# WalletConnect CEO Jess Houlgrave says self-custody and compliance can coexist Research, a Stabledash show. Jul 24, 2026. Jess Houlgrave. https://live.stabledash.com/shows/research/episodes/jess-houlgrave-on-walletconnect-pay-the-clarity-act-and-d5PUT-3FL-U Houlgrave argues that how keys are held is a separate question from regulation, as WalletConnect Pay moves into local-currency stablecoin checkout. Jess Houlgrave, who joined WalletConnect as COO, moved to CFO and now runs the company as CEO from Lisbon, is making the case that self-custodial wallets can meet regulators' goals. In a June 3, 2026 op-ed she argued the CLARITY Act does not protect self-custodial infrastructure. The bill passed the House in July 2025 and cleared Senate Banking in May 2026. ## A flaw in the bill Jess Houlgrave's argument on the CLARITY Act is that regulating software providers like banks or brokers pushes builders away from compliant ecosystems rather than toward them. She ties her interest in self-custody to financial inclusion, pointing to billions of people where institutions are fragile and "people's assets get frozen" without due process. She cites the Bank of England, which said initially that self-custody wallets would not be able to hold a British CBDC, though she says it has since walked back on this a little. ## Keys versus compliance Jess Houlgrave says the way keys are stored has nothing to do with the assets in a wallet or how it behaves. If a provider can put someone through KYC and cryptographically link a wallet address to that identity, she says, "problem solved." She also points to the ERC-3009 token standard, which mimics the auth and capture flow of traditional payment systems and prevents funds being sent to the wrong wallet. ## Local stablecoins at checkout Jess Houlgrave expects the localization of stablecoins to be a big theme for the next two years, calling it the next very obvious move for the space. WalletConnect Pay, the stablecoin and crypto checkout product WalletConnect launched in March 2026, is rolling out through Ingenico terminals for physical retail, with a projected $400 billion in annual Total Network Volume. Houlgrave says it is live in Argentina with the peso and with the Brazilian real, is going live in some Asian countries, and will be live with some merchants on Japanese yen pretty soon. Jess Houlgrave says she is probably speaking with regulators more than she ever has before. Her argument is that self-custody and compliance do not have to be traded against each other, and she wants the CLARITY Act to say so before builders move away from compliant ecosystems. ## Key takeaways 1. Jess Houlgrave argues the CLARITY Act has one glaring flaw: it does not protect self-custodial infrastructure. 2. She says key management has nothing to do with compliance, and that KYC can cryptographically link a wallet address to an identity. 3. WalletConnect Pay, launched in March 2026, is rolling out through Ingenico terminals and is live with the Argentine peso and Brazilian real. ## Chapters - 0:00 Self-custody matters for people with fragile financial institutions - 3:06 Key management and compliance are two separate questions - 5:30 Neobanks using self-custody must be clear about user risks - 9:50 Easy wallet onboarding has hidden the responsibility of self-custody - 12:23 Most people misunderstand bank custody, and tools exist for compliance - 19:15 Local currency stablecoins will be a major theme - 22:29 WalletConnect Pay handles FX between wallet assets and merchant pricing - 26:02 Jess is spending more time with regulators than ever ## Transcript **Drew Rogers** (0:16) Jess, welcome on. What up? What up? Great to see you. Hello. **Zach Fowler** (0:20) Hi, guys. Great to see you. Good to have you back on one of our... So today, we actually have four repeat guests on the show, which is, like, kind of a first, but it's awesome to be in this position now. We're we're we're diving deeper and deeper. People obviously know you. You've been in the space for a long time. But congratulations on your publication. That was that was a great piece you wrote. We're excited to dig into it today. **Jess Houlgrave** (0:43) Thank you. It's been my... Probably my, like, hot topic for most of 2026, actually. I'm a bit obsessed with it. I've been spending a ton of time with banks, with regulators, writing, thinking, with all of our wallets. **Drew Rogers** (0:59) I think it's so, so important. So, yeah, thanks for having me to talk about it. Yeah. What what drove that? What what made you want to focus specifically on this this specific topic? Bring us into a little bit of the the passion for this topic specifically. **Jess Houlgrave** (1:13) You know, I guess in a way, I I think it's probably two things. When I first learned about crypto, self custody was super interesting for me. And so we're going back, I don't know, twelve years now. And the idea that somebody can, like, hold their own assets is incredibly powerful when you think about it. I'm super privileged. I grew up in The UK. We have very robust financial systems, very robust institutions. But I'm highly aware, and I studied, like, development economics and various things at university. I'm highly aware that that isn't the case for millions and millions and billions of people around the world where those institutions are fragile and people lose their assets. People's assets get frozen, you know, without due without due law and process. And so I thought that the power of self custody was just immense for, you know, financial inclusion more than anything else. And then why it became a pet topic this year was provoked by a couple of things where I've seen central banks or regulators start to say things like, we're gonna exclude self custody wallets from this. The Bank of England was one when they talked about the British CBDC, and they came out initially. They've since actually kind of walked back on this a little bit, but they came back initially and said that self custody wallets would not be able to hold those assets. And I was like, hang on a second. What what is driving that? And that's really what led me to do a bunch of research, really start talking to people about why there was this, I think, misconception that self custody equals bad or self custody cannot interact with a regulated environment safely. And for me, I think that we kind of combine this idea of, like, what is the key management with what is compliant all in one bucket. And, actually, there are two very, very different topics. **Zach Fowler** (3:06) Yeah. So how would you easily... Like, you talk to a regulator that this isn't something that they're accustomed to. How do you easily define those two buckets for them? So firstly, when we talk about self custody, we're talking about the fashion in which keys are held. Right? So we are talking about a very technical **Jess Houlgrave** (3:21) concept. Now when you talk about regulation, most regulation has an aim. It's trying to do something that protects the consumer or protects the financial system from things like money laundering or bad actors being able to interact with the financial system, terrorist financing, all of these sorts of things. And when you look at these two things side by side, like, they're not in the... We're not talking about the same thing here. The way that the keys are stored has actually nothing to do with the assets that sit inside that wallet or how that wallet interacts and behaves. When you're talking with a regulator about what they're trying to achieve when they say something like, you know, I want to... Let's let's say the Bank of England example. The CBDC cannot be held by a self custody asset. Why? Well, we don't know who owns that. Wrong. You can actually secure a wallet address or... And the the control of that keys to an identity if you have a... If you have the technology to put someone through a KYC process and then to to cryptographically link that wallet address to that identity, problem solved. Actually, I know because I've KYC'd my specific wallet. Everyone knows it's Justin's wallet. Why shouldn't I then be able to hold that CBDC in my wallet? The key management is nothing to do with it. What the Bank of England is trying to get at is who is the owner of that wallet. And so when you start to unpick all of these pieces of regulation and actually ask regulators what it is that they're trying to achieve, very often, you get to a very different end state, which is just about information availability, proof of ownership or control of that wallet, you know, tracing the asset movement, what what enables an asset to move from one wallet to another, what processes need to be in place. And all of this can be separate from what the underlying key management is. And I think that's really, really important. Now, of course, there are some bits of regulation that directly impact key management when we're talking about qualified custodians, things like this, very different topic. But when we're just talking about things like payments, trading, all of that other stuff, actually, I think we should take those two things and and and really unpack them. When we look at this from, like, a global perspective and, you know, we think about this talks of these talks of neobanks and the way neobanks **Zach Fowler** (5:48) are being built, you know, we've seen a lot of this tension on Twitter that came out with with with CAS and EtherFi. And, again, I'm not on the side of, like, that that, you know, self custody is the only way. I think there are ways that, like, right now, you have to build neo banks with this, you know, with with a custody model. But I I mentioned that to Rob from Movement, they were supporting a team in their ecosystem building in Afghanistan where, again, they've gone in and out of OFAC sanctions and, like, kinda like you mentioned earlier, they're just... One day, they wake up and, like, I can't access my bank account. That's that's clearly not right. So when we think about... And especially if you're a neobank going and building out your staff right now, how do you navigate self custody in in the context of compliance regulations in the geos that you're working in? And a lot of neobanks too don't consider them... I think the the tension or the nuance rather of this point you're making, which I think personally I really align with is, like, if you're if you're in the neobank layer here where you're involved or you're you're, in some ways, facilitating this, I mean, it's pretty obvious to me if you're, like, building a neobanking platform. **Drew Rogers** (6:55) You may not be holding the keys, but you're definitely in, like, an in... You're an involved party. Like, you're an involved party to this. So, like, what is the responsibility even though custody may not be actually... Regardless of where it is, like, does that mean you're in a transmission position? Like, I think these details are kind of where, you know, the the real importance really lies or the real expertise is needed. How do you think about it? You know, I think the the term neobank has kind of become **Jess Houlgrave** (7:24) a real catchall. You know, within that neobank definition, at one end of the spectrum, you have, like, regulated banks with full banking licenses who are, you know, are enabled to really hold your assets for you. They can do things like lending all the way through, you know, the, like, fintech tech neobanks who maybe don't hold a full banking license, but they have EMIs. They're still regulated in some way. And now we have these styled, you know, somewhat self styled neobanks who are actually using self custody under the hood. And and I think all of that is fine as long as that neobank is very, very clear with their end user what the risks associated with that particular product are. And in the regulated environment, it's made very explicit what you need to tell your end users. You know, the... When you sign up for a Revolut account or an n twenty six account, you have a whole list of terms and conditions that you have to accept. And it's very clear to you, you know, in The UK, for example, deposits are protected up to a £125,000. And it's super, super clear when you're signing up, you know, your deposits are only protected up to this much. And if you, you know, you can lose them even though we custody those assets. If the... If if that neobanking provider has an issue, then your deposits may not be protected. In... When you get into that, like, fully self custodial neobank environment, because they're not regulated at all, there's also no provision about what an end user needs to be told. And that's where we see incidents where, you know, somewhere in the tiny fine print that most users don't ever read, it will say, actually, by putting your assets in here, they're no longer your assets. We saw that a couple of weeks ago. And this this is where I think the industry and anybody building these products has to... Even if they are not regulated by definition, they have to behave responsibly, and they have to make it very, very clear to an end user what the risks are of using that product. Doesn't mean that self custody is bad or self custody is good. Just means that there is an, I think, an obligation on anybody building any product that serves consumers **Drew Rogers** (9:50) to be transparent about it. Are you generally seeing a lack of that happening today? Like, overall, you think that there's a big room for improvement there, or do you think the industry... I mean, you've been involved and you've seen so many companies in... Within this vantage point you have in recent years. How would you measure, like, progress in terms of how the industry is doing compared to what you would have hoped for or expected at this point? It's an interesting moment with, like, the user experience around this stuff. Because now we live in this moment where, like, self custody used to be, like, kind of paired with awful UX to get started on something. Now it's like, you actually can't even really tell the difference. So it's sometimes really hard to know what is happening. Like, how do you think we're doing generally on this dynamic? Yeah. I think you raise a really interesting point, which is actually all of that friction that we used to have when we used to have to write down 24 words and then think about, oh god. I gotta create it. Where am I gonna store this? What happens if there's a fire in my apartment? You know, all of this stuff. Yeah. That actually served a purpose in a way which was to, like, **Jess Houlgrave** (10:56) scare you that, like, if you lose this, you're gonna lose your assets. And, like, you know, I I was terrified for years of, like, of this stuff. Still am in a way. And... But but that made it very, very clear to you that, like, you were 100% responsible, and, like, there is no hotline to call when you lose your your keys. Now to to to your point, it... It's almost so easy to spin up a wallet. You don't have to go through any of that pain that I'm not sure that end users are always really aware of it. Some applications do this really well. Right? They they flash up a big warning screen that, you know, we have no access to your assets. If you lose this, if you don't do the backups to your phone, etcetera, like, we cannot recover your assets. And for others, it's kind of maybe a little bit more hidden. And, you know, that's... Everybody has to make product decisions based on who their users are and, you know, adding big warning signs if somebody isn't really gonna use this except to maybe, like, play a game once or, you know, to to do something small. That's that's a How many random Pripy wallets do you have because you just randomly log on to some trial app, and then you just like, I made an account with Google, and now all a sudden, you have 20 self custody wallets just, you know, floating around there. Exactly. And, you know, I I guess all of that is to say that I I think there is just like a responsibility for people building to think this through carefully and to be clear with their end users what is... What the risks are. I I... What if... I'm thinking through this from a partially philosophical, **Zach Fowler** (12:32) partially fill product perspective. One, have we had this illusion of self custody when we've been interacting with banks for the past, you know, fifty to a hundred years. What impact did that... Does that have on our relationship with these apps? But then two, what does the flow look like for that app in Afghanistan that right now maybe you're fine, but could... Or whatever country you're in, could then floats in and out of OFAC? All of once... All of a sudden, one day, they're, you know, they're on the list. You get a red alert that's like, hey. You can't access these features. Here's how you can back up your wallet. Like, is that the flow that we need to take? Is there some hybrid model that we know we haven't explored yet? How how would you kind of maybe respond to the first part of of the philosophy behind what self custody actually looks like in a digital era? **Jess Houlgrave** (13:18) But also, two, like, how should... How would you... What's your ideal flow maybe in this in this world right now? On the first one, I, like, I couldn't agree more. I think the vast majority of people think when they put $100 into their bank account, there is literally $100 sitting in a box somewhere, and they will always be able to go and and get that money out. I think, you know, certainly two thousand seven, eight crisis in many parts of the world, like, proved that wrong. In The UK, we saw these, like, lines and lines of people stood outside banks, outside Northern Rock, unable to withdraw their deposits, and people lost money. Now, of course, the government stepped in and etcetera, and now we have these these deposit insurances in in many parts of the world. So I think that, you know, those of us who lived through that are probably more aware. But I suspect, you know, if you stopped 10 people on the street tomorrow and said, like, you know, the... That money in your bank, is it actually yours, will it always be there for you? Most people would say yes. Whereas, actually, what's happening when you make a banking deposit is you're entering into a transaction with that bank. You're giving them custody of your assets. They can do stuff with that. They can go and lend it. That's how they make money. And, you know, there is risk associated with that. Of course, they're regulated, etcetera, and so that risk should be relatively small, but that... It's nonzero. But I think you're right. People people... Most people don't understand how banks work, and that doesn't help necessarily then when you start talking about this more complex relationship of neobank self custody regulated, not regulated, etcetera. Your your second question on, like, what is the ideal flow is a much more challenging one. Right? So, technically, from a technological perspective, we actually have a lot of tools at our disposal to help us manage risk and compliance even when it comes to self custody wallets. And, actually, it's kind of the same whether it's a custodial wallet or a self custody wallet that the compliance burden should be relatively similar. You need to know who is responsible for the transaction. Any countries where there's something called travel rule, you need to know who both the sender and the beneficiary are in order that that that transaction is is compliant with travel rule. You know, there is great token standard in EVM called three zero zero nine, which mimics this, like, auth and capture flow that we see in traditional payment systems today. This prevents kind of, like, funds being sent to the to the wrong wallet. Actually, the Tempo blockchain, there is, like, specific... The ability to actually only receive from specific addresses, which helps that even more. So there's all of this technological innovation that allows us to to have more control over who can interact with what environment, who can send funds, who can receive funds. Do we know who those who those assets belong to? We have one tool called, like, sign in with X or sign in with Ethereum, and we do a lot of work with our regulated partners to use this as a component of our stack. When somebody is in a KYC environment, they can actually just prove that they have control of that wallet address by signing an off chain message with the private key. Super simple, super easy user experience, but it means that that regulator or that regulated provider can actually say, yep. I know that Zach definitely owns this wallet because he signed a message with that private key, you know, that gives me a a lot of comfort that he owns it. So there's all this tooling. Now the the the follow on, though, is, like, what what decisions do you make given that you've got those tools at your disposal? And questions around, you know, the the the poor, poor individual who is in a jurisdiction which is subject to sanctions. They have done nothing wrong. They are not part of the regime that is being sanctioned. But unfortunately, they really suffer as a result of that. You know, that is a that is a huge question. Like, do you as a regulated provider somewhere else, you know, do you follow those sanctions? Yes. You kind of have to. Should there be more should there be more availability for when you can actually prove that this person hasn't done something wrong, that they... Their assets shouldn't... Should be allowed to interact with, you know, the global ecosystem? I think so. But you're getting into, like, very philosophical questions here that I think are really, really hard to answer. I think, you know, one of the one of the things that I really love about self custody, and it doesn't solve for the issue that you mentioned when, you know, somebody is still in the place that that is being sanctioned. But I think there is immense power for people who are fleeing those regimes and who are moving, you know, from one place to another to be able to take their assets with them. **Zach Fowler** (18:09) Again, it doesn't solve the problem for everybody. But, you know, we we unfortunately live in a world where there's millions of people every day who are leaving their countries because it's not safe. And the ability for me to take all of my assets with me as I cross that border is incredibly powerful and not to have to leave everything behind. Seems like a seems like a human right in some ways. We could talk. I think it is. Move you on the philosophy side off off stream at the the next event we cross paths because maybe not the best best content to have on on the record. But I I mean, I've been thinking about this was pre pre Stablecoin boom. I was working in the in the payroll space and, like, had a tech company that came to me. It was, like, a dev shop, total non Web three people. And he's like, this is when the, you know, war in Ukraine was just getting started. And he's like, I have a developer over there. Like, their bank literally got blown up. I've only been able to send them Stablecoins. I'm completely lost, by the way. But he's asking me for this thing, USDC, and all I know is that's the only way I can pay him right now. You know? And he's fleeing the country. And that was, like, again, my first, like, real encounter with this is solving, like, not just a, oh, this is a little bit of an inconvenience. Like, this is a huge humanitarian issue that this technology is helping solve. Yeah. Crazy powerful. Zach, anything... Jess, since I think we spoke last, we have launched **Drew Rogers** (19:25) our research business. I guess we'll call it a business unit, which is technically what we're this is... This this conversation is falling within a research series all about, you know, cross border payments, the global perspective around money movement, all that good stuff, which is why we wanted to include you in this. Zach, was there anything specific to this topic that you wanted to get Jess' perspective on? I know we Yeah. Wanted to cover the article. The one... I thought I thought it was I have selfish questions, but I wanted to make sure that we, like, checked the box. We'll ask... The the one box that I wanted to check was was this relation that you mentioned earlier with with CBDCs, **Zach Fowler** (20:02) and I think this becomes especially relevant with the conversation with with Forex coming on chain, more local currencies coming on chain. How how should either entities or even these banks be thinking about the relationship between local currencies and their users versus the dollar? Because, you know, we've seen regulation even come out of Brazil that's saying, hey. Actually, we're gonna make it harder for you to use stablecoins because we want money in our local currency. Does that does that... As this develops, does this change the the dynamic with any of these, you know, neobanks or payment flows or even stablecoin checkout flows that we're maybe not thinking of right now or we're gonna need to be thinking of in the future? Yeah. So so firstly, I think the, like, localization **Jess Houlgrave** (20:46) of stablecoins is the next very obvious move for this space, and I think it's gonna be a big theme for the next two years. It makes sense in a number of ways. Right? Like, firstly, end users. Most end users, unless you're crypto, you don't think in US dollars. You get paid in your local currency. The price that you see in the store every day is in your local currency. You think, you save, you act, and you operate your local currency. You don't wanna have to do a translation to US dollars and or bear on the US dollar rate in order just to hold an... A digital asset because it just adds friction. It adds cost. It adds complexity. It means that the infrastructure providers need to bear some of that complexity and need to be able to accommodate for FX and all of this sort of stuff. But for end users, it's it's really important. I think it's also really important for central bankers. If I was a central banker, I... And I think about my my currency that I am responsible for, we already live in a very dollarized world. If by the increasing dollarization of my country, and therefore, my own currency becomes less important, I actually lose some of the benefits of of of monetary policy that are at my disposal. And monetary policy is incredibly important for doing things like controlling inflation and other sort of macroeconomic, you know, artifacts. So I think it's... For me, it's very obvious that if you're a central banker, you probably don't want your country to end up completely dollarized because you lose an awful lot of control if that if that happens. So I think massive theme to to take place over the coming years, both from a user experience perspective, but also from a a macroeconomic perspective. **Zach Fowler** (22:29) What... And I think also you've done all this work with, you know, Stablecoin checkout, and there does. It it seems to be some cognitive dis... Distance where, k, we want people to use Stablecoins. We want less checkout fees, but also I'm living my life in real or the peso. Most of these vendors probably don't wanna have to be forced now to receive a dollar, go through an FX transaction, get it to their bank. So are you thinking through even with that product line, who can we start working with for these local currencies, and what do those payment flows look like? You know, either going off chain, I think of people like EtherFuse that are doing zero FX swaps for their currencies. Yeah. What do you what do you do you... Is that the the little teaser announcement that we'll we'll see some of that more? Or, yeah, how does that even impact merchants that are that are using your terminals? 100 **Jess Houlgrave** (23:18) with WalletConnect Pay today, you can, as a merchant or as a payments company, you can price in the currency that you wanna price in. So when I walk into a store or I'm on an online checkout with WalletConnect Pay, it's gonna just show me the amount that I need to pay in euros, in dollars, in anything else. The magic happens when we then do that interaction between that point of sale and the person's wallet because what we're doing is actually seeing, you know... And you can see here, that's just $56. But what we're doing when that wallet goes to make that payment is we we read the balance in that wallet. So we know you've got some USDC. You've got some PYUSD. You've got, you know, EURC. You've got the euro stablecoin. And we're giving you the choice to pay with the asset that you want, and we're giving you a very clear conversion rate. So say I wanna pay this 56 US dollars, but I've only got euro stablecoins in my in my wallet. I'm gonna be given a a live FX quotation rate there. It's gonna say, yep. Actually, Justice is gonna cost you... I don't even know the euro dollar exchange rate right now. It's gonna cost you €60, but actually what you're paying for is $56. And we manage that all behind the scenes. And with partners, with our off ramp partners, etcetera, the merchant is getting that in dollars, but the end user is operating in in the stablecoin or the asset that that they want irrespective of the currency. And that's super important. And we started rolling that out, you know, in... I'm trying to think of some of the currencies that we're now live in, but in Argentina with the peso and with Brazilian real. We're going live in some Asian countries. We're gonna be live with some merchants on Japanese yen pretty soon. So it's incredibly important. Super cool. So it's incredibly important, though, that the end user feels that this is in their local currency because, you know, if I walk into a store here in Portugal and they're like, oh, that's $13, please. Like, hang on. Like, my brain my brain can't cope, and I should be able to cope probably because I work in this, like, international environment. But, certainly, my 80 year old next door neighbor cannot cope with, you know, thinking about US dollars in Europe. Well, it's just... It's it's interesting to think about. You're like, okay. Great. I wanna go use this great neobank, but now I'm forced into extra FX fees that I didn't have in my other experience. **Zach Fowler** (25:35) So do we really want merchants to go deal with that same thing? Like, it just kinda feels like, okay. You're introducing this to solve my problems while giving me a new problem? **Jess Houlgrave** (25:45) 100%. 100%. So... Yeah. So we have to abstract all of that from both the user and the merchant, make it really easy, make it, you know, easy to reconcile and and easy to operate for both of those parties. Yeah. I have one more question. Jess, we gotta we gotta let you go. Yeah. Thank you so much for And... Your **Drew Rogers** (26:02) yeah. One more. Just like it's... Because I followed WalletConnect for many years, it's been really sweet to see this evolution, especially in the last six to twelve months toward more of the... What is now possible when you bring all of these pieces together and how you're positioning it really as a payments first use case for, like, the... Every layer of the stack, as you say here, PSPs, merchants, wallets, users, like, yes, all of these things coming together can do a lot of things and how you're positioning it to payments organizations and, like, you know, the Ingenico partnership we talked about last time. Like, my main question is is as you've seen the the current evolution come come to fruition, how how are you spending your time? Like, where where... Who specifically right now, this week, next week, are you... There's so many people, positions, things to go achieve. What is the most important places that you're spending your time in terms of bringing this full package to to fruition? I'd love... I I I love to think through that with you. It's it's a great question. And when I constantly... **Jess Houlgrave** (27:05) You know, **Drew Rogers** (27:06) that's what we're doing in some ways. You could you could spend your time Yeah. I... **Jess Houlgrave** (27:11) You know, and in any week, the honest answer is I'm speaking with DeFi protocols. I'm speaking with stock exchanges, with payments companies, with wallets, with banks, with institutions, with regulators. Regulators is definitely a big theme at at the moment. And, actually, I think part of the hope... Hopefully, the value that I bring to some of these conversations is that I have that very diverse perspective. And because we work with all of these different counterparties on the network, we're able to design standards, technologies that actually solve everyone's problems together. And because we work with kind of both, you know, both sides of the network in terms of where the assets are and where they need to be, we can design great systems and processes and technologies that serve these people in a very compatible way. Because solving this person's problem without solving this person's problem doesn't really help us. So the honest answer is I'm spending my time all over the place. The the more nuanced answer is I I am super lucky that I have such an excellent team around me at WalletConnect, and, know, you we have people dedicated to working with our wallet partners, dedicated to working with our payments partners. And so a lot of the the conversations that I'm involved with, I'm really lucky because they're the ones that I I want to go and have. But, you know, as I said at the very beginning and and where I joined this conversation, this regulatory theme is is such a big topic this year that I'm probably speaking with with regulators more than I ever have before. And and I hope that that has a big impact for the space and and especially for all of the self custody wallets that are on the WalletConnect network because I want them to be very successful. Amazing. **Drew Rogers** (28:50) We do as well. Jess, thank you for the time, and stay in touch. Excited to follow follow along. And for someone who's speaking with a lot of regulators, you're very bright and joyful. So appreciate the energy as always. Thank you for having me. Great to see you guys.