E180: Kast Founder: The Biggest Crypto Opportunity Of Our Lifetime Is Happening Right Now

**Raagulan Pathy** (0:00)
If I give you the no BS version, I think it's because people realizing that a lot of crypto hasn't really delivered much value to people. Hundreds of millions of people, potentially billions of people, could really do with a fintech that sits on top of crypto rails. The biggest thing you could do was build a fintech or a bank on top of those rails. And I had that thesis, Bill Kast on that thesis. I think it's playing out now, and now people are realizing.

**Kevin Follonier** (0:23)
What might they fail to understand about how hard it is?

**Raagulan Pathy** (0:26)
I think my...

**SPEAKER_3** (0:28)
Raagulan Pathy, the founder and CEO of Kast. A global stablecoin neo-bank connecting digital assets with everyday finance.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:37)
A former Circle executive driving the next generation of stablecoin adoption.

**Kevin Follonier** (0:40)
Kast raised 80 million at the 600 million valuation. What the hell are you doing with 80 million dollars?

**Raagulan Pathy** (0:45)
We're building a lot. We always had to run break even. We really had 10 million for most of the first two years. We're acquiring companies, especially for that infrastructure. We're doing a lot of licensing and acquiring companies for licenses. I have to do all this against a multi-billion dollar competitors and then 80 million doesn't seem like nearly enough.

**Kevin Follonier** (1:02)
What happens exactly to my money as a Kast customer if Kast goes out of business?

**Raagulan Pathy** (1:06)
We keep a lot of that money with licensed custodians. So that provides some level of surety. We also clarify bankruptcy with most structures. Most crypto people especially want to know is whether you can have a self-custodial or non-custodial option to make it much clearer that you can actually have non-custodial money so you can actually own the money yourself the way that crypto people like to do it.

**Kevin Follonier** (1:25)
Which means that if Kast goes out of business, you have access to your money.

**Raagulan Pathy** (1:28)
Exactly.

**Kevin Follonier** (1:33)
Hi everyone, this is the little bit that I know none of you like that can help us make a huge difference for this show and we want to take it next. 71% of the people who regularly watch When Shift Happens have not subscribed. And so all I'd ask you if you want to make a huge difference is the following. If you've seen this show before and you like it, help me, help my team, hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to build this show for you. Thank you.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:58)
I got the Pudgy gold card out.

**Kevin Follonier** (2:00)
I also have it there, but I was like figuring out which one better.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:03)
That's the normal Pudgy one?

**Raagulan Pathy** (2:05)
This is the gold card.

**Kevin Follonier** (2:07)
Basically, she gave me, I mean, I have like four gold cards. I mean, they're not...

**Raagulan Pathy** (2:14)
I don't know if... You know what? I don't have this one.

**Kevin Follonier** (2:18)
She just gave me a bunch I can choose depending on who is the guest. So, for example, I think Raoul, I put the Solana one. Tushar, I put the Solana one.
Dantapir, I put the Bitcoin one. The Pudgy one, I don't know when to put it. Actually, it's my favorite. I think it looks the best.

**Raagulan Pathy** (2:42)
Yeah, we're actually, because it's the latest one, so we did a really good job with it. It looks so good. It looks so good.

**Kevin Follonier** (2:48)
Yeah, it looks fantastic.

**Raagulan Pathy** (2:49)
So we're going to fix, we're doing, we're refreshing all the cards and the whole brand. So, that can be up to the Pudgy standard.

**Kevin Follonier** (3:02)
Another thing to do out of a billion different things.

**Raagulan Pathy** (3:05)
That's so many things to do.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:09)
How do you prioritize?

**Raagulan Pathy** (3:12)
How do I prioritize?

**Kevin Follonier** (3:14)
When you have so many things to do, how do you prioritize what to do?

**Raagulan Pathy** (3:16)
We have the, like a quarterly review of all the things we need to do.
And I was talking to someone about it yesterday who was like, okay, let's get smaller teams together once a month. We get the bigger teams together, you know, cross-functionally every half, a quarter or every half a year. But actually what happens in reality, I told them is like startups move much quicker than that.

**Kevin Follonier** (3:38)
I would say three months is like an eternity.

**Raagulan Pathy** (3:41)
It's an eternity, right? And so what I said to them is that that's fine. But I run these war rooms all the time. Where I'll just like last week I did three, this week I got three or four. I just think of things that need to get fixed. I pull everyone together and I'm like, right, we're gonna sit in a room until this is fixed, you know?