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🟢 Uphold x Zebec Network ⛵️
Recorded: May 21, 2025 Duration: 0:49:49Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, Zebek and Uphold announced a strategic partnership aimed at revolutionizing payroll solutions in the crypto space, including an upcoming ZBCN token airdrop for Uphold users. The conversation also touched on the growing importance of stablecoins and the need for regulatory clarity in the evolving crypto landscape.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. hey guys what's going on uh hope everybody's having a good i don't even know what day it is
wednesday uh so shout out everybody that uh made some time to listen in to our very exciting spaces.
So, Ben, let's kick it off, bro. How are you?
Hey, hey, how are you doing? Can you hear me okay?
Loud and clear. How are you, sir?
I'm good, man. I'm good. I'm in good spirits.
I've been to the AVAX conference, the AVAX Summit in London this week.
I'm heading back home at the moment.
I'm looking at the
charts. Everything's feeling green and nice and exciting. It's a good time to be here. It's a
good time to be in crypto and it's a great time to be listening into Zebex Bases. We've got a real cracker today. Simon and Dr. Martin and I caught up earlier this week to kind
of have a little bit of a brief for the call and listening to them speak about this subject,
it got me really pumped up. So I think we're going to have a really good one. I'm very excited.
Simon, how are you, my friend?
Is Simon with us? a really good one i'm very excited simon how are you my friend
simon with us yeah i think we uh we can't uh we can't hear you guys oh there you go there he is apologies for the technical difficulties ben thank you again for
hosting um one of our spaces and of course dr, Dr. Martin, thank you for joining us
as well today here. We're really excited to get things kicked off. Absolutely. How have you been,
Simon? Has it been a good couple of weeks? You've been busy? It has. I mean, we're busy building
it to bep, right? Product upgrades, announcements coming out on almost a daily basis. So the team
is working at full capacity, but a lot of exciting things to share today with the community.
Love that. Well, we won't take too long. We'll get fired into it.
Before we do, though, just a very quick sound check. Dr. Martin, are you with us and are you well?
I'm with you and I'm well, Benny.
Excellent news.
Funny how our hearts cross again, right? We've known each other for a long time and a different life.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, good. We've got a full house then. That's great. right we've known each other for a long time in a different life yeah absolutely well good we've
got a full house then that's great uh i think we've got well 285 in already so this is pretty
good jj we good to go we're ready to go man uh shout out uh bitcoin about to hit 109 so uh
well wouldn't it be amazing to uh to hit all-time highs while we're having this conversation?
That would be a lot of fun.
Okay, guys. Well, look. Welcome, welcome.
As Simon said beforehand, I'm Ben White.
I'm very, very privileged to be here to help moderate and host, co-host some of the...
Simon, I'm getting a little bit of feedback from your device there.
I think we're good now. Yep, great.
Very, very privileged to be here to help moderate and co-host the Zebeck Spaces.
We've got a very, very exciting space today.
We're calling it, what are we calling it?
XRP Forge the Path and Zebeck Lights the Way.
Really, really excited to be doing this with the team from Uphold,
specifically with
dr martin heisberg i hope i've pronounced that correctly if i haven't you can correct me in a
moment um so we've got dr martin we've got simon with us let's get straight into it um perhaps
the best thing to do is to just give dr martin the opportunity to introduce himself in his own words. How are you doing, Dr. Martin?
At the company, everybody just calls me Doc.
Oh, I love that. Can I call you Doc?
You can call me Doc. Don't worry.
Oh, fantastic. Doc, tell us a little bit about yourself. The Doc is only there because we had three other Martins
at the beginning in the group that I was.
When Apple was still small, we had two other Martins,
so there was three Martins
on the call. So I put my title in there for that reason only. And now it's kind of stuck.
I think it's a great one to do. I'm not even a real doctor. I can't fix your hernia.
No, but maybe you can fix our bags. And that's what we love. So you are head of research at
Uphold. Super super super excited to hear
a bit more about that so before we get into things maybe a very quick introduction from
you in your own words what do you do and how do you do it wonderful um just a heads up i need to
leave at five minutes past half the hour okay great, great. We've got 30 minutes. What do I do?
I come up with thoughts and ideas at a time when nobody pays attention to them.
And by the time everybody else catches on, I'm long gone.
I spent the last, oh my God, I'm old, 30 years in computer science and chaos theory and computational complexity theory and all of that.
Not in a very bright academic career because other jobs sort of came in the way and I never stayed at one institution.
But I've been with decentralized networks before there was a Bitcoin.
But I've been with decentralized networks before there was a Bitcoin.
I've been with Byzantine Consensus in the mid-1990s.
So I gave my first ever talk on what blockchain can do in 2010,
completely ignoring Bitcoin.
Because at the beginning, I thought, wasn't really that interesting.
I still don't think Bitcoin is really interesting.
What I find interesting is that sort of every technology goes through different cycles.
It's invented.
Some people get in very early and give it all their belief and put the house on it.
The early adopters, right?
And there is a period of experimentation.
And I think the last 10 years have been that.
We didn't build what we needed to build.
We built what we could build, right?
At the beginning, it's always a phase of the experimentations
where you get your developers and you build your own blockchain. At the beginning, I remember a time when we, some friends of mine and I, envisaged the first
decentralized exchange. And it was a massive headache in terms of coding. Now any hardware
sophisticated programmer can build you a DEX in an afternoon, right?
There's nothing spectacular about this. I think the thing that happened in 2024 is the ETFs really brought attention
that nothing is what it was anymore.
So Bitcoin has changed.
Bitcoin was supposed to be an e-cash payment system.
It never became one.
Nobody's paying in Bitcoin.
And we've never realized the crypto dream
of replacing fiat money with crypto.
And that's gone.
It is now a risk asset for institutional traders it has a million different
faces whether it's an investment whether you like your mean coins as a cultural thing
well all of these things have in common is blockchain and that's where i come in my research
field is blockchain what can actually, what problems does it
actually solve? And so I'd uphold my part of the research into tokens, into new listings,
and into the strategy of the company very much depend on a single question.
What does it do for me? Does it do it any better than a non-blockchain solution?
for me? Does it do it any better than a non-blockchain solution? There are many, many cases
where people build blockchains for stuff that really doesn't need a blockchain. We've seen
the same in the internet boom. Not every mom and pop shop needs to have an e-commerce website.
Remember a time when everybody needed to have their own e-commerce website, and then they
realized nobody's buying anything on their website
because everyone's going to Amazon anyway.
The same is true for crypto, right?
There are lots of chains out there still that were very exciting
when we built them because it was a first.
And we went from proof of work to proof of stake
and then delegated proof of stake.
Like Cardano is this highly sophisticated academic field of research.
And it's wonderful.
I love it.
That's where I'm at home.
But for a company like Uphold, we need to ask, what does it do for people?
Does it solve?
Does it help me save money?
Does it help me make money?
Does it make me more efficient?
And that's the tokens I discussed.
So in 2021, I had a meeting with some people from Circle,
and they mentioned the ideas of CEREC, and that's why I got to know Sam.
from countries that are, let's say,
not used to all the facilities that we have.
You know, blockchain payments in the West,
in the UK, in Europe,
it's hard to take off when you have mobile phones
and you can just point your phone at something
and it's paid.
People don't really care.
So from the user perspective, what does it do?
And at Uphold, everything we do is very carefully crafted from the user's perspective. We don't add features and tokens just because we can or because they are hip and new, but we add them and we choose the direction that the company takes because there is an actual problem that is being solved.
That's why we were very early on the stablecoins, very early on.
We never listed XRP for the simple reason that it was a good technology,
whether they had legal issues or not.
And now, after these 10 years of experimentation,
we are getting into real problem solving.
What is the real use case?
And so I spoke to Sam years ago and read about your network.
And it is driven by actual use cases.
And that's always something.
I'm not really interested in whether the price of XYZ goes up by 100X or 200X.
I'm past that age where you care about money in that way.
But I care about exciting use cases.
And that's why we listed CEMEX.
And that's why the Apple people are talking to you.
I love that.
And thank you so much for going into that level of detail.
You really covered a few of the bits I was going to ask you. I guess, you know, conscious of your time,
and I want to bring Simon in in a moment to talk about this, but what is it that really stood out
about ZBCN for you? And, you know, I'd love to understand a little bit more about how you
evaluate utility and long-term relevance when you're listing tokens early.
But what is it about Zebex specifically that really stood out to you guys?
I do believe in a multi-chain future.
I have had endless conversations with people like Vitalik about the vision of one blockchain for everything, right?
Ethereum as the world computer and all this stuff.
I don't think that adds any utility because what we need ultimately is resilience.
We need to get rid of the hackers, of the crimes.
And for that, we need diversification and we need resilience.
We need networks that do not depend on the whims of one person,
one company, the single point of weakness,
the single point of attack.
That is at the core of what we do with decentralized networks.
what we do with decentralized networks.
Right?
So I've never...
Why did I look for CEREC?
It's actually, I'm brutally honest.
When I first looked at it in detail,
I thought, okay, there's another payment...
A whole bunch of people
who want to do another payment network.
And I was an absolute...
I absolutely abhor Solana for various reasons,
but I'm not afraid to set myself challenges. And I always try to explore the next thing.
So a deeper look into CIVX showed me that it's sort of a development that XRP would have taken if they wouldn't have been lamed, paralyzed by the legal issues that they had for such a long time.
I have to be honest that XRP hasn't really developed that much over time because of the legal problems.
It will now because there's developer activity coming back to Xerpli.
It will now because there's developer activity coming back to XRP.
But I welcome any network.
I think there's room for hundreds of payment networks.
It seemed to me that payroll needs a special marketing push
because payroll is something that affects millions, billions of people.
It is what we use for payroll is a corporate decision that every company is affected.
And if you can gain inroads and get people excited about using a blockchain-based payroll system that has no baggage, right?
XRP has a lot of baggage.
Bitcoin has a lot of baggage.
And I've always thought that something with a clear vision, right? XRP has a lot of baggage. Bitcoin has a lot of baggage. And I've always thought that something with a clear vision, right?
I like projects with a clear vision you can outline in one sentence.
We have this elevator test.
There are six floors from the ground to the Uphold office in New York,
and that's exactly the time you have to sell me your product.
And that would fit in, right?
Doing payrolls and facilitating payments
in a way that we haven't before is probably,
it's an interesting use case.
And that's why I kept following Cerec.
Absolutely love it.
Thank you for that.
I guess I'm going to ask you one more thing before we um
before we bring simon in to talk a little bit about this and i guess that is
you know we're seeing a real shift in terms of the approach of the administration in the united
states which obviously then you know that feeds out into, you know, all of the approaches
that are being taken by different nation states all over the world.
We are not seeing it yet.
We are hoping for it.
We are hoping for it.
We have been promised a lot.
But some of the ETF decisions have been postponed.
I'm waiting for June when the SEC is supposed to come up with the first real rules for crypto.
And that is exactly where I was going.
What are you hoping to see in that instance?
What I'm hoping to see is a constructive industry-friendly approach that deals with the problem of fraud, of hacking,
but embraces the multi-chain future that I think most serious thinkers and academics in blockchain
have realized that multi-chain is the way to go.
One of the reasons why NFTs, for example, were based on the original Ethereum 721.
They're just shite.
The big problem that these NFTs have is that they're dependent on a chain. So I'm never
going to put my passport in the current NFT format. I'm never going to put my house feed
because if the chain goes down, I lose access to my house. It's like taking a loan from a bank,
a mortgage from a bank to buy my house. The bank goes under and my house is gone.
bank to buy my house, the bank goes under and my house is gone. So the NFT standards that we had,
they're rubbish. An NFT needs to be completely chain agnostic and independent.
And if the SEC manages to embrace this without, and this is my big fear, without putting a
straight jacket on crypto as it did with the Sarbanes-Oxley and all the other acts on equity.
Remember that we had the boiler room operations.
Most of people in crypto don't remember that.
In the 1980s, the penny stocks,
there was so much fraud and so much blatant greed and money-making in the stock market.
So this is not new to crypto.
Crypto isn't the evil guy.
We've had these fraudsters operating on telephones in boiler rooms in the 1980s in America,
and we made laws and got rid of them.
So what does that mean?
What do I hope from the ECC?
I hope they do not impose the same strict regulation immediately on crypto projects
than we have for equities.
Because 95%, I'm just saying a random number but it's a high number
I'm saying a random high number
of projects will not survive
the requirements we currently put on equities
quarterly reports
reports important notifications
to the stock exchange
yada yada yada
most crypto projects are extremely dodgy and lack transparency.
And the biggest thing that's missing from crypto is a full picture of obligations. We know how many
tokens a project has. We do not know how many outstanding loans they have in the back or off
chain. That is the biggest issue. You can tell me I have X many tokens and they are trading at $3.
That means I have that much money, but you could have borrowed 20 times that amount.
We've seen it with FTX.
We've seen it with, I don't know, so many projects.
Just because the technology is new, we tend to believe it's the future.
But the same rules apply.
And those rules for equities are now
very strict and globally accepted. So what I want from the SEC is, yes, we must introduce rules,
global rules, not American special rules, but global rules. And they must be introduced in a way that doesn't immediately crash the crypto market.
Because if the SEC decides to go full force on all the rules that we have for equities now applied to crypto,
then you're going to see a crypto crash the size of which you won't believe.
The only thing that is immune are networks that are completely decentralized,
don't even have a company like Bitcoin or Casper or these things.
But anything that has to follow the rules, if they don't declare crypto a separate category of instrument, if they simply put crypto under the equities rule, then we do have a problem. So June is, I'm very much expecting major turbulence by June when we get to see
these rules and when the probably end of May, the first leaks will appear. I do believe that
Hester Pierce is a very, very, very savvy politician. She understands blockchain.
I've spoken to her numerous times,
also in Washington.
And she knows what she's doing.
So let's hope that the rules are,
first of all, not misguided,
not America only,
that they don't favor a specific chain
that somebody in power
just happens to have a gazillion tokens of
and that they are designed for users in mind.
Thank you so much.
And yes, let us hope that.
Simon, what say you?
How are you doing?
I wanted to ask you, we've spoken, we were how to how to name this show and what to what to
cover and and i know that there have been some some people that have been talking about uh zbcn
as like the next xrp and stuff like that what does that kind of comparison mean to you before we then
get into kind of like you know adoption of zebek and that utility that Doc Martin here was just talking about?
Well, I mean, we've been hearing it more and more recently. I'd say at Zebek, we have a ton of
respect for Ripple and XRP and what they've built. I mean, in fact, we've been in talks with them now
for the past couple of weeks about a potential product that we're working on together. So I'm
not going to get into too much detail there, but're definitely on their radar and i'd say um it's definitely a
company that's about respects a lot now the similarities between zebek and xrp really come
down to the markets that they're serving right ripple um you can give a lot of the success to
the size of the the problem that they're trying solve. So if they're tackling global remittance alone, that market is shy of $800 billion in US terms. Now, when you look at
payroll, which is the problem that Zbeck is trying to solve, the payroll market in the US alone in
volume is north of 10 trillion. So both massive, massive markets, which is why I believe that
Ritual has been able to get to the size it has.
And Zbeck, I believe, is on a similar trajectory.
I love that.
I love that.
Yeah, absolutely.
The focus on payroll,
it's because you need marketing for payroll.
You need to convince actual brick and mortar companies
to switch their payroll systems,
which are hugely inefficient.
It doesn't matter where.
Payroll is an administrative nightmare.
And it could be made so much more efficient with the right approach to crypto.
I mean, that's a really good point, Doc.
And then, so Simon, let's talk a little bit then about adoption.
What's been most surprising at the moment about adoption of like Zebex Tech in traditional business environments?
Well, adoption is definitely one of the most important metrics that we track as a company.
And it goes beyond just users and volume.
We do publish that on a monthly basis on our Twitter.
So do take a look at that and you'll see kind of the areas we've been growing.
take a look at that and you'll see kind of the areas we've been growing. Now, when you look at
payroll, we really attract the adoption of crypto-based payroll across our webtoon firms.
So beyond kind of your expected tech firms and startups, which have always had high adoption
rates for crypto, we've seen a lot of traction in the education and the healthcare sectors.
So Paybridge, which is one of the payroll companies as the back has
acquired, paybridge has the focus on education clients and serves a number
of universities, charter schools across the U S and the students and teachers
in these institutions are very aware of crypto and the power of receiving a
paycheck or part of a paycheck in stable coin.
So we're expecting to see more growth in this space as we look for
new acquisition opportunities as part of the PGP roll-up that we are underway with right now.
Now on the card side of our business, of course, the Zbeck card suites plug in seamlessly to the
Zbeck payroll suite. When you look outside of the US, we've seen a lot of growth in geographies that
have currency instability.
For example, Latin America, where using a US dollar peg stable coin and putting the US dollar on a card makes a lot of sense for everyday spending to keep your expenses in line with
your income. Now, we also have seen a lot of success in regions where bank connectivity for
crypto exchanges is not really where it needs
to be because users now find that the Zebit card is a way to circumvent the traditional slow and
cumbersome off-ramp process by being able to connect your crypto wallet directly to a MasterCard.
Love it. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And I guess...
Simon just touched on something interesting.
Like two years ago, we had some strategy meetings at Uphold
and I told them that stable coins are going to explode
for one simple reason.
Nobody wants to spend their Bitcoin.
Nobody wants to buy a fucking cup of coffee for 0.0000 something fluctuating by the second
and stable coins are as long as people get paid in fiat money in money that whose value they can
assign to their costs right you don't get a bill for your rent in crypto you don't get the gas bill in fucking XRP, right? You get it in actual money
that runs the economy. So crypto hasn't taken over. If you try to run your books in ETC, which
I've done for over a year, just to prove a point, it's very confusing. Nobody's going to do that.
We live in society. Societies are ruled by governments and democratic societies and any other.
And they work with this money. The money assigns value.
I know I need these 300 euros to pay my rent at the end of the month, at the end of the week.
So as long as this is the case, stable coins will rule.
And this is one of the reasons why I'm optimistic.
One of the reasons why XRP introduced the RLUSD, right?
For the longest time, we were all so crypto-deluded.
We thought that governments would send each other billions of dollars in XRP, right?
Or in Bitcoin, right?
That was never going to happen.
And it never happened. And it never happened and it never will.
They need to send the exact amount of dollars and euros and yen.
And for that, the stablecoin market is absolutely explosive.
At Uphold, we have listed so many stablecoins,
especially USDC on every single network that we can find.
You can send your USDC on, I think, 30 different chains at Apple
because the chain doesn't matter. That's the underpinning. For the user, what does count for
the user? It's the ease of use. That's why Apple is successful because it hides all the complexities
of a phone. Nobody cares anymore what's inside the computer. When Ben and I first met in Taiwan
centuries ago, people still bought their motherboard and their processor
and they overclocked their PCs.
Nobody does that anymore, right?
We just want ease of use.
Remember overclocking, Benji?
Oh, my God.
I ruined so many motherboards with overclocking to get my games running.
So we now have an answer.
It's going to be stable coins. It's going to be stable coins.
It's going to be money that people understand.
And we need multiple networks to handle this enormous volume.
Once we get into FX, it's even bigger.
International trade.
We're talking trillions moving daily in the trade, in foreign exchange, in payroll, in insurance, all of that, there's
enough space for many different networks. So be it with XRP for governments, be it with Sebeck
for individuals and for companies for payroll. There is a use case here. That's what I love.
Absolutely.
An actual problem to solve.
Yeah, 100%. I think that's really obvious there. And Simon, why don't we jump into then talking a little bit about how Uphold and Zebek are about to work with one another and what this partnership looks like.
Do you want to kick off?
Yes, absolutely. That's a great question.
I mean, Uphold is definitely one of Zebek's most valued exchange partners.
Uphold and the users of Uphold hold, I think north of 30, $35 million worth of Zebex
tokens right now. And it's a really good and active holder base, as you can see from the
spaces, right? I assume a lot of folks that have bought Zebex on Uphold are on the spaces today.
So thank you to everyone for believing in us and investing. Now, there's a few exciting things that
we have planned with Uphold in the coming week.
So number one is I'm not going to give too much detail here, but there will be a ZBCN airdrop to
certain Uphold users. Look out for an announcement from Uphold on there. It's Twitter and on email
in the next couple of weeks, but that is going to be planned for sometime in June. So that's
super exciting. That's going to get us, get our token into the hands of many great investors and great buyers. Secondly, ZBEC will be starting to use Uphold's
institutional custody platform for managing part of the ZBCN treasury. Uphold has really built a
world-class custody solution and is serving some of the biggest funds and money managers out there.
And given our commitment to working with Uphold
and growing with Uphold,
Zabek will now be one of Uphold's clients
on the institutional side.
So we're really excited to get that kicked off soon.
Fascinating. I had no idea.
We've been kicking it on you for a while.
I hate to think about the future. I have no idea.
I'm paid to think about the future.
I have no idea what's going on in the day-to-day business.
But that is very nice.
We really did spend a lot of years building an exceptional trading network.
And, Doc, do you want to follow up on anything there in terms of, like,
I mean, I appreciate you are the research guy, but, like like in terms of what this partnership with Uphold, you know, Zebek has coming up,
like what's your view on it?
I have no idea about the partnership that's coming up.
I'm not in the loop.
You have to talk to me.
Maybe the official Uphold channel is here.
They know something.
They know something.
I'm not going to comment on anything because I don't really see these announcements.
But I want to talk with SEBEC and my team here at Uphold about the payroll situation.
Because I see some massive synergies there.
And that's all I'm going to say.
I'll take that further after the call because if indeed you want to tackle the payroll market, which in a way we are doing too, but don't really, it can't be our main focus because we've got so many other things to do.
Maybe there's some synergies there too.
Making no promises is not an official announcement.
It's just me thinking aloud. Look, it makes a lot of sense, especially when your employee base is already very familiar
and open to crypto.
So I think that's a conversation for another day, but really glad that you're there, Doctor.
You know how difficult it is for a company like Uphold?
We have employees in, I think, 80 different countries.
Do you know what a nightmare payroll is?
Having to deal with banks in all these countries. Do you know what a nightmare payroll is? Having to deal with banks in all these countries.
We already need third parties to be able to pay some developer in, I don't know,
Tajikistan or wherever they are.
Payroll is becoming a bigger problem by the minute because our workforce is diversifying.
People work from the beach, from the penthouse,
from their chalet, from the ski slopes, from the beaches.
They're flexible.
And blockchain decentralized networks allow us to do all that.
And the thing is, a lot of these people probably prefer
to receive their paycheck in stablecoin like USDC
versus all these local currencies,
especially if they're living this international life,
you can bring your USDC with you anywhere.
You can load it up on a map card instantly and go spend it without fees.
So we believe this is the future.
The data is showing us every month that this is more and more and more how the world is moving.
And it gives us a lot of confidence that we're building in the right direction.
You know what I did today?
I canceled.
I've had an Amex card since 1996.
My Amex membership is longer than most of your lives.
And today I canceled my Amex card because they sent me an email and said,
me an email and said, a new requirement, blah, blah, blah.
there are new requirements, blah, blah, blah.
Every year we have to get your payment slips, your bank statement for the last three months.
And I realized I cannot provide that.
I don't have a traditional bank with traditional statements where all my expenses go from.
I told them, sorry, but most of my stuff is in Apple that I pay with my Apple card directly
from my stash of Kaspers and Bitcoin.
So you accept that?
And I got a phone call back from him and I said, can you explain what that is?
I said, you know what?
Fuck you.
If you go keep up with the times, I don't need your credit card anymore.
I love it
I was an expat in Taiwan
for a while
and no local bank would give me a credit card
the only card I had was Amex
and they
I loved Amex at the beginning
but go with the times
you can't even buy crypto with Amex anywhere
so I finally picked them out of my life.
I've moved on to completely on chain now.
Do you feel liberated?
I feel liberated.
I use pliers to break the map card.
It was kind of a ceremony.
I'm conscious of your time, Doc.
So before you go, is there anything that you want to leave us with?
And then, Simon, you and I can carry on.
And I know we've got a little bit more to talk about.
Plus, we've got some questions from the community.
Doc, is there anything you want to leave us with in terms of a final thought?
Keep building. You're on the right track.
I have no guarantees that I believe that none of the chains
that think they can take over the world and grow a million times and go to a million dollars per coin.
I don't believe in that.
I believe in many different chains covering many use cases and actually integrating into the real economy that people care about.
And I think Sebeck is one of the great examples of doing that and having the right
attitude towards development. And do check out our fabulous Upport. If you have more than 100,000
to trade a month, you have to check out Upport Institutional. Thank you so much for having me.
Good luck with everything. I'm looking forward to all the promotions that you're doing with us.
I really appreciate your time. I know, Simon, you're in the same position.
It's been great hearing from you.
Obviously, incredibly well-read and well-connected
in the crypto space.
And it's just amazing to have someone like you up on stage
sharing a bit of your insights.
So thank you so much.
I'm actually in bed, but that's a modern stage.
Oh, my goodness me.
That's an on-chain
modern stage for you.
That's it.
It's the world we live in.
Yeah,
absolutely.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you,
Ben.
All the best.
Bye-bye.
Simon,
how about that?
Like,
you're on the right track
and that is a,
that's,
you know,
that's a real endorsement there.
How does,
how does hearing that
from someone like Dr. Martin kind of make you feel in terms of the way you're going and the progress you're making?
I mean, it's very validating to hear. Of course, with Zabek, we've been now building for four years through the depths of the bear market when a crypto company couldn't even get a bank account, let alone launch its own MasterCard product.
So we've come a long way in those years.
I feel that the market is now really starting to appreciate builders, utility companies with real world volume and real world users, which is a Beck is really one of the biggest out there.
We are a cross chain solution.
And of course, we were born in Solana, but now we serve over nine different chains.
Of course, we were born in Solana, but now we serve over nine different chains.
And as Martin said, he really believes the future of crypto is multi-chain and it's about different protocols and different networks coexisting with each other.
And that's always been core to what we believe in Zabek. And the numbers are speaking for themselves.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's clear to see. Really love that. I guess, you know, before we get into the opportunity to speak with some of the community and wrap up, let's just cover again what this Zebek and Uphol partnership is going to look like.
Just give me some specifics, give me some dates and some times and some resources, places to go learn a little bit more or, you know, anything I can do to find out what's going on.
Just lay it out for us again, just in case anyone, you case anyone didn't hear it or wants to get a bit more.
So there's two pieces of news that will be coming out in the next couple of weeks
between Zbeck and Uphold.
So as I mentioned earlier, Uphold is one of the large holders of Zbeck tokens
through the Uphold community.
And we are launching a campaign to reward people in Uphold
to look into Zbeck and learn about Zbeck through an airdrop program.
So Uphold will be making this announcement, I believe, in early June.
The airdrop will happen in mid-June.
So keep your eyes peeled for that.
That will go out on Twitter as well as an email to all Uphold users.
And to bring this partnership even further, ZBEC is now going to be working directly with
Uphold on the institutional side.
That means that part of the ZBC and Treasury will now be custodyed with Uphold.
We've done extensive due diligence on Uphold's tech and the security of their platform, and
we really believe it to be a world-class solution.
So we feel very comfortable to be working with them on the treasury side.
Awesome. Well, look, I think it's a really, really exciting campaign.
When you told me we were speaking with the team from Uphold, I got super excited.
Doc is now officially a hero to me.
Breaking his Amex from his bed and talking to us about the research he puts into crypto
is absolutely incredible. But I mean, I think that's a wrap when it comes to the main subject
here. We obviously have an opportunity while we've got everyone listening in to maybe take a
few questions. JJ, I don't know if you want to take a few out of the comments that we can have or um i don't know how do you want to uh how do you want to approach the questions yeah
so um let's i guess bring uh some people from the uh community because on the comments themselves i
don't see uh too many that i think we haven't covered yet so let's uh miss Jennifer is in the building. So let me add her real quick.
Awesome.
Let's see.
Jennifer, can you hear us all right?
I am here.
How are you?
Hey, Jennifer.
Hey, thanks for having me on, you guys.
How are you?
Good.
I've seen you.
You've been in the audience for the last few shows.
So it's great to be able to speak with you.
Thanks for listening in when you do.
Yes.
Well, I'm excited.
I follow you guys closely,
have been adamantly following and posting
and sharing your work.
And I'm really interested in this payroll space,
but coming from the aspect of the entrepreneur.
So I'm building in the Web3 space as well,
but I have a small security business.
And I'm curious, does this payroll, when do the financial products roll out for small businesses and suppliers and contracts?
So rather than being on the payroll, being able to issue invoices and receive them instantly as a small supplier and business owner?
It's a great question, Jennifer, and it's something that is on our roadmap,
but it's not a product that we're actively building.
As you can imagine, the payroll market is massive,
and there's so many angles that we need to attack to really build our product,
so it's a world-class product.
And our company resources have been going towards the payroll build
and the payroll rollout
But I think supplier and vendor payments is a natural
Next step given we are over 200 corporate clients and we perfected this b2b sales process
That would be a very logical growth area for the company
Yeah, I mean as a small business owner paying paying payroll, I mean, it's a hassle for the little guys as well as the big guys.
But then also being paid as a little guy is a big problem.
So I'm eagerly awaiting for this product.
Well, in the meantime, if you would like to check out our small business payroll product, we can have a member of the sales team reach out.
Yeah, I was. I've written you guys a few times because I'm just curious about the costs of onboarding
or moving as an SDK.
I mean, what exactly it takes to onboard instant payroll?
The process really can be up and running in one to two weeks.
So rather than getting the details today,
I think we should have a separate call with your team. So drop us an email and we'll make sure to be in touch.
Okay, great. Jennifer, so yeah, I just saw that you have DM'd us. We get a lot of spam,
so the spam we've been hacked a few times. So I personally, so now that I confirmed it's a
real person, I'll DM you and we'll schedule a call this week to get everything sorted.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, I got you.
Thanks, guys.
One last question, though, I have to ask because I've been so curious about it.
When is the partnership with Ripple coming out?
We cannot stay.
We cannot stay.
All right.
Good shot, Jennifer, because it was on the tip of my tongue i was gonna try i had to ask i had to ask i appreciate you for asking the questions i'm
not allowed to ask that's very good all right but no really jennifer thank you so much for coming up
and i completely like wholeheartedly understand where you're coming from as a contractor in the space. Like I, you know, being able to invoice people and receive payment back and being able to
kind of like have a, you know, like a platform that captures all of those things.
It's actually super important.
And I think a lot, a bit like what Doc Martin was just talking about a moment ago, this
idea of like the future of working, et working etc a lot more people are going to be
kind of freelance contracting working for lots of people and to be able to you know tap into
something which is very specifically being built for the on-chain community i think is a really
really important point so great great question thanks for coming um jay should we take one more
One more.
Yeah, let me see.
Let me see.
So let me see how many we got.
We got Leo.
So let's just add him real quick.
But we got like two minutes.
Yeah, let's go with Leo.
And then we'll wrap up from there.
Leo, how you doing?
Hey, can everyone hear me?
Hey, Leo the lion.
How is it?
Pretty good.
Hopefully, I'm doing cardio right now as we speak.
So if I feel agitated, I'm performing cardio.
I'm the Stairmaster.
But just a quick question.
I won't take too much of your time.
First of all, I just want to say I love the ZBEC community.
And trust me, I know of to say I do I love the Zback community and
Trust me I know of all the grand majority of the blockchain I've been studying blockchain for about five years given take just real quick and I just have a question first Simon
So what is the strategic?
What is Zback strategic strategic to become the default payroll for layer 3?
Web 3 and how does it defend against copycats?
Because there's going to be a lot of copycats out there, especially for the legacy giants
adapting quickly. That's a great question. And I'd say we were the first in Web3 payroll. And
there's a lot of network effects in a business like payroll. It's not a business that's easy
to just start off the ground. And we built a global business around both fiat and stablecoin payroll. We serve over 200 corporate
clients and we process hundreds of millions in annual volume. We then thought to ourselves,
how do we make this payroll product even more defensible and sticky? Because that is the key.
You want your payroll to be sticky so that clients do not move over. Well, we built products that plug into that payroll.
Enter the ZBEC card.
We now kind of own the consumer spending life cycle, right?
Originally that card is linked to our stable coin payroll.
Now it's being used as an off ramp.
It's being used for international payments
to send money to friends and families, et cetera.
So by having all these ancillary services
surrounding our core payroll engine,
it increases the ability for us to defend these clients, keep these clients and add on new clients
with time. Great answer. Thank you. And Leo, thank you so much for that question. Really
appreciate it. It's been a really good one today it's been really insightful
hearing from the good doctor uh and uh and simon sounds like you guys are cooking up some really
exciting things partnerships with uphold with ripple you know continuing to develop to develop
the uh the infrastructure around the the zebek ecosystem you know really really exciting time
for you and for the platform.
So thank you so much for helping coordinate
this one again today, it's been really good.
Thank you for hosting, Ben.
Thank you Uphold, thank you to the community for joining
and be on the lookout for the next phases
in the next two weeks.
Absolutely, looking forward to that too.
Leo, Jennifer, thank you both as well
for your contributions.
Great to hear from the community. Appreciate you all and have a good one. JJ, wrap it, my friend.
Awesome. Now, Ben, you did a great job. Shout out everybody for joining. Simon,
obviously, thank you for your time and Dr. Martin for pulling up. Leo, Jennifer,
thanks for the questions, of course. And thanks to everybody for joining on the middle of a
Wednesday. Let's, yeah, we're doing another one in in two weeks and uh you know excited to keep seeing you guys on on our spaces
so thank you guys and uh see you on the next one peace love it bitcoin still 108 000
