The End of Loyalty Points: Turning Your Cashback Into a Shot at a $1M Jackpot

Who cares about points? That's my question. We had nine days notice. We had nothing at that time. It was like no website, no nothing. Basically, just decided to go, pack the bags, flew out, and started Sero. People don't really care about 1% cashback, 5% yield, earned programs, random points. All they care about is the upside. We are building Sero in its current, which is this upside app. We have a rewards protocol that we had built underneath, which is run on chain, which dictates the dopamine hits an app.

This reward protocol is lossless. There's no, let's say, games of chance element within the app per se. Give me, like, twelve months. I mean, I can't even imagine where we're gonna be at that point, but I think it's gonna be massive. If everyone is going one way, you just have to go the other end. You then have at least a shot of making it.

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If you want an intro, you can pay me on x or go to latitude.xyz to learn more. Sanjay, what a gift to to get to hang out with you and have a conversation Yes. On especially short notice. Thanks for hopping in the studio here in Brooklyn. Welcome to Stable Minded. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I guess I had, like, twelve hours notice Yeah. We have. Or something along those lines, but yeah, was around so... We closed a new podcast sponsor. Baby number three for me is coming in Actually. Probably days.

So this was short notice, but we're really excited for what you're building and we really enjoyed having you on the live show recently and just wanted to spend some time to unpack the founder journey a little bit with you and like what you're building specifically. But also as I think about why this episode and why it would be valuable is like getting a real kind of inside the mind of a current founder.

Like right now you are like, you said 60, 70% of the way, finished with pre seed, like you were just like in it and I find what you're building really really fascinating in terms of how it works. That's what made me wanna reach out to you and do this. So just thanks for taking the time.

Give us a little bit as we kick off your background. I'm also really excited to learn a bit more about your your background because we didn't really get into that last time. So give us your intro and then we'll we'll dive into it. Okay. So, yeah, my name is MJ and I've been building CERO actually starting from April 20.

We began working on the idea as soon as we started the Nitro Accelerator program, which is an accelerator hosted by Dragonfly Paradigm, Electric Capital, and Castle Island Ventures in collaboration with the Monad Foundation. So we kind of actually had, a nine days notice to fly out. For Nitro? Yeah. Because like I received an email on the April 11 that, we had to be here and start the program by the twentieth.

So we kind of were scrambling to get everything in order, get the visa sorted, register a company because like we had nothing at that time. So you... But it's like, no website, no nothing. So yeah, we basically just decided to go, pack the bags, flew out and started Sero. At this time, you get accepted into Nitro. You have no company formed. No. There's no public... Like, what what what was it that you pitched to them and what made them say, yes, like, to The US and do this?

Now looking back, I guess the main things that they were hyped about was the team probably because every single one of us had pretty solid career across fintech and crypto, and we'd, built companies, exited companies across the four founders that basically currently is building Sero. I think that's probably the main driver why they picked us, but also the idea initially was very nice.

So what we set out to do was, we wanted to build the first long chain credit card with the revolving USDC credit limit that would allow crypto natives like ourselves to borrow money without locking up collateral, which I guess still there's... What we wanted to go and fix was the problem of collateralization. The fact that, like, you can't really borrow money without posting... I don't know. Let's say, in order to borrow 10 k USDC, you must post, like, 15 k eve in collateral, and then you still have to pay APR.

Five x. So I wanna I'm like, 150%. 100%. Yeah. But but I mean, like, no bank, credit facility works like that Yeah. Universally, like, you know, outside of crypto. But... Yeah.

And what we wanted to do, we wanted to kind of, like, take our own spin on it and start and lend money to these crypto individuals, basically basing our decision on their own channel history, centralized exchange accounts history, trades that they have done and made, I mean, their portfolio of memes, whatever that we could get our hands on, plus, of course, additional data sources that they could provide us. And Yeah. Kind of like bundle it into a card experience.

Because one of the biggest problems was that if you are trying to lend money on chain, you don't really see where the users are spending it, and, there's always a risk of them running away with the money. Our idea was that, look, we could probably fix these two issues if we issued a card on top of this, like, lending protocol that we were building. And then, yeah, we arrived at Nitro. We spoke very early on with, Maria from Electric Capital. She advised an extremely extremely bold GTM

because like otherwise nobody would pay attention. She advised you to go really loud. Yes. Tell tell us a bit about that. That's always been like a part of what makes in my view, Sero so unique. It feels very sensational. Sensational. Oh. And not in like a not in like a bad way. Like it's not sensational. Tasteful way. Yeah. It's like tasteful,

it does feel like dopamine in like a brand. It's exciting. It's fun, you know? She told you that was... No. Like, she just said like basically that we had to be extremely opinionated. Either we pick, you know, a very specific audience or we are just loud. Because otherwise, like, if we are just going to try to... Okay.

I don't wanna, like, bash our pseudo competitors, PlasmaCast and others, but they are kind of already starting out competing with the likes of Revolut or even, let's say, Robinhood at the current stage. The thing is that both of those companies, Revolut, Robinhood, they over time evolved into this blue chip premium offering, whereas they are kind of, like, from the get go starting to capture the same by appealing to the same audience and offering the same things.

But, yeah, people don't realize that, let's say, Robinhood when they first popped off, they were the zero fee trading platform. Yes. But they were known for the fact that every single time you press buy button, confetti would go up on the screen and like, you know, it'd be like Free stocks. Yeah. Sign up, get a free stock. Like, that was the thing. Exactly. Exactly. And you have to, like, evolve into it. Well, that was kind of our discussion with her, mostly about the GTN and just being bold.

But then also during that time, we spoke to every single crypto nether we could get our hands on within the first two weeks, like close to a 150 people that just basically told us more or less the same three things. Number one, that nobody really uses crypto cards. Everyone has their daily driver. Let's say in Europe, mostly it's Revolut, right, that everyone is using. And then all of that crypto cards are the second, third, fourth card that people are using and which means that, like, off ramp is not really demote.

The second thing is that people don't really care about 1% cashback, 5% yield, earned programs, random points. Basically, everyone is suffering at the moment to the same crowd. It will never like move the needle for them or pull them over the line and make them switch from some of those main cards. Was that surprising for you? I mean, to be honest, yes, because everyone is offering it. That's the first thing people foot is like Yeah. Percentages and rewards and... Yeah. And that was kind of...

I was surprised because I thought that like, okay, you know, this is in some way would move the users because like otherwise, I don't see the reason why everyone is offering it. But, yeah, at least based on our like research and conversations, for most people, it doesn't bother them because they don't care about it as much. It's nice to have. Yeah. It's nice to have.

And, I mean, the thing that I'm thinking about is, like, nobody's gonna switch, you know, from their Chase Sapphire to whatever other card that is offering 3% cash back on, I don't know, on Tropic credits. Yeah. It will definitely not move the needle. Maybe they will do that for just this one subscription type, but still they will use their main card and many of the others. And the third thing was that...

So initially, when we were thinking about this uncollateralized lending protocol, our idea was that we would put everyone on this sort of like a progressive curve where you start with borrowing a very... Or having access to a very small credit line, let's say $5. You borrow $5, you repay 5, then you go on to receive 10. And kind of like from there, you can like over time grow your available credit line because generally repeat borrowers, their default rates tend to zero.

So I see this in traditional credit, but not at that, like, micro scale. Yes. Correct. And there's actually one product that I would like to call out. Yeah. I think they did it good, but I don't know what happened to them. There's this company called Divine, and they built a protocol called Credit Cash on Worldcoin Eco, and they actually did something very similar. You haven't talked to them? No. Alright. We gotta get... What what was the name of them? I wanna talk to the guys at VimeCash. Yeah.

Because they they also raised a lot of money. Interesting. From like Paradigm and some wonder guys. Yeah, I haven't heard from them in a in What

was so fascinating about what they built? I mean, it was an uncollectualized lending protocol. They were building that on WorldCoin. Can you define under collateralized? Like define these terms, under collateralized... Zero. Like basically, you'd borrow money on chain without posting collateral. So I don't need to... Let's... I have a value that's represented in whatever form. I don't need to bring that value to a platform

in order to get a loan. I can actually... Just just borrow money. Borrow money. In the same way as any under credit product kind of works in real life apart from crypto. Because like in crypto, the only way of how you can borrow is like you lock in money. Yeah. Like, actually lock in. So the Yes. You say lock in, what does that typically mean? Like, I actually send my funds out of my custody Yeah. Give them to and the lock them up for until this is paid back. Yes, correct.

And then they use this money in case of a default or in case, well basically they take that money in case of a nonpayment, like when you don't pay back the money or, I don't know, let's say your collateral starts losing value and it drops below principal amount that you had borrowed, they are allowed to liquidate that capital in order to then make that protocol or the LPs of the protocol whole. Sure. Right? Which is just the way of how it works. And for Divine, what they did interestingly was...

So they built all of this on top of the WorldCoin or the World app. And, you know, like, the World Project is the one... Dystopian one where you have to scan your retina in order to verify proof of human. Yep. Yeah. And basically, all of the users within that ecosystem had been KYC ed, and they basically can't, like, you know, do, like, duplicate profiles or anything of that kind. There's only one profile and they were betting on the fact. That's the benefit of the dystopian part. Yeah.

You get some benefits of the humanness of... But yeah, it is it is a tension. Yeah. But the way of how I understood it is that the way they bet on the fact that these people, because they have these... The reputation which is sacred,

I mean, they default, it will be forever of like attached to their profile, to that address, for example, on the WorldClient or WorldChain. And, yeah, and then... But are we actually there yet in your opinion? Like, if I go and murder someone outside and I shoot someone and then I get convicted for that and I go to jail, I somehow get out, who knows? And like, maybe I'm trying to get like, if I go through a background check, that will be known. Hopefully. If if anything works, like, that will happen.

Like, are we actually at a point where on chain... Because I'd imagine like if you... There's probably a spectrum here, but like if that actual hygiene and accountability doesn't exist on chain yet, if I can't actually verifiably have that incentive be stuck with me? Because there's definitely something about consequences. Like, I go do something in the real world, you know it's going to follow you. Does that make No.

Mean, in on chain, what you do, you just do something bad. You generate the new address and that new address is totally new entity with no history on it. You declare bankruptcy, you don't pay a loan, like this happens in the real world all the time. Yeah. But I mean in real world, you have a file that follows around. Yeah. That's good. But on chain there's not. Plus also you go from one chain to another chain to the third chain, it's like it's always new. Plus also, there's no KYC inherently.

So whatever you do on chain technically would not reflect on your real world file. Yeah. But the thing about, like, the the world clone is that, like, I mean, obviously, it's like an extremely KYC ed walled garden. Yeah. And they were betting on the fact that because you have this file, now it's on chain, now you default on the loan that screws your file that is seen on chain. So therefore you are more inclined to repay back money. Yeah. It makes sense. It's kind of like the legal system analogy.

It's like The US has a legal system. It's a closed loop. Exactly. The same logic, but on chain.

And because of that, although they are not pressing the charges in terms of, I don't know, you defaulting on the loan, so that's why I'm gonna push you to declare bankruptcy. Yeah. Now it's like if you default on the loan, it's forever reflected on the chain that like you have done that. Yeah. Hence, you kind of can't borrow anymore, plus any other app that would interact with your wallet or whatever would be able to always go back and see, okay, so this guy was a defaulter.

It's kind of like a FICO alternative sort of, like a bureau alternative. Help me understand this because the difference between a Morpho backed loan on Coinbase, which I have with my Bitcoin, where Well, I mean, but that's all... Like, you have, let's say, 100 k worth of Bitcoin, you have borrowed 70 k USDC. This is different. Right? So Yeah. Like, imagine if you could, come to a more full world and just borrow, let's say, 70 k without needing to post 100 k Bitcoin. You just post 0 Bitcoin. Yeah.

And you just borrow 70 k and you borrow it because you have an impeccable credit history. Sure. Which is kinda like the same of how any bank works, the same of like how the credit system outside of on chain works. Yeah. They look at your reputation, they look at past history, and you know, the way of how you have handled that and so on. And based on that, they lend you money and they price it accordingly.

So is it kind of fair to say that Sero in its early phases will be like focused on doing maybe what you mentioned that other application did really well, starting really small, building context, building history and also getting those data points set up early in like a pretty low risk way. Yeah. So that as you grow, you can actually build pretty rich credit data around people. Is that kind of the idea? We wanted to do that and I mean still that's very integral part of the app, like the score itself.

But when we started, our idea was like, yeah. You know, people just gonna do this because, you know, credit is the answer. But then after talking to people, like, later on, we came back to the same cohort demo on the app, and they kind of told us they don't really care about some of these other bits that we are offering. All they care about is the upside. And that's how we got to the point where we are building Lucero in its current form Yeah.

Which is this upside app concept because we realized by offering variance, by offering the upside or the chance of outsized outcome Yeah. When either spending or providing information or repaying your loan, etcetera, we will be able to get the people excited, get the people engaged, retain them over time, and Yeah. That was kind of like how we got to the point where Sarah is at right now. That came from the user testing going back to that Yes. Like upside seemed to be this thing that really stood out.

The the thing is that it was like by wide margin the most

talked about and the most, you know, like it got the most attention. Yeah. Okay. So you get this insight. You're probably like in Nitro or like moving to The US right now with your team, and you guys are seasoned fintech builders crypto and fintech. How do you then attempt to architect an app that actually accomplishes this upside system in a way that's like measured and responsible and crypto casino stuff? Like there's a huge slippery slope there Yeah.

Which takes out most of people who try to do what you're doing because they don't walk the line correctly and they, you know, for whatever reason people blow up the protocol unintentionally, people take advantage of it, they become regulated out of oblivion like whatever the case may be. If you're going down a very... Like it's a huge opportunity here, which is what I'm excited about, but there's also like so many land mines around you. Of course.

How do you build something that's actually accomplishing upside without actually putting a massive massive risk? So the way of how we are structuring this right now, so I don't want to like go too much into detail. I guess this is the sauce. It's the sauce right here. Yeah. This is the sauce. It is. It is. Well, first of all, reward distribution is detached from the spending experience. Like, have a rewards protocol that we had built underneath, which is run on chain, which dictates the dopamine hits an app.

So that's one. And this reward protocol is lossless. There's no, let's say, games of chance element within the app per se. And rewards protocol is able to allocate capital to our outside integrations,

which are licensed partners to offer things such as 1,100,000 lottery with Megapod exclusive partners. Shout out to Shout to Megapod. Did you know Megapod existed when you got this feedback, or did you come across No. I was like, well, as soon as we heard the feedback, we're like, okay. We need to really make this, like, you know, as crazy as possible. I wanna do a lottery because, I mean, it kinda has worked before. Maybe, you know, like, Yalta Bank back in the day.

There was this, like, price link savings project that blew up because of their correspondent underneath Evolve, but they were kind of that OG OG upside banking app. What was the name of it? Yalta Bank. Okay. Now they are sweepstakes gambling platform because their account provider blew up and they couldn't reimburse all their users and they had to pivot. But nonetheless, they were doing extremely well up until that point.

And what they did is, like, they were paying yield on the user's balances or generating yield on the user's balance. But instead of allocating it to the user, they were offering a million dollar potential payout every day or, an access to lottery. That was funded by the seal that was generated by the user's balance. And to be honest, this concept of, like, price linked savings, there's this lottery bond effectively that the UK government is running. It's like one of the fastest growing savings product.

Like, it's called premium bond. But effectively, it is, it's like they are scalping or like taking a cut from the general guild yacht that they would pay you. They allocate that money into this large price pool k. That every single bondholder gets a chance to win every day. UK citizens? Yeah. That hold out premium bond. Okay. I'm imagining like a government Is this feel like a really, like, buttoned up, like, kind of boring program, or does this feel like That's the thing.

I mean, it it seems obviously everything that's, like, government related, that's extremely corporate and, like, extremely, like, you know, structured. Yet the underlying concept is unlimited upside or uncapped upside that is directing the users or the potential bondholders to switch from another savings product to this savings product. And effectively, what they do, they pay you out lower yield on aggregate, but in exchange, they give you a chance to win. And it's the fastest growing savings product in The UK.

That's wild. How long has this been going on, do know? I don't know. Like, couple years understood, but I was actually surprised when I heard... Because, obviously, like, we... But first... Actually, Alex from our team, he knew about this, like, for a long time here. And, yeah, he kinda, like, raised this as a maybe an interesting way of how we can like, you know, kind of spice things up Yeah. In the app because generally, like, we are generating yield on the balances, like in collaboration with Agora.

Shout out, Nick. Shout out. Okay. Effectively,

this becomes like a really interesting insight for you guys as you're like, The UK Government has cracked this human incentive system in a compliant and like buttoned up way where you can actually build a model around this to maybe open up access to... Like is this is this kind of the inspiration for what the CERO v one protocol over here, spending over here, like is that how you think about it? Actually, like now when you ask... Because I play a rewards protocol. Yeah.

That's like I go to the baseball game Thursday night with my son and there's a fifty fifty raffle ticket. Like, okay, what that's a rewards protocol. You know what I mean?

There are rewards protocols everywhere. Yeah. And it's just like the mechanics and nuances of them, you know, what are they tied to? Like, oh, you can't participate in this unless you're going to the baseball game. Like, there are all these different ways to think about it. Yeah. Well, I mean, in our case, what we have tied it to is the eScore that you have to like just maintain or build.

You build it through holding cash, spending cash, providing us more information about yourself, and as soon as you are given a loan by repaying it back. So over time, you kind of build your reputation. But it's a capitalism Infrastructure. I hate to say that. When you when you say it like that, yeah, supposedly. It's capitalist infrastructure. This is like the hypercapitalism. I don't know. Like, hyper gamification of Well, you're trying to build perfect financial context.

Actually, like, now because we're going through a three seed and fundraise, and I'm talking to a lot of investors and actually, like, my pitch at the start when we started versus, like, what it is right now. When I'm showing the app, I'm actually referring to score building as the game, and you play this game by spending with the card. Right. To push away from the notion that, like, we are just a neobank or just another card, it's kind of like a completely different spin off.

But with that being said, yeah, the score is the integral part which unlocks more upside. Yeah. So, obviously, you are also able to get it at least some of it or a chance of it without having a massive score. But if you haven't built up your Serock score, that improves your odds. The idea of gamification has always been closely tied to financial technology. Like, we would be fooling ourselves if we didn't...

Like, I have many many friends who play the credit cards points game and like this thing is nothing new in some ways, but there's something really really unique here that you've built that is unlike anything... Is there... Like, look, the points, I mean like who cares about points? That's my question. I don't understand. They're meaningless for what they give you. It's like for example, like I'm using Revolut. I'm a power user of Revolut. I mean now I'm power user of Theros since we launched the card.

Is it actually ready to go right now? Yeah. IOS? Sorry. It's It's on test flights still, but I will give you the card. Okay. So I can go right now Yeah. Spend money. You can go flip a coin. You can potentially get the chance to win a million dollars daily. All of that stuff is like already live. We're just like waiting for the App Store approval to be finalized. But, yeah, nonetheless, it's like I'm a power user of Revolut. Yep.

What I've gotten back from, you know, using Revolut all these years is now they have launched this points program, which basically they are running. I think they give, like, one point per €1 spend. And I effectively have managed to acquire roughly like 400 gigabytes of Rome or like mobile data for all of the points that I have collected over the, I don't know, past like two and a half years. What does that mean? I mean, it's just like it's useless.

For being the power user of Revolut, I've gotten Very 100 gigabytes of data. That's all that they thought that I'm worth, first of all, which is I don't understand like how the math adds up there. But the other part is that it never has pushed me to use their card more. Yeah. Like, I'm just like using it because I mean, it's convenient and I started using it like a long time ago, but that's about it. I'm not using it more because of the points. I'm not using it less because of the points.

I don't see like any incentive

behind or I don't understand like how this point system really increases or... Super opaque. Point systems generally are very... How do you... Like the redeemability,

the ecosystems, like... I think most of the things that I can redeem those points for are kind of irrelevant. Okay. And if it's irrelevant for me, then probably it's irrelevant for a lot of people. Yeah. And I mean, our Europe team mostly is European. Like, okay. So we have, like, currently a team of seven. Everyone is using Revolut. Nobody cares about points. Well, there's, like, 100% hit rate right now.

And then, like, from the initial, like, tester group or interviewee group that, like, we had, all of the Europeans that had Revolut doesn't care about those ones at all. So the question is, what do these points really achieve? Why they are doing this? And maybe there's a better way on how to either structure the rewards or the prizes that you can get or basically spend this money.

And the way of how, at least in several context, we think about it is because, like, you don't really care about 1% cashback or 5% yield or three and a percent half yield or whatever like you can get from keeping money in certain application? Because I mean broad strokes, it doesn't really matter. That does matter for certain large institutions who have a ton of You're talking specifically about like the normal retail citizen. I'm talking about, look, let's say 5% yield, I have a rolling balance of 10 k.

10 k, I mean, saved, that is, like, rolling on my account is actually, like, a privilege for, like, in most of the population. Correct. Right? Okay. So let's say 10 k. So 5% yield, which is already like a pretty solid one. It's above the t bill rate. So 5% nets me €500 or dollars, for example, annual return. $500 minus taxes Minus your annual fee. Minus annual fee. That's like, I don't know, $300. What can I buy for $300 in, for example, New York?

A cocktail?

Maybe. Like,

it's not even one night out. Yeah. Your whole concept of rewards and loyalty is built around that. Yeah. So so how does So Let's let's take these $300 and maybe

allow people to indulge in upside seeking. Yeah. How does... What they're already doing elsewhere.

Yeah. Yeah. You're taking the human... There's something going on with human nature of upside seeking, and, you know, for better or worse, this is something about humans that we are wired to like take the bet, go for it. Even if we know the house. Mean, you're forced to. You are kind of like forced to now even. It's like... Sure. There's been some really interesting like psychology around that and written papers around this in the last year. Kind of the moment of culture, it sort of gets depressing a little bit.

Everyone is dopamine, Max said. Yeah. Like, everyone.

And because of that, I mean, like, I don't know. Let's say you scroll Instagram, you scroll TikTok, every next scroll is a gamble. Like, you are doing that because, like, your brain wants to potentially hit the video that it will like. And now you, like, you start looking around every single game nowadays starting with, like, I don't know, CS GO or, like, FIFA back in the day when they introduced the cases. Now it has already spilled over to every game, literally.

Like every game has some sort of a unknown upside element Yeah. Intertwined within Yeah. Their mostly market mechanics. Either there's like a case unboxing, a back opening, or something like that. Then you start looking like beyond that... The Robinhood example. I mean, like that was... People don't say this but like that's

definitely what converted me to Robinhood which I now have my retirement in Robinhood. I do all my Roth IRA stuff there. Like, I, you know... Does this like box? Like this? When I was in college Okay. This was the time of their growth where they were kind of doing what you're talking about where... And I think most of my friends and people who I know who still use Robinhood today, they were converted because they really pushed this like download the app, get a free stock.

You could get like Nvidia stock or Palantir like, what stock am I gonna get? It was that like sense of maybe I'll get Amazon, was like a thousand dollars, like maybe I'll get Amazon. It was that it was that thing. Like you end up getting some who knows what the hell stock is like $8. But it's like, it was still that idea, right? That was what converted people. And now, I've gone through KYC, I now have everything ready to go, I'm there now. And now I have grown with that company. And and they've grown too.

I would say there are now more of a fun, gamified stock trading platform. Now they are a wealth app. Yeah. And they are like targeting. One of most powerful financial companies in the world. Exactly. But they started by getting Young people. Young. Ambitious Yeah. Hungry. So bring this really practical now. So you have this... Go back to the $300 like average person at the end of the day is getting like a few $100 hypothetical worth of rewards instead of taking that and getting a hotel room for the year?

Which happens with Sero. What's the alternative? I mean, like, we use this capital... Well, first of all, we pull it all together of all users. Everyone generates their $305,100

dollars a year. We pull all of that money into like one big pot. Okay. And is that technically...

I'm asking this question because

I'm like... That's the rewards that's the rewards protocol. Okay. Whose money is that technically in the pool? I'm not gonna comment on that. Okay.

We just had on Glider and Bitwise and their automated token portfolio stuff, Vault stuff. There seems to be like... I'm getting some emails about this right now, like the nuances of Vault. Who owns what? Yeah. Well... Or these funds together? That's the thing, like we don't want to necessarily disclose it as of now. But... The term vault might be the best way to think about it, is how a vault works. Yeah. Smart contract vault. Is there anywhere that a user...

Let's say I'm a user and I wanna use this thing, will that clarity be clarified somewhere for me? I guess part of me doing this kind of taking the gamble of maybe I don't know exactly. Well, mean, it's tied to your score,

you kind of are subliminally informed. Okay. About the fact that, like, okay, there's, like, you know, something that you are entitled to in some way or form. We don't want to, like, necessarily disclose it. But then Okay. At least in, like, plain language that, like, okay. So there's x amount of dollars that you get access to or whatever. But, I mean, most probably, at one point, we will. The thing is that at first, because we are this early, like, must be extremely bold. We must be crazy in some way. Yeah.

You know? So we are taking a relatively indigent approach to this. All the money goes into one vault. That vault decides who gets what dependent on the way of how you spend money, hold money, or what information you have provided us. And there's like three outcomes. Effectively, number one, let's say I bought water minus $5. The second outcome is new trigger buy now pay number, which is the special notification with the Shopify like a ching sound to it, you know? Yeah. Audio queue details, very important.

And you are presented with the game. So you press on the notification, and you're presented with the game. And the first game is coin flip. We have developed or managed to develop, and we really started building this in end of May, like, first week of June. So the first game we haven't developed Okay. Is coin flip. Coin flip is $50.50. You have to flick the phone to flip the coin. You have, like, you flick the phone? I mean, like, you just... I don't know. Dude, okay.

And the the coin flips, and dependent on which side it lands on Yeah. You either get something or you don't. Mhmm. And you can get either full, partial, cashback, or some other things. Okay. So that's second lineup I never... But we can build multiple games. It could be a Plinko drop. It could be a dice roll. Are you developing the game side of this in house as well? Yes. So I'm like, we are thinking about it. I I like... That's the thing. I feel like you could probably build like so many nice...

You should just buy... Like raise money and acquire like a really great couple people who are building games. I know. Know. So many people have done... We'll get to that point. Yeah. Give us, like... You know, it's been three, four months only. Like, give me, like, twelve months. I think we're gonna be... I mean, I can't even imagine where we're gonna be at that point, but I think it's gonna be massive. Either way, the third thing is these integrations are basically...

Like, we allocate money or Megapod to acquire entries for that particular user in their next day's drop. Because they are basically raffling out a million every day or basically like you are buying entries into million dollar lottery every single day, then they are basically doing the drop. And, yeah, I mean, you have a chance to win. We instruct them to basically acquire the entries. Okay. Right? But we can also do other integrations here.

So we've been in talks with several partners to, for example, offer luxury good raffles instead. Or, for example, offer collectible packs or do something of that kind. And then within the same experience, with Tensero, you will be able to, for example, rip your Pokemon pack that you got because the rewards pool or rewards protocol said so. You got the rewards pack, so you can rip it. It can be a regular card or it could be like, know, some limited edition like Uh-huh.

Know, like Charizard or whatever, and suddenly it's worth like few thousand dollars. Can really start thinking about, like one of the first introductions for me to see this whole conversation as more than just like speculation

and meaninglessness was NBA Topshop. That marketplace and what it did commercially with IP, with the user experience Yeah. With the marketplace of that. Like that for me was like, I remember like I couldn't sleep one night and this sounds really dramatic. Like I could not sleep one night because I was like, there is something happening here that is going to totally transform the way that technology works and I'm imagining... Typical

NFT tilt.

That was that was definitely the moment. And I I'm unfortunately not the only one who's felt that way with them, but like, I feel like we're coming back to this though because even though the concept of NFTs as a category have like let most people down and there's like so many black eyes, you can't even really like... We almost have to start fresh, but they got so much right.

But what I'm imagining here is like a financial platform like you guys, imagine if instead of them just coming to market with an NFT marketplace, they had almost a front of house financial layer that was distributed by an NBA team or the league itself and now like all these fans are doing what they're doing with Up Top and Rain and all these amazing neo banks for teams and now teams can actually go to the stadium and do the do the thing that I mentioned earlier of like fifty fifty raffle but just like tour three point o powered by Sero where you guys are like actually doing the mechanics.

Yeah. Stuff like that needs to exist.

I know. I mean, it's like the possibilities in this case are endless. We can venture out. We can partner with whoever. We can build our own experiences. We can build our own raffles, you know. And again, like, we just plug it into this, like, protocol, which just dictates or admit... The other day, like, I said this thing. Basically, it's a protocol that administers the dopamine hits in app. And and there's, like, multiple ways on how it can be done.

And all of that with an aim to push user to use over any other card, hold money on CERO as opposed to any other place where they hold money and provide us as much information as possible so we can then later on under right ship. And just appealing to their own desire of escape escaping the permanent underclass. Do you get more excited with the owning the user relationship side of like, this is our app, this is our relationship and we're gonna be the thing that people think of when they experience this?

Or is what I described maybe more of like Infra. The infra more interesting? Like, where do you fall on that? I wanna build the consumer products. Like, we have built like an insane amount of infrastructure underneath like Yeah. Also on the credit side. I mean, we can touch upon it, like, later, but both of these things are unique in its own way. But how much infrastructure can you build, first of all? I mean, kind of get over it. It's like, everyone is building infrastructure.

Like, the the whole point of an infrastructure build out is that there's gonna be applications that are using it. Right? So application always is the end goal. Do you think that we're way over indexed on infrastructure right now? Oh, 100%. Speak a little bit more on that. What do you mean? I don't I don't wanna dive into that. I just think it's just everyone is building an infrastructure. Everyone is trying to do consumer, but pivoting to doing infrastructure instead or doing b to b.

What are people missing that are doing that? It's like building boring stuff. It's the same thing all over again. Yeah. Like, copy paste of something that has previously existed. And I think if you wanna, like, do something new or basically just, make a thing consumer, like, you have to build totally different. If everyone is going one way, you just have to go the other, and you then have at least a shot of making it. Yes. Because it's just like everyone is copying. If you do the application

well using your own infrastructure, you're way better positioned to sell the infrastructure. So it's like Exactly. Just we've been talking to some companies. It's like, hey, you have the licenses, you have the tech, you have all these things, like just go build the front end too. Like, don't wait for these customers to come to you. Just go build what you wish existed and have that unfair advantage. You know,

the the thing is that like in this way, like acquiring customer is very tough. I mean Yeah. And that's why, like, I think it's maybe, like, an easy way out to build an infrastructure sometimes. It's like, yeah, I'll just focus on b to b customers. You know? I'll try to support whatever company or an app that is trying to acquire the user rather than trying to do it ourselves because it's just easier. When you are building in consumer space, it's...

By definition, it's kind of the holy grail, but it's also very tough. Yeah. So if you make it right, I mean, you're golden. So our bet is that... I mean, we have something on our hands right now that I think is just like... It's very compelling. We are also shipping very quickly, which allows me to, like, you know, bet that we will be able to scale this super fast and go global as quickly as possible, though we are starting in Mexico specifically and then, like, gradually are going to evolve into other markets.

Why Mexico to start? What made you choose there? I mean, we kind of got slightly pushed into the market. Okay. Your wife Yeah. Your wife wants to vacation there more No. No. No. It's it's mostly on the infrastructure side. I mean, it was just easier to navigate all of the card issuance and account issuance sets there. We were able to go to market there quicker on the card side Because we also need to... A very specific setup. We need to be able to externally authorize the transactions in order for this to work.

Externally, like through another company? No. Like, let's say, we are working with Rain. Rain is asking us, does this person has money? And then we answer to Rain, yes, he does. Because that allows us to loop in the credit component Mhmm. Into this mix. But otherwise, if we can also go with Rain managed program, but then Rain is checking the user's non custodial smart account Mhmm. For the balance. And if he just doesn't have enough, that's it.

You run into the problem that you're solving is what you're talking about. But again, it's like Mexico is just easier. Plus I think also it's kind of like going right now through this fintech boom that, like, we saw in Europe and The US. There was just, like, the same flex of new companies trying to enter the market, new concepts, new ideas. I think Mexico is going through this right now. They have Plata, Doombank, Revolut is entering right now, and there's other players as well coming in.

The market's extremely underserved, and it's predominantly young. So in our case, like, have a... On one side, we have a pretty growing demand for upside. Yeah. And, on the other side, more than 60% of the population does not have access to credit, so it's kinda like a match meant we haven't Perfect. For a Did you talk to Sjerrill a little bit? Yeah. Okay. We did. This is this is Yeah. Power of stable minded here. Okay. So good luck with the pitch competition you have. That one is gonna be insane.

I think we're gonna be able to pitch at the largest gambling conference. We got fast tracked into a pitch competition final after the owner saw our intro video that we posted on X the other day, and it just, like, blew up a bit and just aligns with, like, what they are doing there. Yeah. So Yeah. We will be pitching and kind of like getting our product distributed amongst a crowd of iGaming people. So that's good. We didn't touch upon credit though. What did we miss before we close? Something No. No. I mean For now.

Part two? Yeah. Part two. Can we do part two? Because there's like that piece of infra. Again, infrastructure, but that piece of infrastructure is standalone like a potential like a billion dollar product. What makes you say that? Because it's cracked. Credit. It's like there's... It's the the first attempt to unsecured lending on chain, and the way of how we have built it out allows us to just ever scale it by integrating new lenders globally.

Yep. And then we can always, you know, just wake up one day and like, you know, create an API for this and, hey, you wanna offer credit in your app? It's really interesting. There you go. You're getting the stable minded intro sandwich because our next guest who's coming on, I think is going through a different go to market, a similar disruption in credit and how that works. So this will I guess tease our conversation with Tech Dollar coming up. But MJ, we we appreciate your time. Thank you.

And good luck on your global end of year tour. Let's plan on hearing how that goes Oh, yeah. Top of '27. For sure. It's gonna be cool. We're doing the APAC circuit, Korean Blockchain Week, Singapore, Hong Kong. Awesome. Then returning back to to The US and, yeah. Expecting the app to go live early October. If you haven't signed up for the wait, let's do it. Cool. Pre seed round will be closed soon. No. I mean, like, any day. Any day. Any day. Let's go. Okay. By the time this comes out.