Zac Prince: What is Crypto Lending? | SALT Talks #233

“Despite the day-to-day price fluctuations of cryptocurrencies, this sector is in a long-term secular growth trend. There are new people and businesses all the time and BlockFi is launching new products all the time.”

Zac Prince is the Chief Executive Officer of BlockFi. Founded in 2017, BlockFi provides trade execution services for institutions and opportunities for retail investors to earn a yield on their bitcoin holdings. In January 2018, BlockFi launched its first product: USD loans backed by cryptocurrency for cryptocurrency holders allowing them to offer their bitcoin, ether or litecoin assets as collateral for a loan. In 2019, BlockFi launched its second major product to retail customers, a crypto-funded interest account. With this account, customers deposit bitcoin, ether or litecoin with the company for the assets to accumulate cumulative interest every month. BlockFi has previously advertised 6.2% annual interest, compounded monthly. The firm has $10 billion in outstanding loans, $15 billion in total assets and has been operating profitably for several months.

Zac discusses his crypto journey and founding of BlockFi, a financial services platform offering the ability secure a loan using one’s Bitcoin value. With the growth profile of Bitcoin, he explains the importance of avoiding the tax consequences of selling the cryptocurrency. With new entrants and businesses joining the crypto space every day, big banks will only continue to grow their involvement as regulations become clearer. Prince talks about BlockFi’s latest retail offering, a Visa credit card that earns users Bitcoin for every dollar spent, instead of traditional rewards like airline miles or cash back.

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SPEAKER

Zac Prince.jpeg

Zac Prince

Chief Executive Officer

BlockFi

MODERATOR

Anthony Scaramucci

Founder & Managing Partner

SkyBridge

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - Intro and background

4:18 - Crypto eureka moment

8:20 - BlockFi elevator pitch

13:38 - Borrowing against Bitcoin

15:56 - BlockFi success despite Bitcoin pullback

18:18 - Future of Bitcoin and BlockFi

22:48 - Big banks’ Bitcoin adoption

26:40 - Bitcoin regulations

31:01 - BlockFi credit cards

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Zins: (00:07)
Welcome back everyone to SALT Talks. My name is Jason Zins. I'm a partner at SkyBridge Capital. As most of you know, SALT is a global thought leadership and networking forum, encompassing finance, technology and politics. SALT talks is a series of digital interviews with the world's foremost investors, creators and thinkers. Just as we do at our global SALT events, we aim to both empower big, important ideas and provide our audience a window into the minds of subject matter experts. And so today we have a subject matter expert and business builder extraordinaire, Zac Prince, the CEO and founder of BlockFi.

Jason Zins: (00:51)
Quickly on Zac's background and biography. Zac is the founder and CEO of BlockFi, a crypto financial services company founded in 2017 with Flori Marquez. With experience in multiple leadership roles at successful tech companies, his career started in adtech where he was a part of two successful acquisitions Admeld, which was acquired by Google and Sociomantic acquired by DunnHumby. Prior to starting BlockFi, he led business development teams at Orchard Platform, a broker dealer and RIA in the online lending sector and Zibby, an online consumer lender. Zac graduated cum laude from Texas State University, with a BA in international business and a minor in Spanish. Zac, thanks so much for joining us today.

Jason Zins: (01:37)
A familiar face with us as well, of course, our host for this SALT Talk, Anthony Scaramucci.

Anthony Scaramucci: (01:44)
A familiar face. You're worse than John Darcie, the other host. See Zac, you millennials, you give us a hard time. I like having baby boomers on this show so we can team up against you people. Zac, I want to get right into it with you. Jason's going to feather in some questions towards the end, but I want to talk about your upbringing, if you don't mind. What'd your mom, dad do? How did you end up where you are at BlockFi? Tell us that odyssey because I know when you were in junior high school somewhere, you didn't think you were going to be the founder and CEO of BlockFi, so tell us what happened.

Zac Prince: (02:21)
Yeah, so I grew up in South Texas. I was always a very competitive athlete and ultimately spent the most time as a tennis player and I was a nationally ranked. I used to travel around the country on weekends competing in junior tournaments across the US. I was always really financially minded growing up. I actually asked my parents for stocks for Christmas when I was 10, but my parents were not particularly financially minded. We were middle class and I was very comfortable, but they didn't give me stocks. And so anyways, so fast forward to college, I put myself through school as a semiprofessional online poker player. Was fortunate to come out of school with no debt. And I always anticipated working in the financial services industry, but I finished school in May of 2009 so it wasn't the best time to be looking for entry level roles in financial services. I ended up working at a advertising technology company and I was employee number 15 and it was just a tremendous experience.

Zac Prince: (03:25)
Three years after I joined, we were 250 people acquired by Google. At the time it was the sixth largest acquisition in Google's history. And after transitioning to Google, I realized that I really enjoyed building things and working on small teams. It took me about six months to completely lose my mind at Google with just the size of the org and everything that was going on. I left Google, went to another startup, launched the North American version of a German based adtech company. That was successful and acquired. And then after that, most relevantly for BlockFi, moved into the online lending sector and the alternative credit sector. And while I was working in that sector, I started personally investing in cryptocurrency in 2015.

Anthony Scaramucci: (04:08)
Let me stop you right there though, because I want the eureka moment. You started investing in cryptocurrency in 2015. Why? And where was your Eureka moment?

Zac Prince: (04:19)
I was actually writing a blog on the side. I was working at this company called Orchard and we were the largest provider of data and technology tools to institutions that were either buying loans or directly financing online lending platforms. And so I was seeing all of this really interesting stuff, online consumer loans, online real estate loans and also more broadly in FinTech, robo-advisors were getting created and I kind of became the FinTech guy in my friend group. And I decided to start just writing some of this stuff down. Should you invest in fractional shares of commercial real estate online? Should you consider using a robo-advisor? Should you be participating in credit markets on some of these online lending platforms? And writing that blog led me to discover Bitcoin. And what really struck me about it initially was a lot of the things that happen in FinTech are kind of a new front end on top of the same core infrastructure that has powered the financial system for a long time.

Zac Prince: (05:15)
And I thought it was really interesting how Bitcoin was not only a new technology that enabled a new payment rail, but also a completely new investible asset that if things worked out for it, could potentially be very, very successful in terms of performance financially, but also have a positive impact on the world. And so I initially just took a flyer on it and was recommending on this tiny blog that I had, that probably 10 people read, that people should create a Coinbase account and buy some Bitcoin. I ultimately completely whiffed it in 2015. I originally bought Bitcoin around 200. I sold the majority of my Bitcoin at 600 and thought I was just such a genius Bitcoin trader and ended up buying more later. But that's what led me to it originally. And then I learned about Ethereum in 2016, made an analogy in my head that maybe Bitcoin is a little bit like a Blackberry. Ethereum's a little bit like an iPhone so I bought a ton of Ethereum.

Zac Prince: (06:12)
Ethereum for six months after I owned it was a horrible investment, down 50, 60% because there was this Dow hack and it was all very scary at that time. You had to send your money off with Coinbase, didn't know what was going on but then in late 2016, the prices started doing well. I had started going to meetups in New York City because at a certain point, my wife said, "You're talking about cryptocurrency with me and I love you, but I don't want to talk about cryptocurrency." She's like, "You can have Tuesday nights, go find some other nerds or whatever to talk about cryptocurrency with." And those meetups initially it was 10 people at a sleepy bar in Union Square just nerding out over cryptocurrency. But by the first quarter and second quarter of 2017, it had started to gather some real momentum and there were big law firms hosting 500 person meetups in Midtown Manhattan and there's a line of 200 people outside because there wasn't enough room to get in.

Zac Prince: (07:18)
It was clear that this was becoming very, very real. And at one of those meetups, I said to somebody, "I've been working in online lending. I think there's going to be a need in this asset class for people to finance Bitcoin and other assets and I think I'm in a great position to do it because I've been working in the alternative debt and credit markets for the last five years. Do you think it's a good idea?" And this person at the meetup was like, "That's the best idea I've ever heard. You need to start this business yesterday." Basically I went home that night and told my wife the idea and put in my resignation at the FinTech company I was working at the next day.

Anthony Scaramucci: (07:58)
Yeah. I absolutely love this story. I want to take you to the elevator here at SkyBridge. Now we're on the fourth floor, but let's pretend we're on the 60th floor for this conversation. I want the elevator pitch. We're coming down the elevator. I open up the elevator, there's Zac Prince. Tell me about BlockFi and now we're moving down the elevator.

Zac Prince: (08:20)
Sure. We're a financial services platform for crypto investors and crypto market participants. We have a retail facing side of our platform where you can earn interest on your cryptocurrencies. You can buy and sell cryptocurrencies and you can get a loan secured by the value of your portfolio. We're also launching our fourth product on the retail side imminently, it's a Bitcoin rewards credit card. You can earn Bitcoin with every dollar that you spend on the card instead of airline miles or regular cash back. And then we have an institutional side of our platform where we're effectively a prime broker for the asset class. And we work with market making firms, proprietary trading firms, hedge funds and other types of institutions to finance their activities in the cryptocurrency markets and also to provide best execution and facilitate their participation in the trading markets without them having to go up and set up connections on all the various venues themselves.

Anthony Scaramucci: (09:16)
And brilliant stuff and I can't wait to get that credit card in my hands. And just want you to know, I have a very high credit score. Just want to point that out to everybody on SALT Talks. But I want to ask you this, I'm going to move millions of dollars of Bitcoin to you, is my Bitcoin safe and secure on BlockFi? And if it is, tell us why.

Zac Prince: (09:36)
It's absolutely safe and secure. A couple of things that I would highlight. First off, we work with the best custodians in the industry, Fidelity, Gemini and BitGo are the core of our custody stack. Additionally, we have a risk management layer that not only is incredibly sophisticated, but has also been battle tested. We made our first loan in January of 2018 and we've been active in this market at increasing scale throughout lots of periods of volatility. We've never lost a penny across any of the lending that we do. Additionally, with the exact business model that BlockFi has, we're the only company that's domiciled and fully regulated in the US and has the backing of phenomenal institutional investors who go very deep in terms of understanding how everything works at BlockFi before deciding to invest in our platform. And we've raised quite a bit of money and we have a very, very strong balance sheet.

Anthony Scaramucci: (10:34)
Okay. Now you've got me convinced, I've moved my millions of dollars over to you, my Bitcoin, I should say, in nominal dollars. And how much could I earn on my Bitcoin when I'm at BlockFi?

Zac Prince: (10:48)
Yeah, just to be clear, we're increasingly seeing folks not only use our platform to earn interest on cryptocurrencies, but also to earn interest on stable coins. Which I think of is just digital dollars. They're one to one interchangeable with dollars in a bank account on our platform and the rates for all of them are very attractive. On stable coins today, folks are earning 7%, on Bitcoin they're earning 4% and on Ethereum they're earning four and a half percent.

Anthony Scaramucci: (11:17)
Okay. Those rates sound high to traditional finance. When we see lower rates and my checking account is zero at the such and such bank and maybe I'm at 90 basis points on my CD, Zac, my three year CD is earning me 90 basis points in fiat currency that's being devalued by the minute due to the printing press. How am I getting 7% from you?

Zac Prince: (11:42)
Listen, the fundamental reason that these high yields exist on platforms like ours is that we're able to charge high rates when we're lending out the capital that our clients are holding on our platform. And the reason we're able to do that is that the cryptocurrency sector, it's not connected to the traditional financial system particularly well right now. And the implication of that is that cryptocurrency companies, cryptocurrency trading firms, they're not accessing the traditional debt and credit markets from banks and so therefore they have a higher cost of capital, which they're accessing through firms like BlockFi. One analogy that I tell folks that resonates with some people is there's publicly traded REITs. One that's called Innovative Industrial Properties as an example. And they basically have warehouses where they allow cannabis growers in states that have legalized cannabis growing.

Zac Prince: (12:39)
They do triple net leases for them and they charge 15%. A triple net lease if you were growing carrots or if you were a normal franchise store is going to be liable or plus two and a half percent, but it's way more expensive. The cryptocurrency industry faces that same fundamental problem of being early, not having access to traditional debt and credit markets. As a result, the cost of capital is high. We enable folks to participate in that. And the good news here is that the majority of the lending that we're doing is over collateralized with liquid assets. On the spectrum of lending risk, we're on the low, low, low end of the spectrum with the types of loans that we're making and that's why we've had the perfect performance that we've had on our platform today.

Anthony Scaramucci: (13:24)
That brings my next question. I've now got my millions of dollars of Bitcoin over there, and I want to borrow against it. Let's say a million dollars, how much would you lend me on my Bitcoin account at BlockFi?

Zac Prince: (13:39)
You can borrow up to 50% of the value of the assets that you hold at BlockFi. If you have a million dollars worth of Bitcoin, you're going to be able to borrow half a million dollars secured by that million dollars worth of Bitcoin.

Anthony Scaramucci: (13:56)
And what am I paying in a percentage of interest right now?

Zac Prince: (14:00)
We have three pricing options. You can borrow at a 50% LTV, 35% LTV or a 20% LTV. At a 50% LTV, the interest rate is 9.75%. And depending on the loan size there's also an origination fee, which can range from 50 bips up to 2%.

Anthony Scaramucci: (14:18)
Okay. It's a fairly high yield, but if you're a big Bitcoin believer and you want to have a leverage play on Bitcoin, you're one of the great places to go for this. What am I missing?

Zac Prince: (14:32)
That's right. It's safe and secure. And importantly, in terms of tax optimization, if you're someone that's bullish on the future price of Bitcoin and you have a large embedded capital gain in that position, as a lot of folks in this space do, because Bitcoin has been an incredible asset in terms of investment performance, just not having to sell and realize that tax consequence is incredibly valuable. If you're someone like me that lives in New York, that's 35% that you're saving by not selling and you still have the position. Furthermore, to the extent that you use the proceeds of the loan to make other investments, which the majority of our clients do, this is kind of a high net worth type of borrowing. You can typically deduct the interest that you're charged on the loan using the investment interest expense deduction for your taxes. It's a very common wealth management tool. We're just making it available for cryptocurrency investors.

Anthony Scaramucci: (15:36)
Zac, you've built this colossal company. The Bitcoin was down in the month of May. It was arguably the biggest month loss, month to date loss, if you will and yet your company did phenomenally well in the month of May. Why is that?

Zac Prince: (15:57)
I think there's a few reasons. Different products on our platform behave differently to market conditions. To give you an example, trading on our platform typically correlates really tightly with volatility. If there's volatility, there's a lot of trading volume. US dollar borrowing is not as active when market sentiment is bearish and performance is bearish like it was recently. But Bitcoin borrowing, which is something that we're also very active in, increases when market sentiment is bearish. Different products react differently to market conditions. Also, I think that our products are still relatively early in terms of everyone, even just in the cryptocurrency market, understanding that they're available and accessing them. I'll give you one stat just to recognize that, Coinbase has 55 million retail accounts, Blockfi has about 450,000 retail accounts today. We're still pretty early in terms of just letting people know that there's a platform where you can do these things.

Zac Prince: (17:08)
And then lastly, despite the day to day price fluctuations of cryptocurrencies, this sector is in a longterm secular growth trend. There are new people coming in all of the time. There are new business opportunities all of the time and we're launching new products all the time. We shipped our first credit cards last month to two employees and a couple of friends and family and influencers and we'll be rolling them out publicly this month.

Anthony Scaramucci: (17:38)
I didn't get my credit card application yet, Zac. Am I still considered one of the friends and family I'm hoping? Or no?

Zac Prince: (17:46)
You absolutely are. You'll be posting a picture with the credit card potentially before this podcast or this show airs.

Anthony Scaramucci: (17:54)
All right, I cannot wait for that actually because I want to spend and earn Bitcoin when I'm spending. Zac, you're in 20, we're going to fast forward now. We're in 2026, it's five years from today. Where is BlockFi? What's the price of Bitcoin? By the way, we're going to ask you to play a guessing game with us. And where is BlockFi?

Zac Prince: (18:19)
2026 I would say Bitcoin's between two and 300,000, BlockFi is doing all of the same things that we're doing today and we have continued to launch additional products that both make our platform more valuable to the clients that we already have, who are primarily crypto investors and crypto market participants, but also take this financial services infrastructure that we've built in the crypto ecosystem and apply it to other areas of traditional financial services.

Zac Prince: (18:57)
What does that mean? Well, we're launching a Bitcoin rewards credit card. That's our first product in the payments category. The payments category is one that we're going to be very active in on the retail side of our platform. We're going to be launching a debit card, peer to peer payment functionality and more on and off ramps so that our clients, both in and outside the US are able to easily transition between a traditional bank account or a FinTech platform where they hold funds like PayPal and the BlockFi ecosystem. And ultimately the impact that I expect we'll have there and that the entire industry will have there is financial services are going to be better, faster and cheaper and more accessible for global consumers. And I think that's a very, very powerful impact that this industry is going to have on the world. And BlockFi will be a significant part of that.

Zac Prince: (19:47)
Then on the institutional side of our platform, clients will be using us for a lot more types of activities than what they are today. Right now we're mainly offering the ability for folks to trade the spot market, but we're going to expand into derivatives. And I think there might be parallels in markets like commodities in FX, where some of the infrastructure that we've built out for crypto can also be applied for some of our institutional clients. Thematically, continuing to accelerate and do more things on the crypto side of the platform but also expanding more into what we think of today as traditional financial services. I ultimately think crypto, FinTech and traditional finance is all going to merge and BlockFi's part of that story in terms of what you'll see from us in 2026.

Anthony Scaramucci: (20:37)
All right, well I appreciate you being on SALT Talks. I would be remiss if I didn't include my erstwhile partner, Jason Zins who I think shave three days ago. And he knows I'm a like George Steinbrenner, so I want people clean shaven. Zac, you can do anything you want. You're doing a beautiful job at BlockFi. I'm a proud investor and I'm looking forward to getting my credit card. And go ahead, Mr. Zins. I know you've got questions that you were thinking about for Mr. Prince.

Jason Zins: (21:08)
Thank you. And I did this to get you going so the public can see the real you. You're hard on us sometimes.

Anthony Scaramucci: (21:16)
I'm a very demanding boss, Zac. But then again, I don't ask them to do anything I wouldn't do myself.

Jason Zins: (21:23)
And the HR director, if I have a problem with it.

Anthony Scaramucci: (21:25)
I am, yes. If there's a problem at SkyBridge, I'm the personnel director, Zac. They have to put the suggestions in the suggestion box right here by the Muhammad Ali portrait. I set those on fire at 4:30. We had a little burning ceremony. Go ahead, Mr. Zins. Go ahead.

Jason Zins: (21:45)
Zac, I want to pick up on one of the points you ended on, which is sort of bridging the gap between the crypto ecosystem and the traditional financial ecosystem. And one, I want to commend you for it because I think a lot of times these days in the Bitcoin community and the crypto community, it's sort of us versus them. Whereas I think longer term to your point where Bitcoin is headed and where we really think the value is, is more engagement, more adoption. And so I think again, I want to commend you on helping to try and bring it mainstream. Now the flip side to that though is we're five years from now, it's 2026. You guys have executed on your plan. You're then playing in the sandbox with the big banks. Everyone sees the announcements from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley but you probably have some special insight here. Where do you think the banks are as it relates to supporting crypto in some of the manner that you guys already are doing?

Zac Prince: (22:48)
Yeah, so I think they're definitely more interested in making more progress today than they were last year or the year before or the year before. They are absolutely starting to do things. Some banks faster than others. And I think that's a trend that's going to continue because the opportunity in the sector is only going to continue to go up and they have to be here because if they're not, then their clients are going to be doing these activities with other folks. That being said, there is a tremendous lack of clarity from a regulatory perspective in a way that a bank would need clarity to do all of the things that a company like BlockFi does. And these aren't companies that turn on a dime and launch new products and technologies really seamlessly. That's not one of the strengths that we would describe banks as having is nimbleness and speed.

Zac Prince: (23:52)
What we're starting to see is two things today. One, asset management products being added to the wealth platforms. I believe it was Morgan Stanley that's added a couple of funds. I'm sure others will follow. And folks like Goldman are starting to get active in cash settled derivatives or clearing futures for some of their pre-existing clients. Ultimately, I think that all of these things are great for the sector. It all ties into the theme of accessibility and access and financing. And in fact, there are things that I anticipate BlockFi will be doing with some of the major banks in terms of partnerships or us being a client of theirs or even vice versa, depending on the scenario. If we are not able to at BlockFi, stay ahead of the curve relative to banks in terms of how fast they're building solutions.

Zac Prince: (24:56)
And I'll give you a couple of examples. If you start clearing cash settled Bitcoin futures, you're probably still a ways away from being able to do that on the cryptocurrencies number two through 10 in the market cap stack. Well, that's not the case for a platform like BlockFi. You're probably not close to offering your clients the ability to participate in staking or the different global markets around the world. And then on the retail side, look, they're even farther away from doing anything on retail that has tremendous regulatory and political ramifications. And ultimately all of the great FinTech companies that we know today have been created during periods of time where the banks were perfectly capable in theory of competing with them and a lot of massive companies have been built. I think we'll have an edge there in terms of technology and client service and just being on the front foot of innovation and user experience with our platform. We're in a good spot. We welcome their participation and it's definitely going to only increase as time goes on.

Jason Zins: (26:05)
Great. Well, I think one of the many aspects of your business that I find so impressive is how in such a short period of time you've rolled out and successfully rolled out all of these new products. Certainly seems like you're continuing to stay ahead of the curve. I do want to pick up on the regulatory side, because that's sort of synonymous when anyone is talking about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. Give us the high level lay of the land on the regulatory side, as it relates to BlockFi specifically and then just the broader ecosystem.

Zac Prince: (26:40)
Sure. BlockFi specifically, we're a MSB, money services business, at the federal level. That's your KYC, AML type regulations. And then we hold money transmission and lending licenses at the state level. We are always evaluating ways that could enhance our regulatory positioning. And this is something that happens with lots of FinTech companies. Just to use Square as an example, in the early days of Square, they had a materially similar setup to the setup that BlockFi has today. Over the last couple of years, they've made progress on creating a new bank in Utah. And so whether BlockFi over the short or medium term makes it all the way to that bank step where we end up somewhere in the middle remains TBD. There are things that we're working on there and we do expect that there will be a progression over time. But every license we've ever applied for we've received. Oftentimes these are licenses where we're the first company ever getting this type of license for this type of activity.

Zac Prince: (27:51)
And so there's a lot of engagement and education that we do with the regulators. And overall, I think we've struck a very reasonable approach to the industry to date in the US and finding an appropriate balance between facilitating innovation, enabling the sector to get created and thrive and trying to tamp out things when they're too far in the deep end. I would be remiss not to say that we still have a ton of work to do as an industry. There are things that are just laughably bad today. For example, the treatment of cryptocurrencies on a balance sheet under the public company accounting rules, not being able to mark them at fair value is in my humble opinion, quite absurd and something that probably everyone in the industry can rally around as a area that needs some change.

Zac Prince: (28:55)
And there are still a few things that need to get sorted out with the SEC in terms of clearer definitions around tokens or why we don't have a green light for a Bitcoin ETF yet. I think those are probably two of the biggest things that are important for us to work on as an industry with regulators in the near future. But overall, I've been relatively happy with how we've let things play out. And I think that the US ultimately will stay true to form in terms of being a place where we want to facilitate innovation. We want to have these new high growth, high technology, high impact industries be built and domiciled here because it's great for the economy.

Jason Zins: (29:43)
It sounds like your philosophy, your view is really to embrace regulation or at least work with the regulators as opposed to try and operate in these gray areas that may exist out there.

Zac Prince: (29:57)
Absolutely. And look, even if you're operating, even if there's something that's a gray area, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't engage. And I think that's part of our DNA at BlockFi and that DNA comes from a traditional FinTech. There are numerous stories in FinTech corporate development, in other industries in FinTech that experienced a big boom and consolidation and maturation over time as an industry where striking that right balance and it always is a balance, separates the leaders from the folks that ultimately end up not being in positions one, two or three in a particular category.

Jason Zins: (30:45)
Great. Well, I think we're getting towards the end of our time. I know on Twitter, of course, as I'm sure you've seen, everyone's asking for when they're getting their credit card. Can you tell us anything when we can expect it?

Anthony Scaramucci: (30:57)
I'm getting my credit card right after this podcast, I mean right after this SALT Talk, that I know.

Zac Prince: (31:02)
We have waiting list for folks who aren't named Anthony Scaramucci.

Anthony Scaramucci: (31:07)
Oh, I'm hugging you.

Zac Prince: (31:10)
And involved with BlockFi as an investor. We have a waiting list with a little over 400,000 people on it. What I can say is that by the time this airs, if it is indeed till the seventh, we will be taking folks off of that public waiting list. We won't be fully through the waiting list, but we will have launched it and the folks on the lower numbers, the first couple of thousands at least of the waiting list, will be getting their cards. And then we're going to work through the waiting list as quickly as we can. And by August, September of this year, we're going to be doing a ton of fun marketing. If you're flying around a major airport, you'll probably see ads talking about airline points are worthless, you should be earning Bitcoin and we're going to go big with it and have a lot of fun.

Anthony Scaramucci: (31:55)
All right, well, I'm going to be spending all my money on my BlockFi credit card, Zac. I just want to make sure you know that. Zins, can you call the Lambo dealer please and find out if they accept BlockFi Visa? Can you call them for me after this?

Jason Zins: (32:08)
It's a Visa card, so you tell me Zac. I assume it can be used anywhere Visa is accepted, as they say on the commercials.

Zac Prince: (32:15)
That's right. Everywhere Visa is accepted.

Jason Zins: (32:18)
Anthony, everyone saw the pictures of you in the Lambo, Anthony. We saw them on Twitter, but let's wait to buy for the credit card.

Anthony Scaramucci: (32:27)
By the way, it was a rented car. I know everyone goes crazy with the hating and everything. But I did get an orange colored car for the weekend, Zac, because I thought it was Bitcoin orange, Zac.

Zac Prince: (32:39)
I thought that was beautiful. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near as cool as you on the car front. We literally have, we have two Kias.

Anthony Scaramucci: (32:48)
Let me tell you, anytime you want to come over to the Scaramucci house, because we're Italian, we got to have cars. Everybody's got to have a car in the family. Anytime you want to come over, drive any of the cars, you're welcome to, but something tells me you're not going to need to do that. You're an amazing entrepreneur. You've got incredible commercial instincts and I think one of the hallmarks of your success, in addition to your charm and your salesmanship is your adaptability. The way you've moved through your career and positioned this company, I'm just looking forward to your future and being a shareholder. I'm super proud of everything you're doing and so thank you for joining SALT Talks and we'll see you soon, Zac. You got to come to the SALT Conference. I'm expecting you there.

Zac Prince: (33:34)
Thanks, Anthony. We'll be there.

Anthony Scaramucci: (33:35)
I'm expecting you to have a kiosk with the BlockFi Visa.

Zac Prince: (33:37)
We have a booth.

Anthony Scaramucci: (33:38)
Yeah, exactly.

Zac Prince: (33:39)
I think we're a sponsor with a booth, the team with be there.

Anthony Scaramucci: (33:41)
I'm looking forward to handing out BlockFi Visa applications to all my friends and delegates.

Zac Prince: (33:47)
Sounds great. Thanks so much for having me, guys.

Anthony Scaramucci: (33:49)
Happy Fourth, my friend.

Jason Zins: (33:50)
Thanks, Zac. That was great. Appreciate it.