Inside the ICE House x Las Vegas: MindWave Innovations CEO Dr. Vin Menon

**SPEAKER_2** (0:12)
From Lake Las Vegas here in Nevada, welcome to another episode of the Inside the ICE House podcast. Today's guest is Dr. Vin Menon. He is the CEO of NYSE, American Listed MindWave Innovations. Dr. Vin, how are you doing? Thanks so much for joining us here in Nevada.

**Dr. Vin Menon** (0:27)
Yeah, thank you so much for inviting us here. And we're excited to work with you on this project.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:32)
So MindWave sits at a real critical moment, I think, in digital asset adoption, right? Institutions want and are increasingly focused on exposure to Bitcoin, right? We see it from big institutions to small institutions, they want exposure to Bitcoin, but traditional systems aren't always built for what they need. So what signs in the industry really told you that institutions needed a governance driven platform and that MindWave had the right structure to build it?

**Dr. Vin Menon** (0:58)
So typically, if you look at digital asset treasury strategies, mostly the treasury yields are generated up to 2% or less than 2% kind of a return. And if you move into a digital asset space, over the last couple of years, we have seen that it is generating 15-20% year-on-year. That itself is a good revenue for the treasury aspect.
Then second, we are focusing on yield generation on the treasury. So, unlike other DIT or digital asset treasury businesses, what we are doing is, we are helping companies to set up the digital assets treasury. Then we run yield generation on these assets.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:46)
So, as institutions really begin thinking about digital assets in a more serious and more long-term way, how do you explain just digital asset treasury in a way that really resonates with these leaders who may have spent most of their careers inside really traditional capital market structures?

**Dr. Vin Menon** (2:04)
So, for the last couple of years, we have seen that Bitcoin and other digital assets are becoming mainstream.
And it's always better to have a basket of currencies or a diversified portfolio in the treasury. So, that is the trend which we are seeing right now.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:21)
And I wanna really just dive further a little bit into how custody, how risk controls and compliance of Interlock Inside MindWave's platform. What distinguishes a system really that's engineered for institutions from one that is built for more retail crypto users, right? How do you find that distinction?

**Dr. Vin Menon** (2:39)
Okay, so for the B2C or the retail kind of a product, so they are catered towards the average ticket size of 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 kind of wallet size.
And institutions are talking about multi-million. And at the same time, we have a 7-layer security system in our self-custody. And we are also having loads of London syndicates insuring, reinsuring our assets.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:05)
And then, so you're in the boardroom, right? Let's play a hypothetical, right? You're in the room with an institution, a leader of said institution. How do you get them comfortable with doing something that, again, some of these leaders may have been working one way for decades, right? And you have to get them comfortable with maybe a new way of doing things, a sort of new digital asset. How do you really get them comfortable with this, with something that may be new to them?

**Dr. Vin Menon** (3:27)
Yeah. So change is always a challenge, right? So we had to go through a change process.
And what we have seen is the entire industry, or more than like 300, 400 public companies are now using digital asset treasury strategies. So we have seen that these companies are performing very well, especially when the digital debt strategies have been implemented. So it's very easy for any other traditional CEOs to, you know, get into that.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:53)
And how do you ensure that MindWave really stays adaptable, right? Because you said, right, change happens, people need to evolve, companies need to evolve. How do you make sure that MindWave evolves? Because crypto is evolving too.

**Dr. Vin Menon** (4:04)
Yeah. So what we have been in this industry for, you know, collectively our management team, we have been in the industry for probably like since 2015-16, right? So we have enough experience. So what we do is we are doing a typical outsourcing of digital asset treasury.
So any company, let's say traditional businesses like pharmaceuticals or manufacturing, they don't really have to worry about how the treasury is been set up, how it is managed, and how the yields are generated. So the whole total outsourcing of these activities are what we are doing for the companies.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:42)
And so I want to talk a little bit about your career and sort of tie that to everything that's going on at MindWave, right? Your career spans fintech, blockchain, infrastructure, sustainable finance, among other things as well. Pharmaceuticals, too. Obviously, you've worked across different parts of the world. Your business is set up across different parts of the world. How has this global and diverse perspective that you've experienced influenced really the governance frameworks that you're building at MindWave? How has it really impacted what you and your team are building?