Speaker 0:  walmart and amazon are thinking of launching their own stablecoin. stablecoins and meme coins seem to be a thing. everyone's doing their, potentially a trump coin coming out. you know, elon musk has done a bunch of stuff with, crypto tokens. but now amazon and walmart are stepping in with a stable coin initiative trying to disrupt the payments plans. what's happening here, john?

Speaker 1:  yeah. so this obviously, this this makes sense. so for those of you that don't know, there's on average, credit card interchange fees in the us are about 1.97 for visa, 1.79 for mastercard, and i think amex is, like, 3.15 or it's ridiculous per transaction. and so, walmart and amazon, they're exploring creating their own let's call them digital dollars for now just to make it easy so people that are to understand. and it could maybe revolutionize how we pay for things, but it also could complicate things if everyone has their own stablecoin. so think of the stablecoin like their own digital gift cards, but they actually work like real dollars. so they can be sent instantly over the internet without going through traditional banks. now this is great for people who use their debit cards kind of thing to spend. but for people that use credit cards and put things on credit, we're gonna have to figure out what that solution looks like. but why does this matter? right? is every time you swipe your credit card, and this is mostly talking about credit cards, though, all these retailers have to pay fees. so for giants like walmart and amazon, this is billions of dollars, annually that they're paying out. so if they create their own digital payment systems, they could potentially eliminate these fees and save massive amounts of money. now the catalyst for all of this is that the us senate just recently passed the genius act, which creates the first ever regulatory framework for stablecoins, giving companies like walmart and amazon the legal clarity they need to move forward. what are your thoughts on this, craig? do you think this is going stablecoins are gonna replace credit cards? i don't think so.

Speaker 0:  i like the overall concept, but, you know, how long have we been talking about decentralizing currency? you know, deep, helping funding the debanked and all that stuff. but we come along to an interesting place where it's just too expensive. traditional banking, mastercard, visa institutions have you locked in, and then the companies get a fee and they charge that on top of you. and, say, maybe you're taking, you're not walmart. let's just say you're a regular person, and you're taking payments through paypal or stripe or whatever. they take their other percentages on top of that, and it really starts to add up, and you want to start looking for a new solution. it's kinda like why went, they cut the cord. they went cordless or whatever you wanna call it, for cutting the cable and not having cable as much anymore because it made more sense for them to focus on, you know, just the content they wanted, and they didn't wanna pay all these absorbent fees. now it's changed where, you know, there's so many different streaming services, for example, rather than netflix just having everything, that it's harder. and as they get distributed and it's harder for you to have your content and more and more, it costs more, people will start to pirate more. you know? so because it costs more. so people are looking for alternative methods. and this isn't like pirating, but it is like, hey. we're getting gouged. we're getting high percentages on this, these transactions, and we pay billions of dollars in fees. what would an alternative system look like, and why wouldn't we invest, few 100,000,000 in a new system to replace our billion dollars in fees?

Speaker 1:  exactly. right? but, again, people buy things on credit, and that's why they use credit cards. right? because then they don't have to pay it right away. yes. with single coins, you have to have the money to pay for it.

Speaker 0:  well, that's not necessarily true. i mean, the transaction happens at a stablecoin level, so there's no bank involved with the transaction. yeah. so, but doesn't mean that whatever that is that or amazon or walmart don't have their own credit institution that allows for these stablecoins to be transferred.

Speaker 1:  that's true. yeah.

Speaker 0:  so we don't know the system for which they're putting this in because let's face it. we've been part of the crypto community for a long time. yeah. i used to run the cryptocurrency conference. we did monthly events. you know, i had, like, 10, summits and conferences back in, like, 02/2019, and, you know, it's been years since then. still, people were bragging about how you can buy anything of crypto at that time, and it was becoming commonplace, and everyone's doing it. how many people do you know that are actively using it in their day to day life? not trading, not this, that, but using it.

Speaker 1:  very few. only those that are heavily in the but, again, this is the natural progression because there's not the infrastructure. i know that when i went to futurist, they had can't remember what coin they were using, but you could pay for things with a certain coin. right? and so the problem is we haven't had the widespread adoption yet, which is why it's a niche market right now. because since this bill got passed, the the genius act got passed, like, even, blackrock a few years ago didn't have any investment in crypto. and now look at how much they have invested in crypto. right? so things are changing. things are growing. not as fast as probably a lot of people would like or as we would have thought, but, it's it's getting there.

Speaker 0:  yeah. amazon's 447,000,000,000 in global ecommerce sales would benefit enormously from a stable coin driven cost savings. but the consumer is not ready to deal with the complexity, so it has to be hidden.

Speaker 1:  yeah. yeah.

Speaker 0:  so it has to be an amazon card, a, you know, starbucks card, or whatever that you just use and you refill. or that's attached to a bank account that just grabs it from your bank and goes, and there's no actual credit card fees or whatever that you you know? but they have to do the invisible technology. if you've gotta constantly be saying, okay. i gotta balance my streams. i gotta convert this coin to that coin. it's changing so rapidly. how do i, you know, i gotta get it out. right? because usually, you know, it's great to have stuff in stable coins, but you usually because only a few people take them, you want them out into cash at some point. so that means you have to convert it into something else usually to get it out. so that's what i mean. they have to build that background mechanism that uncomplicates these things for the consumer or, nothing happens. so if they can build a credit card, like, system that you just get the walmart card that's hooked up to your stablecoin account and you just fill it up whenever or it's attached to your bank account and it just actually does the transfers because it's walmart on the back end, then maybe you got something. but we have to figure out how that whole process is happening. what is the mechanism? are we gonna be building a new, visa slash mastercard company that does all that on the back end for people? because that's probably a fantastic opportunity. yeah. so we'll have to see. and at the same time, people don't want, everything in one. they don't wanna say, okay. i gotta go put money on my amazon account, and i gotta go put money on my walmart account, and then i gotta go put money on my starbucks account, and then i gotta go put money on you know, i don't need 10 accounts. we want one. you know? or

Speaker 1:  exactly. yeah. exactly. like, i hope that this doesn't, like, i hope that we're able to find a common ground. but at the same time, it makes sense that these companies would want their own so that they're gonna reap the benefits of having their own stablecoins. right? as opposed to, it's it's like it's like a rewards, like like aeroplan or air miles. right?

Speaker 0:  yeah. and interchange fees in the us total approximately $32,000,000,000 annually for merchants. so it's a big chunk of change that two to 3%, takes yeah. 32,000,000,000 in the us. so, you know, being able to, try figure that out. the genius act includes one to one, fiat banking, audit compliance, and consumer protection rules. the stablecoin pilot programs are expected within six to twelve months of legislative clarity. so i guess they're still going back and forth on what does this mean specifically, what does this mean. and so, you know, whenever there's this new kind of movement stuff, there's legalities need to be worked out. if you ever worked in a, highly regulated field or something like this where they just, you know, the rules weren't set yet, but you're working with companies that are working with the regulators and things change. so yeah. generally, if you're open and honest and you document everything, if things change, they give you the breathing room to switch because we've been working on this, and then you decide to go different. great. now give me, you know, whatever to switch, but it takes a while for this stuff to get worked out.

Speaker 1:  oh, it does.

Speaker 0:  yeah. i'm think it's gonna be several years, just me personally, for legislative clarity. what do you think?

Speaker 1:  absolutely. yeah. and speaking of years, i don't know if you remember back in 2019, zuckerberg in baseball. it wasn't called zuckerberg, but it was dubbed libra. whatever happened to that? i know it didn't work out. they abandoned the project, but, like, i i'm just curious because, like, it was huge one day and then gone the next kinda thing. right?

Speaker 0:  yeah. and, you know, again, no one wants a 100 different stablecoins.

Speaker 1:  yeah.

Speaker 0:  so they want the american coin, the canadian coin, or whatever you wanna call it

Speaker 1:  yeah.

Speaker 0:  that's matched to our currency. you know? don't get me started and say, oh, i'm anti american, anti canadian. i'm just saying. we want something tied to the canadian currency, call it what you want, that you can use anywhere. yeah. it's like when you go to the cne and you can get those cne bucks that you can spend in certain place, but most places don't take them. and or you go to a festival, and a lot of times that used to be the case, but now they've changed it a little bit. but, you know, they you can buy bucks there and use them there, but most places don't take them when they can't use that at the park. and you're like, okay. why would i lock myself in? i have a $100 cash that i can spend anywhere, but now you're saying i gotta put $25 on walmart and $25 on amazon and $25 on starbucks. but if i wanna buy $50 something over here, i don't have enough money now because i spread it around everywhere. yeah. so, yeah, it just but, i mean, i love where this is going because i think at least i believe the banking industry is due for disruption.

Speaker 1:  yeah. and, again, this is less about cryptocurrency, and it's more about payment infrastructure catching up to the internet age in my opinion.

Speaker 0:  yes. yeah. and this is when things get serious. this is when, when big money starts to say, hey. let's let's build a crypto infrastructure for the average consumer to, wipe out $32,000,000,000 of expenses in our industry. people will spend money, and this will actually start to happen. like, before it was hobbyist. before it wasn't big industry, they were kinda anti this. but now that there's big money behind it, i think we're gonna start to see, consolidation and, forward moving.

Speaker 1:  yeah. for sure. i agree. yeah.

Speaker 0:  so let us know what you think. you think these amazon and walmart stablecoins are the future? you think there's gonna be one coin? do you think it's another crypto dream and you're gonna stick to your ethereum or, bitcoin? let us know what you think in the comments.