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Zebec x Uphold: Countdown to Tip-off 🔥
Recorded: Sept. 26, 2025 Duration: 0:32:28Space Recording
Short Summary
Zebek and Uphold are forging a powerful partnership aimed at reshaping financial services through blockchain technology, with exciting projects and significant growth in the ZBEC community. As they prepare for a major sports sponsorship and innovative payroll solutions, both companies are positioned for mass adoption in the evolving crypto landscape.
Full Transcription
Thank you. so so Thank you. so so Thank you. so so so hello welcome welcome how's everyone doing let's uh let's get a quick mic check simon you there
how's it going yes happy friday Friday, everyone. Happy Friday to you,
sir. And nice to see you. Okay, we got two Simons, so I'm going to get this right. Simon Zabek
and Simon Uphold. Hey, Simon Uphold, how are you doing? Hi, very good. Nice to be on. Thanks for
inviting me. Great to chat. Thanks so much for coming up and joining us. Really appreciate that.
JJ, how are you today, sir? You all good? All good on my end. It's Friday, and thanks, obviously, Simon from Uphold and R-Simon and you, Ben, for hosting.
Great stuff.
I appreciate y'all.
Welcome, everybody, back to another Zebex Spaces.
A bit of a special today because we are joined by Simon, another Simon, who is CEO at Uphold.
Great to have you up.
Obviously, we've been all cognizant, aware of the relationship forming between the two companies
and the exciting collaborations that have been coming out.
So this is just a great opportunity for us to cover that in a bit more detail.
Really looking forward to that.
Before we jump into things, Simon, how are you?
Markets up and down and
choppy, but we're still here. We're still shipping. There's a lot of exciting things coming out,
right? Yeah, it's been a crazy week for sure, but some big announcements on our end and many more
to come. But of course, I'm super excited to be here today with another Simon, the CEO of Uphold.
Zabek and Uphold obviously have similar missions. We both
seek to change financial services for the better. So I really think today is going to be a great
show and we have plenty of exciting news to drop. Yeah, absolutely. Really looking forward to hearing
more from both of you really. Before we do jump into kind of more about that relationship and
the news and the different things we've got coming up simon from uphold as i will now call you every time i address you uh can do you mind just
introducing yourself and maybe share what uphold has been up to recently as well any new products
initiatives just like you know give give us all an intro to you and and the work that you guys
have been doing yeah sure well i've beenphold for about seven years. We serve just over 12 million customers. Increasingly, we're focused
on enterprise customers, so banks, brokers, payment firms, even payroll coming to us and
sort of seeking to plug into our infrastructure.
And, you know, we're not an exchange. People forget that we're not an exchange. We don't
have an order book. We're connected to 32 different trading venues. Half of them are
DEXs. And we poll the entire market every 10 milliseconds for the best pricing, the best
liquidity. So it's a model that works very hard on customers' behalf. And brokers and banks who
are plugging into this space come to us because we're not relying on a single order book. We can
give them a great price in the market and a very consistent and reliable service that doesn't rely
on one exchange. Awesome. We had Dr. Martin with us before a few weeks back, a few months back now,
and it's great to meet him. It's fantastic to meet you too um simon b simon from zebek uh i've got a question for you this is one of the
first ones really that uh i wanted to to really kind of like give the audience a bit more context
just can you just like outline how the zebek and Uphold relationship began and how it's evolved over time and what
makes this next stage of that relationship's development, you know, different? I was actually
reflecting on this earlier today because it's crazy to think that it's only been one year since
Uphold first approached us and listed the ZBCN token. I believe it was September 2024. And we've seen tremendous
growth in ZBEC's community on Uphold ever since. And now I think Uphold is actually one of the
largest holders of ZBEC tokens globally, of course, through its own clients, while of course
having a very big presence in the U.S., which is a key market for ZBEC. We're expanding aggressively in the U.S., and we've recently announced a partnership
with Assure on stablecoin payroll, so it's very important for us to work with regulated
custody partners like Uphold.
Earlier this year, we partnered with Uphold on the institutional side, on the treasury
front.
We plan to grow that relationship as we bring on more institutional investors and partners for ZBEC, who, of course, trust Uphold for storing their ZBEC tokens in a safe and compliant way.
And on the retail side of the business, we're looking at potential payment products launch and further rewarding Uphold users with ZBCN promotions and incentives.
and incentives. So many big things to come in Q4 this year. So please keep an eye out.
So many big things to come in Q4 this year. So please keep an eye out.
Love that. And Simon from Uphold, from your side, the Zebek partnership,
how's that experience been? And what's that provided for Uphold and your users?
Well, I think it's shared values, really. For us as a company, we don't believe crypto is
just about trading and making a quick profit.
We're far more interested in bringing our customers serious projects with very clearly
defined use cases in the real world that solve practical problems and have the potential
to generate fundamental value.
So our customer base tends to be slightly older folks. They're not pro traders. They're
not in for a quick flip. They're much more interested to discover projects that have
very clearly defined goals. And particularly, they like infrastructure projects. So obviously,
we serve the XRP community. We're one of the largest holders of XRP in the world.
And the Zebek token and project has resonated very,
very strongly with that user base.
Today we hold, I think it's around a hundred million Zebek.
And since we launched it,
I think we're first to launch in the US.
And I think we're still the only place you can buy Zebek
in the US in terms of a C5NU.
Since we launched it, it's gone up by more than 500% in value. And I think it fits very strongly with the buy and hold a token and support a project that you truly believe in.
So, you know, it's been one of our most successful launches this year.
So, you know, it's been one of our most successful launches this year.
And it underlines, we like these, we love these kind of projects because they're about blockchain as infrastructure to update the financial system.
They're not just, you know, they're not just about a token for speculation.
Yeah, I love that. And I totally agree. That whole kind of vaporware conversation is one that we have often.
And it's just it's always so it's why I personally love working with Zebek, too, because this this idea that we are really kind of like, you know, pushing the pushing the boundaries in terms of what what crypto can do for the payroll and for, you know but banking the unbanked and those things it's really
exciting so i love to hear that you you know you share that um that passion for for what's happening
there yeah um simon simon b simon from zebek i have just a moment ago pinned to the top of the
space so anyone who is listening in now can see it up there a pretty fancy vt that went live last week with
some incredible nba nhl sponsorship kind of alpha what can what details can you give us on this
activation this looks like a lot of fun yeah it was a pretty slick ad that we put out and i'm sure
everyone's been dying to know what the actual details are since this teaser came out earlier in the month.
We are super excited for this one as it's our first foray in U.S. sports.
After a successful sponsorship of the UEFA leagues in Europe last year, we really wanted to bring it home to the USA.
So as a beck and uphold, we'll be working with six teams across professional hockey and basketball this year. You're going to see
activations throughout the stadiums and on TV for over 30 million viewers at home as well.
This is going to give both of our brands unprecedented reach during a time when Americans
are more interested in crypto-based solutions than they've ever been.
I love that. I love that. I'm very, very excited about it. As a huge sports fan myself, I am really excited to see it on the television, but also just knowing that it's happening out there is amazing.
Why the focus on NBA and NHL then specifically? What made these leagues and these six teams, I guess, the right choice for you?
Well, for our international listeners, hockey and basketball are pretty much a religion
in many parts of the US. And of course, hockey in Canada being the number one sport where I grew up,
there's no better way to connect with local communities than through their favorite sports
teams. So we decided to work with six teams in different parts of the country, Milwaukee, Las
Vegas, Atlanta, St. Louis, Detroit, and Minneapolis, representing over 20 million people in their respective metro area.
So we're talking about, you know, very, very big reach for both of our brands.
advertising but to introduce crypto payments within the stadiums by bringing official crypto
cards or wallet-based tools to help us onboard more users into the Zbeck and Uphold ecosystems.
I love that. I love that and it's absolutely just like you guys to continue innovating even when
you've got great activation going on so that sounds really exciting. Uphold, Simon, how does this sponsorship
help Zebek and Uphold as a pair partnership connect with everyday people and SMEs across
the US? Well, I think it's incredibly exciting. I mean, sports fans are all about passion,
loyal, they're community driven,
many parallels with crypto projects. What's happening in the US is extraordinary. In the space of nine months, the full weight of the US administration has been thrown behind crypto.
And therefore, we're in the era of mass adoption. We reckon that about between 30 and 50 million Americans are going to buy
crypto for the first time over the next 12 months. So this is about showing up in iconic venues.
It builds brand, it builds recognition, and it builds credibility for both partnerships. And
we're really proud to be working with Zebek because it's the kind of project that we want
to be introducing and known for as a trading platform. We don't want to be known for meme coins and that kind of stuff. We want to
be known for serious projects solving real problems. And, you know, we've been doing our
first outdoor advertising ourselves this year in London and San Francisco. And it's very exciting
for us because, as I say, our model is different.
We're not an exchange. We work harder for you, the customer, by polling for the best price and
the best liquidity and the best resilience. If, you know, on an exchange, if the exchange goes
down, you're kind of stuck. On a poll, if an exchange goes down, we just route orders to one
of 30 other venues. So it's a powerful message that we're keen to get out at this point in the market.
It feels like a very comprehensive way to do it.
And I love that coverage as well across the whole US.
I think that's just a great way to run a campaign.
So I can't wait to see it roll out.
Simon Zebek, Simon. What's coming up?
What else can we get excited about,
either for Zebek on its own or Zebek and Uphold,
particularly Q4 or fall or autumn,
as I like to call it here in the UK?
What's exciting that you guys have got coming up?
Well, I think, first of all,
tying to this NBA and NHL campaign,
we will be announcing pretty soon custom drops related to merchandise between the teams and Zabek and Uphold.
We don't have the final terms and conditions on that, so I'm not going to get into full details here.
But expect to see multiple opportunities for both of our communities to participate in the sponsorship campaign, to earn rewards.
And I wouldn't even rule out earning tickets to the games as well, as I'll be definitely attending a few myself there in the sponsorship campaign to earn rewards and I wouldn't even rule out earning tickets to the games as well as I'll be definitely attending a few myself there in the fall. Now in terms of
exciting news outside of the NBA and NHL arena we have a lot planned between Zabek and Uphold.
So one of the campaigns that we are going to be introducing later this year is one that is aimed directly at bringing payroll funds on chain through Uphold.
So stay tuned for that. In early October, we will be announcing details there.
And beyond that, we are looking at a potential product launch together, too, which we're hoping will come to fruition by the end of the year.
Lovely. That sounds, you know, as very bullish very exciting looks like you've got a lot uh i
don't i don't i want i do wonder to myself sometimes simon when you find the time to sleep
and the rest of the team it's uh it's it's non-stop all the time both the back and uphold
are very similar cultures as we were working non-. So yeah, I love that. Okay, let's, let's talk for
a moment then about what makes this partnership special. I know we've covered the kind of the why
and you know, this, as you say, this shared passion for real world value, utility, some would call it when it comes to your missions. But what is it that you
think, or why should I say, do you think that Zebek and Uphold have such this natural fit when
it comes to payments, financial services, et cetera? Well, at the start, I said that both
Zebek and Uphold have very similar missions as we're on a journey to reshape financial services,
Zabek and Uphold have very similar missions as we're on a journey to reshape financial services,
making it more accessible, faster, and more transparent. And we've been delivering on our
commitments. As a fully regulated platform with over 12 years of history, there are very few
digital asset exchange providers with a reputation like Uphold's out there.
And it fits right in with Zabek best major push on compliance certifications this year
and okay that's actually perfect because that takes me into the next question i'd made a note
of which was we we've obviously had a couple of spaces before where we've spoken about
compliance and the need and the how essential compliance is in the Zebek journey.
Where are you guys up to that right now?
And can you expand on why ISO, SOC2, why those things matter?
And I guess the doors that they've opened now that you're really going down that route.
Of course.
And we've done dedicated spaces on compliance topics, as I'm sure our community is very aware of.
But from what I've always said from the beginning is that compliance is really all about trust,
especially as we bring on larger institutional partners and clients.
Standards like SOC2 and ISO matter more than ever as we handle greater transaction volumes around the world through Zubek.
As you've probably seen, we recently announced an institutional partnership with Assure, which of course is a leading payroll company in the US.
And this week we announced a partnership with an EU MICA-compliant stablecoin called AllUnity, which is backed by Deutsche Bank.
So there are many more of these to come, but they would not be possible without the compliance standards that Zbeck has achieved, which is another reason why we doubled down on compliance this year
when we purchased GateKnox,
which is now our compliance brand within Zbeck.
Absolutely wild announcement, by the way, this week,
mentioning Deutsche Bank.
These are real institutions that are starting to creep into the comms now, Simon.
How is Zbeck positioning itself amongst these global players? What are those conversations like to creep into the comms now, Simon. How is ZEBEC positioning itself amongst these
kind of global players? What are those conversations like to kind of like lean into?
Yeah, we're really proud to see it because it is a vote of confidence in what ZEBEC has built.
And at the end of the day, ZEBEC is an infrastructure provider, right? So we provide
the rails for these banked back stable coins to be successful in their mission to move finance
flows on chain. So all Unity and
Deutsche Bank is really just one of the first. Our team is going to Frankfurt next week and we'll be
attending the Cybos Conference, which is the SWIFT annual conference. There are many leading
institutions out there, banks and payments companies, which we are already in talks with.
So we're expecting to see more announcements like this coming very soon. Thanks for that. I really appreciate it. And it's
great to see that hard work and that push for compliance really starting to pay dividends. It
really does make sense and it's fantastic. Simon M from Uphold. You got away with it for a few
minutes there. Sorry, I let Simon go for it. But I would love to ask you another question, particularly when it comes
to some of the new features that Uphold has launched. I wonder if you could perhaps walk
through a few of those and how they fit into the bigger vision that you guys have, both as Uphold
independently, but also with Zebek. Sure. Well, on the consumer side of our business, we think of
ourselves as building a crypto-enabled neobank. So we want the app to be woven into someone's daily financial life. So there's a
seamless connection between traditional financial innovation and on-chain innovation. So we're just
about to launch a debit card that will pay 4% in digital assets and 6% for the metal card.
We are shortly in October, we're launching,
a big part of our mission is surfacing on-chain protocols,
making them easy to access for the average user.
Uphold is very much about the non-technical user,
so we're not aiming at pro traders.
And we're going to be opening up on-chain borrowing and lending in October through a very innovative protocol we've been developing.
And that's linked to a Visa card.
So you'll be able to take a loan against your digital assets and you'll be able to spend the dollars in the real world through a Visa card that's being issued right across North America and the US.
So we're hugely excited about that.
And the biggest story for us is all of those services that we develop for our retail wallet,
we're API-ing so that companies can plug into them. So an increasing part of our story is
we're a platform for on-chain finance. And if you're a bank or a broker or a payment processor
we can get you integrated with blockchain and digital assets in around 90 to 120 days
rather than years to try and build this stuff yourself and you know we've just signed a
contract this week with a company called SpreadX. We've got a very large self-hosted wallet provider integrating with us soon as well.
So, you know, we're a platform that people can plug into to access all of that liquidity and pricing power, but also on and off ramps in around 150 countries.
so on and off ramps in around 150 countries. It must be so exciting as well, obviously,
being able to really start expressing so much of what you want to build and speed running it now
that you've got a government that is so excited about the potential of crypto.
a government that is so excited about the potential of crypto.
Well, the backlash in the US is extraordinary.
I mean, we've gone from an environment where we didn't even know if certain parts of our
business were legal because there was no guidance to an environment where US banks are being
told crypto is now a novel banking activity.
And virtually all of the big banks now in the
US are feverishly building blockchain teams and rolling out blockchain projects in a manner that
would have been unthinkable a year ago. And they're all looking for partners to work with.
So, you know, after seven years of slog, it's very nice to really sort of get to the serious part of the job, which is about plugging in all of our infrastructure to traditional financial companies.
And back to your compliance point, compliance is our second largest department after engineering.
We've made huge efforts to look like a bank.
So when a bank or a broker wants to integrate,
they recognize the processes and the controls.
So again, that's why it's such a nice partnership with Zbeck
because I think we have a shared vision of,
you know, compliance has to be at the heart of what you do.
Otherwise, you're not going to get adopted.
Completely.
It feels like that meme, you know,
the one with the guy stood in the corner
and everyone's having fun at the party and they're like, they don't even know that I am.
And it feels just like Zebek Uphold, any kind of like infrastructure player in the crypto space is suddenly getting to say like, hey, I'm over here.
We've been doing this all along. We know what we're doing. It must be just it must feel so rewarding.
Well, it is. I mean, it's literally the first time we've had significant inbound.
We've had the story for years, but the inbound hasn't come until there's been clarity of the regulation.
So inbound inquiries really have soared only from the start of this year.
So it's all very new.
Amazing.
Can I ask you one more question, actually?
Sure.
And this one's a little bit more, you know, you can set the time horizon if you like.
I like to say 12 to 18 months.
But, you know, being CEO of a, you know, a setup with that many active, daily active users and that many accounts, etc.
What do you see as the biggest opportunities for mass adoption in the
next like 12 to 18 months? I'm super curious to know like what you view those biggest opportunities
to be. I think the biggest opportunities are quite simply tier two banks in the US,
two banks in the US, large brokers who haven't adopted crypto until now, they realize that
there's an $80 trillion wealth transfer coming. And that wealth is going to a digital native
generation who will expect them to offer a lot of these on-chain services and digital assets
as a matter of course. And they're behind where they should be because crypto has been a pariah technology because of perverse political sentiment.
That's now reversed. And so the starting gun has been fired for these TradFi institutions to plug
in. And of course, they bring with them enormous installed user bases. We're just about to plug into a broker with more than a quarter of a million active accounts.
And that allows us to scale as a company in a way that would have been unthinkable three or four years ago.
So it's really plugging into large installed user bases as TradFi adopts the technology.
TradFi adopts technology.
Amazing.
And I really appreciate
you kind of
answering that for us because there must
just be so many things at the moment. So to distill
it like that, it means a lot.
And I think it's great for our community
to be able to get that kind of intel
and that wealth of that
experience from you. So thank you so much.
Simon B., Zebek Simon,
I think we're going to wrap soon.
This has been a really, really exciting session.
I feel like we've learned so much
and it's great to hear about the progress
that both Uphold and Zebek are making independently,
but also as a partnership.
What's the one thing you would like the community to take away from this session today?
Well, I would echo what Simon said.
Banking is moving on chain, particularly in the US, post Genius Act.
And with regulatory clarity, lots of institutions are now waking up to crypto.
And both Zbeck and Uphold have been building
this future financial system on-chain for years.
Our services work in tandem together
and they plug into legacy Web2 systems.
Whether they are traditional banks
or traditional payroll companies,
this gives us the ability to scale
and achieve mass adoption for crypto
faster than anyone used to think was possible.
So the future is really bright and I'm extremely excited for what's next with Zbeck and Uphold's
partnership. Of course, we have a very exciting sports campaign this fall, among other things.
So keep your eyes out for announcements from both of us. Nice one. I appreciate that. And Simon from
Uphold, last moment from you here. What's
exciting you or excites you the most about the next phase of this partnership and maybe Q4 also?
Q4, I mean, for us as a company, the most exciting thing is we're opening up on-chain
borrowing and lending in a way that makes it accessible to ordinary people. So hugely excited about that. The Zebek partnership is a real passion project for us
because we today employ around 500 people all over the world.
And a real practical problem I deal with every day
is I want to hire a brilliant developer in Indonesia,
but we can't sort out the payroll.
And it affects your ability to access talent.
So I think the Zebek, you know, programmatic payroll through DeFi is a brilliant innovation
and it solves a very practical problem that we as a company deal with all the time, which is we're
limited where we can employ people and we're limited in terms of where the talent is
by restrictions of legacy payroll systems. That should be a thing of the past.
100%. I cannot agree with you more. That's fantastic. And I really love the fact that
that's something that you guys, that you prioritise. I think that's amazing well look i think we are coming to the end
of this session uh simon m from uphold i want to thank you personally but also i think on behalf of
zebek i know that you um i know that you're super busy uh and it's great to be able to get you up
here talking like this i think both just incredibly powerful for the zebek community to hear it but
also i think for anyone at large that's just stumbled across this spaces and we've had like this, I think both just incredibly powerful for the Zebek community to hear it. But also,
I think for anyone at large that's just stumbled across this space and we've had, you know,
thousands of people listening in. So thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate
the way that you've answered these questions I put to you. Appreciate that. Thank you very much.
Thanks for having me on. I've enjoyed it. And Simon from Zebek, final thoughts from you before we close out no I mean super excited for
what's to come we had a huge week this week and a lot more coming in the next few weeks so
let us get to work and yes more updates to come nice one thank you so much JJ I think we're ready
to finish up but just before we do I want to say to everyone in the community everyone listening
thank you so much for giving up half an hour of your day today to listen.
I'm sure you found it useful and we really appreciate you tuning in.
Absolutely. Thank you everybody for joining in in the middle of the Friday. Have a great
weekend. Again, thanks Ben and both Simons. I know you guys are super busy,
Weekend. Again, thanks, Ben and both Simons. I know you guys are super busy, so appreciate the time.
And we'll catch you guys on the next one. Stay tuned for a lot of stuff cooking.
So, you know, exciting weeks ahead. And yeah, let's let's get it, guys.
Talk soon. Everybody have a great weekend. Bye bye.
