having a hard time getting any bank to provide them a bank loan for their business because they weren’t sure if crypto was even a legal thing. This was around 2013 when I guess, you know,

42:20

Ross Ulbrich was  trending with Bitcoin and Silk Road. He did get convicted back in 2015. So  2013 is when he got arrested.  So maybe the timeline isn’t so different because of that.  you know, talking they were talking about how much has Bitcoin  and just the overall.

42:41

sentiment around it is  and it’s  improved so much and you know he is very proud of what he’s done as far as you know  Wood Circle but Brian Armstrong is also was also talking in this small clip here in the interview how  you know how he started Coinbase  how he was very inspired by the Bitcoin whitepaper so yeah it’s  really cool to see and it kind of gives us a  vision to the of the past but also what could be in the future.

43:12

So I mean, I like this video. We’ll leave it here in the link as well.  It’s the entire video as well for  the summit.  I want to save the best for last here.  And that’s with credit card adoption with with or credit cards adopting Bitcoin to some capacity. So I think for me, what inspired it before the crypto summit was this video from Daniel Sparks. We’ll leave a description. We’ll leave a link to the description as well.  So he talked about.

43:40

how credit cards  with you know particularly AMX and some other more established cards have been pulling back on their rewards some on their cash back and and benefits  because everyone already has credit cards and  people are not paying back their their

44:00

balances so the carriers  of the credit cards are actually the ones kind of suffering they do actually make a lot of their money with just  a balance statement  just an interest as well but generally you know  we live in

44:18

not financial good times for like a better word. I don’t know if that’s how we describe it,  but  you know, it’s It’s a credit crunch, but also  yeah.  So like a small, small thing on the, on that, like every credit card company is kind of different on how they make their money. So for example, American Express is all about transaction volume. They get most of their money from  just you swiping the card to charge cards. You don’t always like carry a balance. Some people do have credit options on  American Express, like

44:47

Most people don’t understand.

44:49

There is no spending limit on an American Express card. Like you could go and if you make enough money and you spend enough generally on an Amex, you could buy a whole car on it. Like, yeah, just straight up. But like, you know, American figures for credit cards too. It’s like, I think the average American owes like $7,000 in debt to credit cards. And I believe that there is somewhere in the like the trillions. we’re, we have the most credit card debt right now than ever.

45:19

And  yeah, more and more like, you know, people are getting smart to like the credit card point systems.  Like there is an argument that, you know, if you use a credit card in grocery stores, who pays for all of those fees? Because a credit card is a higher fee than a debit card.  It’s somebody who’s financially struggling.  So there is some like  equality conversations around that. And that is going to decimate the…

45:46

the fees, which is going to decimate the rewards market.  If these bills pass in Congress and  there’s a lot of conversation around it, the points guy has some really great info. This video is a good example of what’s happening.  But  credit cards are changing and they’re changing very quickly because  not only do Americans carry way too much debt, just like the American government carries way too much debt,  but…

46:12

Most people don’t know how to use a credit card. They kind of use this free money. They overspend. They do that. You know, like it’s an interesting  model and they all offer points and points are being devalued more and more.  So  it’s a shifting game, very fast and very hard shifting game.  Yeah,  I agree. So I think Gemini credit card.

46:33

came out in 2021 and it was the first one to well actually I think they relaunched their credit card as far as the rewards program. Wasn’t it crypto.com that had some of the first credit cards? Yes it did but that one was not as popular because depending on how much crypto you held in the wallet or in their app you would get more rewards so if you held more of their token called Kronos or CRO

47:01

you would get more rewards and more cash back and such. then Gemini right now actually enables Bitcoin instead of points with rewards. But you made a very interesting point earlier saying that the people of the US at least carry a large debt in credit cards alone, like individuals being upwards at 7,000. So as of

47:29

March 31st of this year, has been estimated that there’s a total outstanding credit card balance of $1.182 trillion.

47:39

And it’s down about 2.4 % from 1.211 trillion at the end of quarter four, 2024. that’s a huge risk for these credit card companies too. Like if the economy tanks further than what it is right now, like they have a really high probability that unsecured debt is going to go on default first. Like, you know, and an unsecured debt is something that you can’t go repossess something. So if you have a car, it’s secured by the car. If you have a home,

48:09

secured by the home. card is a risky and that’s why you know a lot of people pay 22, 25, 30 percent for credit cards because

48:18

like the credit cards companies recourse to sue you in court maybe get a judgment  but  you know what what’s stopping you so  there’s also a ton of fraud in credit cards there’s also a ton of like  charge back merchant problems the fees are high you know MX charges 3.4 percent like credit cards are  largely broken

48:39

Visa, which is one of the  major credit card  providers, they are  adopting  stablecoins.  So there’s this article that we will leave in the description as well,  where it talks about empowering the future of payments with stablecoins. So they kind of highlight here how they’re going to use stablecoins on their credit cards now. So that’s kind of big. know, Visa is what the number two largest provider for credit cards worldwide, if not the number one. And I think  right after that would be MasterCard.

49:09

So and  and when you look at it, know credit cards again, you know, the financial system that we have today is largely built in the  50s post-world war two  Yeah, so  there’s delays and settlements you swipe a card today two to five days later the car the payment actually clears  There’s high interchange and processing fees, you know MX charges 3.4. I believe these others charge about 2.8 You know to the merchant 2.9 plus something  There’s frequent fraud and there’s frequent charge backs.  So

49:39

That’s a big thing and then you’ve got choke points from these these banks that are processing everything  so  if they can  Update the rails  and make stable coins the thing it’s instant settlement global by default. You don’t have foreign transaction fees  Yeah to the US government’s like joy  I’m sure  US dollars USDC back dollars  are gonna be  the like  the global payment rail You know essentially all over the world  and then you’ve got transparent audible

50:09

big brother here  but  you’re not able to say  was that person you know like was that transaction fraud okay let’s  flag all of these you know go look at it like what happened it should cut down on fraud and then and this is the really interesting part for me that I just don’t really  you know understand quite yet is like it’s gonna be near zero fees so if there’s near zero fees how do you offer you know four percent back  you know on a on a card still yeah

50:38

You’re going have a hard time even if it’s Bitcoin like what you know, how do you do? you charge monthly fees for the credit card? You have a yearly fee. Do you know you do all of that? Like what what is it? Yeah, it’s a really good point because I before talking to you about it this week or before us getting here on the segment this week I actually talked to you about like credit cards and stuff and you were telling me how you know if they’re coming back on their transaction fees then their rewards are also gonna come gonna come

51:08

down or scale down as well because it’s  you know something that the credit card provides they’re gonna have to leverage which is part of the reason why they charge a lot in their transaction fees which i didn’t even think about but for bitcoin you know might be different  um gemini is more of a exchange than it is a bank or a financial system however if you’re an exchange where you can buy bitcoin directly through them that does  subject you to complying with the sec finc and and other

51:37

you know, providers, other  lawmakers here in the US or agencies.  So  them providing Bitcoin,  I don’t think it’s FDIC insured yet, but  in the near future, we might see some form of FDIC insurance, which I think could  help consumers a lot, but I’m not sure if that could also help the business as well, as far as,  you know, anything would happen.

52:03

But we could I guess that’s just for the money that they’re housing, you know, like if they fail, they fail. But for a credit card, like  the.  You like, guess it doesn’t matter, you know, like,  yeah, they fail, they fail.  Yeah, I mean, I see insurance for brokerage accounts. There’s no FDIC insurance for like  credit card companies per se. You know, they carry their own insurance.  Yeah, I agree. So.

52:29

We’ll see what happens. Gemini Bitcoin card was actually really big in Bitcoin 2025. They used two Tesla Cybertrucks to make this promotion. So it was actually blowing up on Twitter. This is not an endorsement to them. They’re just pretty big. Incredible marketing for sure. In fact, I think because they’re

52:52

They launched this model in Bitcoin 2025.  It actually  helped them a lot with traffic, with signups and everything. So they’re doing something right here.  the last point that we’ll cover here for Coinbase Crypto Summit is  Coinbase is actually releasing its own credit card and it’s called  the Coinbase  One Card.

53:13

Which actually I think it’s a very beautiful card because it’s  black. I think they’re inspired by Amex  Centaurian black. think that’s the black one from Amex.  Users who sign up earn 4 % on Bitcoin on every purchase.  But the card itself is like stainless steel, which I think most use stainless  metal or just metal cards. think

53:40

I think Apple uses  titanium which is a really beautiful card. So if you look at it, it’s got all this text but it’s actually the Genesis block from Bitcoin like the Genesis block being the first ever transaction or block in the ledger that is the blockchain,  the output of it. And I think it’s a very  memorable, you know.

54:04

Easter egg if you will like little reference here they made in behalf of Bitcoin so I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet Leon but so maybe you may not see it here on my screen but  On the on the right hand side of the car you see the name Coinbase and below it This is actually a remark that was made inside of the Genesis block itself by Bitcoin It says and this was backwards  in in the Genesis block, but it’s been flipped here for convenience. It says the times

54:33

January 3rd 2009,  Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.  So it  references a lot to  the bank bailout that happened in 2008 recession. Because this is the whole reason why Bitcoin existed. you know, the recession back in 2008,  it disrupted the markets  and Bitcoin was born.

55:00

Yeah, and it’s kind of  the irony of it too is  Bitcoin is ushering in a new financial system.

55:09

It’s not an alternate system that everybody thought it would be, you know, like a free in there. This is still a system that is going to be highly regulated and  brought into the normal financial system. Like  the new thing is  Bitcoin and underlying crypto is going to become the new system. So very fascinating to see,  you know, the roots of where it came from of disrupting a financial system to  becoming and replacing it in a  somewhat undestructive method. Like,  you know, like no big companies are failing.

55:39

no changes. It’s just companies are adopting it versus  before you had Blockbuster go out of business to bring Netflix  to become popular.  I don’t think you’re going to really see  Visa go out of business because crypto came in. They are going to adopt it as an infrastructure. Really crypto is becoming the infrastructure of our financial system worldwide.  think that’s what it was originally meant to be.  Bitcoin itself is more of a

56:09

What blockchain?

56:36

Yeah, my only gripe with this card is it’s an American Express card, it’s like not an American Express, like  Express card where you get all the benefits and all that from American Express. You get the fraud production.  Well,  I guess you do get the fraud protection. You do get like discounts to the partners.  I don’t know if you get travel protections or  the things, but  you will get accepted. But, you know, if you go out of the country, out of the United States, like American Express is a little less  accepted.

57:06

you’re in a big  tourist hub  and then oftentimes when you’re in a tourist hub they’ll have like a visa mastercard like

57:14

POS and then you’ll have a MX POS and you just got to tell them what you’re using  But it’s  you know credit cards and  Financial flexing is always a thing. So  this card is symbolic to everybody like it positions it as web 3 native user It’s part of  coinbase is broader ecosystem with his base DeFi tools and NFTs and everything but  You know like  the only thing is you’re not spending crypto per se like they’re not really disrupting anything

57:44

you there right now,  you’re just earning crypto, you’re not using it to pay for it.  And I believe you collected in USDC, maybe I think you can collect your rewards in ETH too or Bitcoin,  but I think it’s all USDC, right?

57:59

As far as rewards, I’m not entirely sure you can look at all the benefits here But  you do need to be a subscribed member to  you know  use this card and to think of it like  an annual fee Which it’s pretty common. I  boosted USDC resort through rewards and then  you okay. I’m taking rewards and then

58:21

You get transaction credits. That’s actually  not bad. Like overall, the wall is pretty, or the credit card’s pretty cool. Like I would love to get it. I probably won’t.  You know, like I don’t pay for Coinbase One,  so.

58:33

It’s a good reward for something that’s becoming,  Coinbase is becoming your new age bank.  Wells Fargo does this where you pay Wells Fargo yearly fee and all this. They’re just doing this as like a,  hey, you have  our  membership. Now you get a card. Now you can bank with them more and more because stable coins are going to become the payment rails. And if you can just  interchange  everywhere  stable coins are accepted, you can accept US dollars. It’s soon going to be  credit, debit, or stable coin.  That’s going to be the question.

59:03

that everyone asks, what’s your payment method? Debit, credit, or stable coin? Or cash?  That’s gonna be  the new ask at every store that you go to. I agree.  That’s gonna be kind of exciting.  One day you’re like, I need enough USDC so I’m gonna sell my fart coin  to  buy  groceries or something.  It’s gonna I want a fart coin  rewards credit card. Every time I swipe it makes a fart noise and I get some fart coin.

59:33

That’d be funny.

59:35

But yeah, interesting times we live in and you know, in light of the 2008 recession,  I think it was a recession. keep saying recession, it  was, it was, it’s called the great recession. Okay. Yeah. So was 2008, know, like recessions have an economic, like,  like there is negative growth in the economy. There was negative growth in the economy. Granted the Biden administration changed the terms of that. And I’m sure the Trump administration will change  the, definitions of what, what does a recession.

01:00:05

But 2008 was the biggest recession that I believe the United States had outside of wars and the Great Depression. That’s a good point. Yeah. So in light of the recession, we had Bitcoin and now we have credit cards with Bitcoin rewards or USDC rewards. And maybe in the future we’ll have Fartcoin rewards. So we’ll see what happens.

01:00:30

So yeah, this is pretty much been everything we’ve had to cover for Social Edge Report today for this week. So stay in touch for next week. Again, like this video if you liked it, dislike if you dislike it, subscribe  if you want to stay up to date and share to your friends.