Ep 290- Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov

**John** (0:01)
Hey, it's the FinTech Newscast. My name is John, and with me, as always, is Steve. Welcome to the show.

**Steve** (0:07)
Great to be here, John. How's it going?

**John** (0:11)
Good, good. And we're really lucky this week to have someone that can clear up a few things on the latest, on, well, on the future of finance, really. Michael Egorov, the founder of Curve Finance. Welcome.

**Michael Egorov** (0:31)
Nice to be on the show.

**John** (0:33)
Yes, I feel the energy, Michael. I feel it.
All right. Well, maybe this will get you excited. Our new story for this week is an announcement from some major players in FinTech and finance, Stripe, Visa, MasterCard. And interesting, along with some kind of e-commerce players, like Shopify and Mercado, getting together for a consortium to build a blockchain based on stable coins for cross-border payments, and I would think to support commerce. What do you think, Steve? Does this look like vaporware or do you think this is just the announcement? There's no software. There's nothing agreed on yet. So there's still a ways away.
But do you like to see this kind of thing or?

**Steve** (1:32)
I do. It's also interesting because we have also the major car networks. You have Visa and MasterCard, you have Stripe as well. And as you mentioned, you have Shopify. So you basically have all the players that you need in this space. It's interesting. Just to take a step back here.
The way that cross-border payments work is that traditionally, they rely on something called the corresponding banking system. And that is basically where Bank A will tell Bank B, we have this much to transfer, etc. Please pay them at the other end. And it's a very, very expensive, very complicated, very slow process.
I think that this has always been, for me at least, one of the pinnacle use case for stable coins is, how do we facilitate faster, cheaper cross-border payments? So if they can pull this off, and I think we have the right players in this space, this could signify a massive, massive shift in how we move money around the world.

**Michael Egorov** (2:25)
Absolutely. And it was about crypto, not necessarily stable coins, but with stable coins, it's better.

**Steve** (2:32)
Exactly. But actually, Michael, I have a question for you. You're the expert, you work at Curve in this space.
Why would crypto be a better use case than a stable coin for this? Or how would you design this to make this be a successful product?

**Michael Egorov** (2:50)
I mean, stable coins are probably more actually suitable for this. But I mean, I actually touched personally this for my personal uses, this use case in general. Back in, I think, end of 2013, I discovered Bitcoin for myself, right? And in 2014, I had, well, I did have to do some small cross border payments, essentially. So, well, first I tried was normal banking, right?
And my transaction got reverted several times and I got charged for that, because, I don't know, some type or in, like, so it's like, I had to, suddenly had to, to do something in the name, like, I don't know, essentially specify second name or something like whatever. Something in the information was not right, so it got reverted, right? Despite all the accounts were correct and so on, I thought it was like going through main days and it was ridiculous. So I thought, okay, I don't like that, I need something better. So I tried to do via PayPal and it kind of worked, but then PayPal blocked this without actual explanations. So I couldn't send many more and I thought, okay, well, all right, so I have this Bitcoin thing and I see that there are different sorts of different Bitcoin markets. So I can buy Bitcoin here, sell Bitcoin there, I can do it myself. Looks like I see how to do it. So why don't I do it?
And the person on the other side doesn't have to know, it's Bitcoin, the money just appears on their bank account. Why don't I do that? So I tried and it worked. And then I tried again and it worked again. And yeah, it just works.
Well, later on, stable coins kind of replaced Bitcoin and that.
But really, all the necessary components appeared in different countries. Like in Europe, for example, we have digital euros, which can be redeemed to bank accounts. In Switzerland, we do have some digital Swiss franc, which can be sent one-to-one to bank account. And I can even pay bills with that. And actually, I'm doing that. And I'm actually swapping US dollar stable coins to these stable coins on Curve and sending. And of course, you could say, why don't you do it in a bank? And well, I mean, my funds originate from on-chain these days, so... Anyway, yeah. Yeah, I would have to send to bank and then, you know, initiate a transfer. And then it's, you know, when it's not the same... Well, like I say, between Switzerland and Europe, you cannot, I think you cannot use SEPA instant. So, it's like not quite instant, and you need to do some confirmations and whatever. And I also need to put it in the bank, and I need to interact with humans for that. And I don't...