The stablecoin revolution is here — are banks ready?

**Tony Clark** (0:03)
This is the London Fintech Podcast, bringing you practical insights and approaches, stories and inspiration from the innovators who are building the new world of financial services.
I'm back now, I'm fully recovered from an amazing week in May 2020 in Amsterdam. I'm delighted to say that I spoke to so many interesting businesses and people. And one of the best conversations was this one with Ran Goldi from Fireblocks. Fireblocks are a leading firm in the blockchain, and they have a lot of space as you'll discover in this conversation. I just want to say, if you're watching the video episode of this on YouTube, on Spotify, we do have a camera glitch at 26 minutes, and we go to a holding screen. If you're on one of the audio players on Spotify or Apple, or one of the other pod players, you won't notice. Let's go to the episode. Welcome to London Fintech Podcast, live from Monday, 2020 in Amsterdam.
And for those of you who are listening, welcome to conversation. I'm with Ran Goldi from Fireblocks. Thank you, thank you. Good to see you.

**Ran Goldi** (1:01)
Yeah, good to see you, Tony. Thank you for having me here, live at Monday, 2020 in Amsterdam. There's actually a lot of people outside that are hearing us. It's a bit scary because we're in this booth of glass, and people are looking at the outside. I feel a bit like a species. Look at this stable coin guy.

**Tony Clark** (1:20)
Yeah.

**Ran Goldi** (1:20)
How are you doing?

**Tony Clark** (1:21)
I always tell the story. I have a professional broadcasting friend who says, podcasting is just like conversation in the pub, this is like the weirdest pub.

**Ran Goldi** (1:29)
Weirdest pub.

**Tony Clark** (1:29)
Weirdest pub. And we've just been, for those of you outside wondering what we were all laughing about, we were just having a conversation about who we look like, but that's a different track to go down, I think.

**Ran Goldi** (1:37)
Yeah, I will say, if you're looking at Tony right now, he's Ed Harris, and we got to the point when I look like a Borat.

**Tony Clark** (1:45)
You sound like a Borat, I think.
Okay, so we're not here to talk about looking like is, we're here in the context of the money stack rewired, and if you take a walk around the hall, or you take a walk around the seven halls that is Money 2020 Amsterdam, there are 144 crypto companies here. Oh, wow. And that's what the media guys told me this morning. And so it's a crowded space. They're alongside the Agenetic AI firms, the biggest financial institutions on the planet, and the payments companies. That's really the broad spread. But we're talking crypto. Fireblocks is one of the largest, Ran Goldi, yeah?

**Ran Goldi** (2:23)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it's funny. Like we were an eight-year-old company now, which is still young, obviously.
When we started, I will say 100% of our clients were crypto, right? Today, eight years after, and again, these were like the exchanges on off-ramps, whatever. Today, eight years after, I will say that 65% of our clients are either payment companies, NEO banks, banks, FIs. The crypto-native crowd has been compressed a bit, but also, again, the mainstream FIs of the world are coming on-chain.

**Tony Clark** (3:00)
Yeah. And let's put some numbers to this. So I spent a bit of time with your team earlier today. Oh, nice. So I had a look at the product.

**Ran Goldi** (3:05)
Did they say anything about me?

**Tony Clark** (3:07)
It's all good.
And I've got my primer. But let's take a look at Fireblocks. And you put me right on the numbers. But I think you do $14 trillion of stable coin transactions for clients annually. You got 2,600 clients. And you're doing 10% essentially of the institutional stable coin volume globally. Is that right?

**Ran Goldi** (3:28)
Yeah, it's right.
So we did actually $15 trillion up until now. The interesting thing is that $6 trillion was last year. So a lot of this is really happening over the last two years. And as you said, about 10% to 15%, I will say, of global blockchain volume goes through Fireblocks. So we really have this really good view of what's happening on chain.

**Tony Clark** (3:54)
And we met briefly a couple of weeks ago. One thing you said to me is that the hottest thing in DeFi is TradFi, which is the title we gave this conversation, because I really like that. And we're going to come to it. I think a lot of that institutional acceleration is recent.