EP. 232 - Solving Stablecoin Fragmentation with Eco feat. CEO Ryne Saxe

**Ryne Saxe** (0:00)
You know, when we started, we thought that the kind of digital payment currency, stablecoin use case would mature within a couple of years. It ended up taking four or five years.
Unfortunately, we kind of like found our way through it. And now it's actually taking off faster than I thought it ever would. So it's kind of like we stretched the rubber band for a few extra years on when would this actually happen? And finally it snapped and it's all taking off at once, and hopefully we can do our part.

**Narb** (0:30)
Welcome to the DevNTell Podcast, where founders, hackers and anyone in between showcase their products built on the bleeding edge of tech. GMGM, welcome to the show, Ryan. I'm excited to have you on today, man.

**Ryne Saxe** (0:42)
Hey, Narb, glad to be here. Glad to... You're willing to have Eco back on. I think Sharik was with you several months ago, and so I'm happy to take the seat myself today.

**Narb** (0:52)
Yes, yes. Yeah, that was a fantastic episode. We learned a lot there, and excited for the gang watching today to get an updated view and outlook from yourself. And thank you so much for taking the time on a Friday to come chat with us. I really appreciate that as well. Great to chat.
No problem.
So I guess for folks who aren't familiar, did you just want to start with the introduction by yourself?

**Ryne Saxe** (1:21)
Myself, personally, yes.

**Narb** (1:24)
Yes.

**Ryne Saxe** (1:25)
I lead Eco, co-founder and CEO of Eco. Some people in the audience may or may not be aware, we've actually been around for a while, always about stablecoins, but started the company way back in 2018 It was too soon for stablecoins. And fortunately, we're still here.
I sort of got caught with the crypto bug a couple of years before that, and I had a technical background, but was actually practicing law at the time, kind of an interim career season. And then crypto captured me and lit the nerd up in me again. And I was like, I got to go back and build. And worked on a couple of projects, one of which merged with my co-founders and became Eco in the early days. And so we're still here. Happy to say any more about any one of those.

**Narb** (2:17)
Amazing.
I'm curious to double-click a little bit into your background as a lawyer. And you also have a physics background as well. I guess, exploring those fields and having the knowledge that you do, like what made you be like, oh, I don't want to do this crypto and technology is where I want to be.

**Ryne Saxe** (2:41)
I think I knew that before.
You know, even when I was in the legal field, I was close to tech. Why do tech companies do deals? Why does a big tech company buy a smaller tech company for their product? How do they fold it in? That was kind of what I was a part of on the legal side of things. And I found that super interesting. But my background was more hands on, more as a builder. And I just kind of had to get back to that eventually. I knew I wanted to start a company or be a part of starting a company that was vicious and that became Eco. I think crypto is super interesting. My story, I think, is actually less unique in the crypto field. There are a bunch of people with meandering nonlinear backgrounds, there's even a bunch of technical lawyers in the field from the very early days. And it's interesting to think about why that is. In my opinion, it's because crypto combines these disciplines and interests that are very, very difficult to combine in the same space. So cryptography, harder science interests are relevant here.
Economic interests are relevant here. Legal interests are relevant here. Regulatory interests, if you believe and did believe 10 years ago that this technology was inevitably going to break into the mainstream world and touch on those regimes. And so crypto is fascinating to me because 15 years ago, if I wanted to exercise those different interests, I would have to take a different class or read a different book. And in crypto every day for the last eight, nine years, almost every day, all of those interests have been peaked in some decision or something I needed to learn. And I think that kind of self-selects for other people with maybe similar patterns in their background.

**Narb** (4:28)
Fair enough, fair enough. And yeah, I don't know about you, but I was gravitated towards crypto and Web3 just because of the tech itself and how cool was exciting the different innovations it would unlock.