Samsung Puts Stablecoins on 82M Galaxy Devices; BTC Slides on Hot CPI

Jennifer Sanasie (0:00)

On today's Public Keys at the New York Stock Exchange, Samsung puts stable coins on 82 million Galaxy Devices, a new token that gives non-US investors a 7% target yield backed by American home loans, and what's ahead for Bitcoin in Q4. I'm Jen Sanasie, let's get into it.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the special Wednesday edition of the show. Before we get started, Consensus is back in Hong Kong, February 1st to 3rd, and then in Miami from the 4th to 6th of May next year. Get your tickets at a discount with the code CDLIVE. Head to consensus.coindesk.com.

All right, let's get to our first interview now. Samsung is putting stable coins in the pocket of tens of millions of Americans. Recently, the Korean tech giant announced that Samsung Wallet will support USDC transfers on Solana and Swi. It starts the last week of the month across 82 million Galaxy devices in the United States. There's no new app to download, just a feature inside the wallet where people already keep their cards, boarding passes and IDs for Solana. It's another household name after PayPal and Western Union. Joining us now to unpack it all is Nick Ducoff, General Manager of Institutional at the Solana Foundation. Hey Nick.

Nick Ducoff (1:15)

Hi there, thanks so much for having me.

Jennifer Sanasie (1:16)

Thanks for being here. It's wonderful to see you again. Just lay a foundation for us. Talk to us about how this partnership came to be.

Nick Ducoff (1:24)

Well, this is really exciting. Another mainstream moment that Solana is building towards.

As you mentioned, Samsung just put stable coins inside the Samsung Wallet app that millions of people already use every day. They don't need to download a new crypto app. They don't need to know about seed phrases or private keys. In a single moment, stable coins will not be available to over 80 million Galaxy phones around the world. And that's not a pilot, that's real scale. And that's the type of scale that Solana is built for.

Jennifer Sanasie (1:52)

Walk me through the user experience here. I know nothing about stable coins. I have one of these devices. I open my wallet up. What am I going to see? How do I actually start using the product?

Nick Ducoff (2:02)

That's a great question. So users can send circles stable coin, which is USDC worldwide in seconds with no transfer fee from Samsung. Or they can send money straight to a bank account in over 60 countries so that the recipient can get local currency and doesn't even need a crypto wallet. So you get all the speed and low costs that makes this possible from a high-performance blockchain like Solana so that consumers can just do what they want to do without having to think about the blockchain performing in the background.

Jennifer Sanasie (2:34)

Is there going to be some level of, I guess, education or consumer awareness here? Because I think about when I get my phone, there are a bunch of pre-installed apps on the phone. There are some features I'm not taking advantage of. So for these 82 million devices, for folks who maybe don't know what a stable coin is, is there any initiative to help onboard people who are using the device?

Nick Ducoff (2:56)

Well, we're certainly doing our part here at the Solana Foundation and ensuring that we make sure people know about this great opportunity they have if they're a Samsung wallet user. I imagine Samsung will make it clear in their user experience that Samsung creates incredible products. That's why they're used by tens of millions of people around the world.

So I expect that the users will have a very good understanding of what's possible with stable coins in their Samsung wallet on Solana.

Jennifer Sanasie (3:27)

Now, is this going to be a wallet where users are holding their own keys? Is it custodial? How does that piece of it work?

Nick Ducoff (3:35)

Yeah. So the technology stays invisible, exactly how it should be if crypto is going to reach normal people. All of that is hidden in the background.

And it's that fast finality and low cost that really creates the consumer experience that makes this possible. Samsung is doing this because they know that Solana can handle the type of throughput without the user noticing that they're using a blockchain. It just feels like any other mobile application that they'd otherwise be using. And with this type of distribution to tens of millions of phones, it really turns stable coins into something that people will actually use.

Jennifer Sanasie (4:12)

I want to zoom out a little bit now and talk about the state of stable coin usage on Solana. What can you tell us about what you've seen when it comes to stable coin volumes as we head into Q4?