Let’s Talk Stablecoins: Interview with the Co-Founder of Cred and Former GM at PayPal, Dan Schatt
Dan Schatt is the Co-Founder and President of Cred, former General Manager of Financial Innovations at PayPal, and a bestselling author of Virtual Banking: A Guide to Innovation and Partnering. Earlier this week, we sat down with Dan to talk about the crypto market in general and stablecoins in particular.
From Mainstream to Crypto
U.Today: Hi Dan. You had a solid career in mainstream finance, including a leading position within PayPal. Why did you decide to go crypto?
Dan: I became interested in the Blockchain technology and crypto space in 2012, back when I was working at PayPal. While PayPal hoped to become the Internet of Money, my “Aha” moment was that crypto would become the Internet of Value, eclipsing PayPal in every way, i.e. Blockchain would prove more secure, transparent, and allow for the tokenization of all asset classes. It is unbelievable to me how quickly we’ve moved to a legally permissible, tokenized version of the US Dollar!
I believed crypto would also attract a larger developer community than PayPal could ever hope for. You just can’t compete with a world computer or a non-inflationary world currency that can be used by anyone with Internet access.
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I later published a book in 2014 called Virtual Banking, with a chapter on Bitcoin and crypto. I’ll never forget my interviews with Wences Casares, who really opened my eyes to the power of Bitcoin.
U.Today: Please tell us a bit about your present company that you, as we understand, also co-founded. What does Cred do exactly?
Dan: What is the best possible loan you can get, other than a free friends and family loan? Probably a home equity line of credit. The problem is most people can’t get a home… Replace the home with crypto and that is essentially what Cred has created: the world’s first Crypto Line of Credit (C-LOC™). We allow people the ability to use their BTC, ETH and XRP as collateral and get cash. Cred has amassed over $300 million in lending capital to provide liquidity against crypto assets. We are set to revolutionize the lending industry by merging an established global lending network, a diverse fintech team, machine learning, and the power of the Blockchain technology.
U.Today: It seems that education, among other fields, is moving onto the Blockchain. The UC at Berkeley now has its own Blockchain, and your company is somehow connected to it through a third entity, is that right?
Dan: Yes! Cred and Blockchain at Berkeley, are two of the founding members of the Universal Protocol Alliance. Howard Wu is Cred’s Chief Scientist and a Founder of Blockchain at Berkeley, the largest US University Blockchain associated in the United States. They have an incredible amount of talent coming through their program and we are lucky enough to benefit from their thought leadership when we created the Alliance, which is dedicated to bringing important pieces of infrastructure to the crypto community and act as a bridge for the next 100 million users of crypto.
Stablecoins and the Current Market
U.Today: What are your thoughts on Bitcoin’s collapse last month? Did it come as a surprise to you? Where does this situation leave us now?
Dan: I guess it all depends on your time horizon. I’m a big believer that crypto assets will become the preferred store of value and means of exchange in the future. As a store of value, just look at BTC and gold in 2011. Gold is down roughly 30% since 2011 while BTC is up ~118,000% but is still just 1% of gold’s market cap. And how many times has BTC “collapsed”?
Price volatility is massive at this time because wealth is highly concentrated and institutional involvement is still limited. This will evolve as the Internet did. Development of infrastructure and practical applications takes time… You can’t rush a pregnancy to 1 month by adding 9 doctors. It will still take 9 months.
U.Today: Let’s move on to stablecoins. Certain critics claim that some of them, e.g. Tether (USDT), are a disguised form of centralized fiat currency since they are pegged against the USD. How would you rate this assessment?
Dan: For the last few hundred years, governments have legitimized fiat currency by backing it with gold. Eventually, as trust grew in government currencies, there was no longer a need to connect it with gold. The same is now happening with crypto stablecoins. Will it matter at some point if they are “backed” by fiat? Probably not. At some point, the trust will be in the finite supply, greater transparency, stronger security, increased utility and ability for it to travel as far and wide as the Internet. Governments will eventually work to tokenize their own fiat currencies, but there will always be demand for a store of value or means of exchange that cannot be controlled by any government.
U.Today: Do you think businesses should strive to move away from governments? Then isn’t there a dissonance pertaining to how this ideal can be achieved with stablecoins which by default rely on central banks?
Dan: Governments and businesses will increasingly be pulled in a direction by the Blockchain, i.e. a path toward more transparency, inclusion, and the democratization of financial services. It will become increasingly difficult for governments to close their borders, impose capital controls, and attract talent if they do not support crypto. And, crypto communities need to leverage some of the valuable components of the existing financial ecosystem—the role of professional custody and basic investor safeguards—because inheritability and token recoverability are needed if we are to provide crypto services that will appeal to the next 100 million users.
U.Today: For better or worse, do you think the demand for stablecoins is bound to increase since they seem to demonstrate more stability during crashes?
Dan: Absolutely, but not just because they are stable. They will ultimately be used as a better means of exchange, remittance vehicle, and as core component in automated commerce.
But, not all Stablecoins are created equal. They’re more likely to be ‘stable’ if they are pegged 1:1 and verifiable on-chain, and can allow for anyone to review how the value is substantiated, not just a professional auditor.
The Future Talk
U.Today: What are your predictions for 2019? Will we see more widespread adoption of stablecoins? If yes, do you see it as a positive thing?
Dan: We are building to deliver practical use cases. There are many examples of this: an Argentinian who needs to get out of an unstable fiat currency, or a Turkish expat looking to make a remittance more cost effectively. Stablecoins can deliver on these use cases. I may live in a country with an unstable currency, and I’d like to move into something stable as soon as I can. I may not have access to a US bank account, to buy USD, but now I can buy a better version of the US Dollar. There are now lots of opportunities that broaden the use cases and bring more people in… So yes, a very positive thing!
U.Today: Some claim that DLT is the future of commerce: the fintech sector will change the global economy, drastically reshaping how we do business. Your thoughts on this?
Dan:
Commerce needs more than a distributed ledger to function. Cred, for example, is providing low cost credit to be used in commerce. Others are providing core banking services such as payroll for crypto companies. The future of commerce involves a host of next generation financial services. How those ingredients are combined with DLT is the secret sauce.
U.Today: Finally, what advice would you give to those who are thinking about entering the crypto world? How should one behave in order to succeed in this still largely unexplored domain?
Dan: Keep your ear to the ground and listen for real problems that need to be solved. The more specific, the better. Tools and infrastructure are still needed to allow crypto to go mainstream. Think years vs. months. We’re headed in the right direction, so make sure not to get caught up in the hype cycles, whether crypto is on the way down, or on the way up!
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