# Cero is 60 to 70% through its pre-seed round as it trades points for prize draws

Stableminded, a Stabledash show. Oct 1, 2026. Markuss Jonans.
https://live.stabledash.com/shows/stableminded/episodes/the-end-of-loyalty-points-turning-your-cashback-into-a-shot-7DVWa4Jwe6s

Co-founder Markuss Jonans says crypto users ignore cashback and points, so Cero pools everyone's rewards and pays them out as a chance at something bigger.

Cero is 60, 70% of the way through its pre-seed round, and co-founder Markuss Jonans says it will close "any day." The startup, which joined Monad's Nitro accelerator with nine days' notice, is building a spending card that replaces points with a chance at prizes, starting in Mexico.

## Why points don't work

Markuss Jonans, who left his CEO role at Dyor Exchange to found Cero, says standard rewards never pull users away from their main cards: "people don't really care about 1% cashback, 5% yield, earned programs, random points." He runs the numbers on a 5% yield on a $10,000 balance: after taxes and an annual fee, he puts it at about $300 a year.

MJ calls the Revolut points he collected over two and a half years "useless," worth roughly 400 gigabytes of mobile data. He points instead to Robinhood, which he says grew from a gamified app with confetti on every trade into one of the most powerful financial companies. Host Drew Rogers says the free-stock offer is what converted him to Robinhood.

## Pooling rewards into one pot

Cero pools all user money into one vault that decides who gets what based on how people spend, hold and share information. MJ cites the UK's Premium Bonds, which pay lower yield in exchange for a chance to win, as the fastest growing savings product in the UK. Yield on balances is generated in collaboration with Agora.

Payouts come through a coin flip game, built starting in late May, or entries into draws run by licensed partner Megapot, which raffles out a million every day. The Cero Score, from 0 to 1000, grows through holding cash, spending, sharing information and repaying loans, and unlocks credit over time.

## Mexico first

Markuss Jonans says Cero picked Mexico because card issuance was easier and it needs to externally authorize transactions, which it does with Rain. He calls the market "extremely underserved" and young, with more than 60% of the population lacking access to credit.

Cero began as an uncollateralized onchain credit card, and MJ says that lending infrastructure could become a standalone billion-dollar product. For now he is betting on consumer upside while, in his view, much of the industry builds infrastructure, and he expects Cero to be "massive" within 12 months.

## Key takeaways

1. Cero is 60, 70% of the way through its pre-seed raise, and Markuss Jonans says it could close any day.
2. Markuss Jonans says people do not care about 1% cashback, 5% yield or points, only upside, so Cero pools user rewards into one vault and pays out through coin flips and Megapot draws.
3. Cero launches in Mexico first, where MJ says more than 60% of the population lacks access to credit, with the app expected in early October.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Cero bets that people want upside, not points
- 2:29 Cero began as an uncollateralized onchain credit card
- 5:11 User interviews showed crypto cards and rewards rarely move users
- 8:06 Onchain lending lacks the reputation that makes credit work
- 14:12 Feedback on upside led to a lossless rewards protocol
- 20:09 Score building is the game, and points programs fail
- 25:39 Upside-seeking is built into modern apps and Robinhood's growth
- 28:07 Pooled rewards go out through coin flips and lottery entries
- 34:30 The industry has too much infrastructure and too few consumer apps
- 37:01 Mexico offers easier card issuance and underserved young users
- 38:40 Credit infrastructure and launch plans close the conversation

## Transcript

**Markuss Jonans** (0:00)

Who cares about points? That's my question. We had nine days notice. We had nothing at that time. No website, no nothing. Basically just decided to go, packed the bags, flew out and started Cero. People don't really care about 1% cashback, 5% yield, earned programs, random points. All they care about is the upside. We are building Cero in its current form, 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.

This reward protocol is lossless. There's no, let's say, games of chance element within the app, per se. Give me like 12 months, I mean, I can't even imagine where we're going to be at that point, but I think it's going to be massive. If everyone is going one way, you just have to go the other, and you then have at least a shot of making it.

**Drew Rogers** (0:50)

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If you want an intro, you can pay me on X or go to latitude.xyz to learn more. MJ, what a

**Markuss Jonans** (1:21)

gift

**Drew Rogers** (1:22)

to get to hang out with you and have a conversation on especially short notice. Thanks for hopping in the studio here in Brooklyn. Welcome to Stableminded. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

**Markuss Jonans** (1:31)

Yeah, I guess I had like 12 hours in the office or something along those lines, but yeah, I was around.

**Drew Rogers** (1:38)

We closed a new podcast sponsor. Baby number three for me is coming in 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 were 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. So that's what made me want to 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 background because we didn't really get into that last time. Give us your intro and then we'll dive into it.

Okay, so yeah, my name is MJ and

**Markuss Jonans** (2:31)

I've been building Cero actually starting from 20th of April. 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 like a nine days notice to fly out. For Nitro?

Yeah, because I received an email on the 11th of April that we had to be here and start the program by the 20th, so we kind of were scrambling to get everything in order, get the visas sorted, register a company, because we had nothing at that

**Drew Rogers** (3:05)

time. No website, no nothing. So yeah, we basically just

**Markuss Jonans** (3:10)

decided to go, packed the bags, flew out, and started Cero.

**Drew Rogers** (3:13)

At this time, you get accepted into Nitro. You have no company formed. There's no public... What was it that you pitched to them and what made them say yes, like come to the US and do

**Markuss Jonans** (3:23)

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 a pretty solid career across fintech and crypto and like built companies, accepted companies across the four founders that basically currently is building Cero. 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 on-chain credit card with a revolving There's a huge USDC credit limit that would allow crypto natives like ourselves to borrow money without locking up collateral, which I guess still there's like what we wanted to go and fix was the problem of all the collateralization and the fact that like you can't really borrow money without posting.

I don't know, let's say in order to borrow 10K USDC, you must post like 15K ETH in collateral and then you still have to pay APR.

**Drew Rogers** (4:12)

I don't know, like 150%. 150%. Yeah.

**Markuss Jonans** (4:15)

But I mean, like no bank, no 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 chain wallet history, centralized exchange account history, trades that they have done and made, I mean, their portfolio 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 otherwise nobody would pay attention. She advised

**Drew Rogers** (5:19)

you to go really loud. Yes. Tell us a bit about that. That's always been like a part of what makes, in my view, Cero so unique. It feels very sensational. Oh. And not in like a, not in like a bad way. It's in a tasteful way. Yeah, it's like tasteful, but it does feel like dopamine in like a brand. It's exciting. It's fun. You know, she told you that

**Markuss Jonans** (5:41)

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 want to, like, bash our pseudo-competitors, PlasmaCost 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 robin hood 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 show up on the screen and like

**Drew Rogers** (6:27)

you know sign up get a free stock like that was the thing

**Markuss Jonans** (6:31)

Exactly, exactly. And you have to like evolve into it. Well, that was kind of our discussion with her, mostly about the GTM and just being bold. But then also during that time, we spoke to every single cryptonator we could get our hands on within the first two weeks, like close to 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 that everyone is using.

And then all of the crypto cards are the second, third, fourth card that people are using, which means that 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 offering 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.

**Drew Rogers** (7:30)

That's the first thing people foot is like, Yeah, percentages

**Markuss Jonans** (7:33)

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. They don't care about it as much.

**Drew Rogers** (7:51)

It's nice to have.

**Markuss Jonans** (7:52)

Yeah, it's nice to have. And I mean, the thing that I'm thinking about is like, nobody's going to switch, you know, from their Chase Sapphire to whatever other card that is offering 3% cashback on, I don't know, entropic credits. 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 any 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

**Drew Rogers** (8:43)

I see this in traditional credit, but not at that like micro scale.

**Markuss Jonans** (8:46)

Yes, correct. There's actually one product that I would like to call out. 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. Have you ever talked to them? No.

**Drew Rogers** (9:03)

All right, we got to get, what was the name of them? I want to talk to the guys at

**Markuss Jonans** (9:07)

Vine Cash. Yeah, because they also raised a lot of money from like Paradigm and some other guys. But yeah, I haven't heard from them. I wonder what happened there. What was so fascinating about what they built? I mean, it was an uncollateralized lending protocol. They were building that on WorldCoin. Can you define undercollateralized? Like define these terms, undercollateralized. Like basically you'd borrow money on chain without posting collateral.

**Drew Rogers** (9:29)

So I don't need to... 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...

**Markuss Jonans** (9:40)

Just borrow money. The same way as any other 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.

**Drew Rogers** (9:51)

Like actually lock in. So when you say lock in, what does that typically mean? Like I actually send my funds out of my custody,

**Markuss Jonans** (9:59)

give

**Drew Rogers** (9:59)

them to the lender and lock them up for until this is paid back. Yes,

**Markuss Jonans** (10:04)

correct. And then they use this money in case of a default or in case, well, basically they take that money in the case of a non-payment. 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 world coin or the world app. And, you know, like the world project is the one, the dystopian one where you have to scan your retina. In order to verify proof of human. Yeah. And basically all of the users within that ecosystem had been KYC'd 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.

**Drew Rogers** (10:57)

That's the benefit of the dystopian part. You get some benefits of the humanness of it. But yeah, it is, it is a tension.

**Markuss Jonans** (11:04)

The way of how I understood it is that like the way they bet on the fact that these people because they have these the reputation which is like sacred I mean if they

**Drew Rogers** (11:12)

default it will be

**Markuss Jonans** (11:13)

forever kind of like attached to their profile to that address for example on the world coin or world chain and uh yeah

**Drew Rogers** (11:20)

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 this company works, that will happen.

Are we actually at a point where on-chain, because I'd imagine if you, there's probably a spectrum here, but 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. If I go do something in the real world, you know it's going to follow you. Does that exist?

**Markuss Jonans** (11:59)

I mean, no. I mean, in on-chain, what you do, you just do something bad. You generate a new address and that new address is a totally new entity with no history

**Drew Rogers** (12:07)

on it.

**Markuss Jonans** (12:07)

You declare bankruptcy, you don't pay a loan. This happens in the real world all the time. Yeah. But I mean, in real world, you have a file that follows you around. That's good. But on-chain, there's none. 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 on your real world file.

But the thing about like the world coin is that like, I mean, obviously it's like an extremely KYC walled garden. 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 the money. It makes sense.

**Drew Rogers** (12:49)

It's kind of like the legal system analogy. It's like the US has a legal system. It's a closed loop.

**Markuss Jonans** (12:54)

Exactly. 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 going to push you to declare bankruptcy. Now it's like if you default on the loan, it's forever reflected on the chain that like you have done that. 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.

**Drew Rogers** (13:26)

Help me understand this, because the difference between a Morpho-backed loan on Coinbase, which I have with my Bitcoin,

**Markuss Jonans** (13:34)

where... I mean, but that's like you have, let's say, $100K worth of Bitcoin, you have borrowed $70K USDC. This is

**Drew Rogers** (13:41)

different, right? Yeah, yeah.

**Markuss Jonans** (13:43)

Imagine if you could come to a Morpho Vault and just borrow, let's say, $70K without needing to post $100K Bitcoin. You just post zero Bitcoin. And you just borrow $70K and you borrow it because you have an impeccable credit history. Which is kind of like the same of how any bank works, the same of how the credit system outside of Onchain works.

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.

**Drew Rogers** (14:12)

So is it kind of fair to say that Cero 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? So that as you grow, you can actually build pretty rich credit data around people. Is that kind of the

**Markuss Jonans** (14:33)

idea? We wanted to do that. And I mean, still, that's a very integral part of the app, like the score itself. But when we started, our idea was like,

**Drew Rogers** (14:42)

yeah, you know, people are just going to

**Markuss Jonans** (14:43)

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, demoed 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 the Cero in its current form, which is this upside app concept, because we realized by offering variance, by offering the upside or the chance of outsized outcome, when either spending or providing information or repaying your loan, et cetera, 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

**Drew Rogers** (15:25)

Cero is at right now. That came from the user testing going back to that point. Upside seemed to be this thing that really stood out. The thing is that it

**Markuss Jonans** (15:32)

was by wide margin the most talked about and it got the most attention.

**Drew Rogers** (15:40)

Okay, so you get this insight. You're probably in Nitro or 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 which takes out most of the 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, you're going down a very, like it's a huge opportunity here, which is what I'm excited about.

There's also like so many landmines around you. How do you build something that's actually accomplishing upside without actually putting a massive, massive risk?

**Markuss Jonans** (16:29)

So the way of how we are structuring this right now, so I don't want to like go too much into detail. It's the sauce right here. This is the sauce. It is. It is. Well, first of all, reward distribution is detached from the spending experience. Like we have a rewards protocol that we had built underneath, which is run on chain, which dictates the dopamine hits and out. 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 1.1 million lottery with Megapont, exclusive partners. Shout out to Africa.

**Drew Rogers** (17:14)

Did you know Megapod existed when you got this feedback or did you come across it?

**Markuss Jonans** (17:18)

No, I was like, 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 want to do a lottery because I mean, it kind of has worked before. Maybe, you know, like Yalta Bank back in the day, there was this like price link savings project that They were doing extremely well up until that point and what they did is like they were paying yield on the

**Markuss Jonans** (17:58)

The users' balances are generating yield on the users' balance, but instead of allocating it to the user, they were offering a million-dollar potential payout every day, or like 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 products. Like it's called premium bond.

But effectively what it is, it's like they are scalping or like taking a cut from the general guild yield that they would pay you. They allocate that money into this large price pool. Every single bond holder gets a chance to win every day. UK citizens? Yeah, that hold out premium bond. Okay. I'm

**Drew Rogers** (18:42)

imagining like a government. Does it feel like a really like buttoned up, like kind of boring program? Or does this feel like... That's the thing. I mean, it seems obviously in everything that's like government related, it's extremely corporate.

**Markuss Jonans** (18:53)

They're extremely 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, dude? I don't know, like a couple of years.

But I was actually surprised when I heard, because like obviously like we, but first, actually Alex from our team, he knew about this like for a long time. And yeah, he kind of like raised this as maybe an interesting way of how we can like, you know, kind of spice things up in the app, because generally like we are generating yield on the balances, like in collaboration with Agora. Shout out Nick.

**Drew Rogers** (19:45)

Okay effectively this becomes like a really interesting insight for you guys as you're like hey 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 v1 protocol over here spending over here like is that how you think about it? Actually, like now when you ask...

Because I say rewards protocol, that's like I go to the baseball game Thursday night with my son and there's a 50-50 raffle ticket. Like okay, that's a rewards protocol. You know what I mean? Like there are rewards protocols everywhere 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.

**Markuss Jonans** (20:33)

Yeah, well, I mean, in our case, what we have tied it to is the score that you have to, like, just maintain or build. You build it through holding cash, spending cash,

**Drew Rogers** (20:43)

providing us more information about yourself, and as

**Markuss Jonans** (20:45)

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.

**Drew Rogers** (20:55)

I hate to

**Markuss Jonans** (20:55)

tell you that. When you say it like that, yes, of course. It's capitalism infrastructure. This is like the hyper-capitalism, I don't know, like hyper-gamblefication

**Drew Rogers** (21:04)

of...

**Markuss Jonans** (21:04)

Well, you're

**Drew Rogers** (21:05)

trying to build perfect financial context.

**Markuss Jonans** (21:07)

Actually, like now, because we're going to a pre-season 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. To push away from the notion that 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,

**Drew Rogers** (21:34)

which unlocks more upside.

**Markuss Jonans** (21:36)

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 have built up your Cero score.

**Drew Rogers** (21:45)

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.

**Markuss Jonans** (22:06)

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 Cero since we launched

**Drew Rogers** (22:19)

the card. Is it actually ready to go right now? Yeah.

**Markuss Jonans** (22:21)

iOS?

**Drew Rogers** (22:22)

Sorry, it's on test flight still, but I will give you the card. Okay, so I can go right now. Yeah,

**Markuss Jonans** (22:26)

if I go 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. 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 one year of 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

**Drew Rogers** (23:03)

does that mean?

**Markuss Jonans** (23:04)

I mean, it's just like, it's useless. For being the power user of Revolut, I've gotten a hundred gigabytes of data. That's all the data 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. I'm just like using

**Drew Rogers** (23:22)

it because I mean, it's convenient and I started using it like a long time ago, but that's about

**Markuss Jonans** (23:26)

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 any incentive behind, or I don't understand how this points system really increases

**Drew Rogers** (23:36)

or... It's super opaque. Points systems generally are very... How do you... The redeemability, the ecosystems...

**Markuss Jonans** (23:42)

I think most of the things that I can redeem those points for are kind of irrelevant. And if it's irrelevant for me, then probably it's irrelevant for a lot of people. And I mean, like, are your team mostly is European? Like, okay, so we have like currently a team of seven. Everyone is using Revolut. Nobody cares about points. Well, that'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 points 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.

**Drew Rogers** (24:18)

And the way of how, at least in Cero context, we think about it is because you don't really

**Markuss Jonans** (24:22)

care about 1% cashback or 5% yield or 3.5% yield or whatever you can get from keeping money in a certain application. Because, I mean, broad strokes, it doesn't really matter.

**Drew Rogers** (24:32)

That does matter for certain large institutions who have a You're talking specifically about like a normal retail citizen. I'm

**Markuss Jonans** (24:40)

talking about, look, let's say 5% yield. I have a rolling balance of 10K. 10K, I mean, saved, that is like rolling on my account is actually like a privilege for like most of the population. Totally. Right. Okay. So let's say 10K. So 5% yield, which is already like a pretty solid one. It's above the T-bill, right? So 5% nets me 500 euros 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. It's not even one night out.

**Drew Rogers** (25:25)

Your whole concept of rewards and loyalty is built around that?

**Markuss Jonans** (25:28)

Yeah. Let's take these $300 and maybe allow people to indulge in upside-seeking, which we're already doing elsewhere.

**Drew Rogers** (25:39)

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... You

**Markuss Jonans** (25:52)

are forced to.

**Drew Rogers** (25:53)

You

**Markuss Jonans** (25:53)

are kind of, like, forced to now, even. It's like...

**Drew Rogers** (25:55)

Sure. There's been some really interesting, like, psychology around that and written papers around this in the last year of kind of the moment of culture. It sort of gets depressing a little bit. Everyone is dopamine, Max said. Yeah. Like, everyone.

**Markuss Jonans** (26:09)

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're doing that because like your brain wants to

**Drew Rogers** (26:19)

potentially hit the video that it will like.

**Markuss Jonans** (26:21)

And now you like you start looking around every single game nowadays, starting with like, I don't know, CSGO 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 intertwined within 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

**Drew Rogers** (26:47)

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... And does this like box like this? When I was in college, 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 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 going to 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 eight bucks, 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've grown with that company.

**Markuss Jonans** (27:40)

And they've grown too. I would say there are now more of a fun, gamified stock trading platform. Now they are a welfare. They are like targeting. One of the most powerful

**Drew Rogers** (27:49)

financial companies in

**Markuss Jonans** (27:49)

the

**Drew Rogers** (27:50)

world. Exactly. But they started by getting young people. Young. Ambitious. Yeah. So bring this really practical now. So you have this, go back to the $300, like average person at the end of the end of the day is getting like a few hundred dollars hypothetical worth of rewards. Instead of taking that and getting a hotel room for the year, it happens with Cero. What's the

**Markuss Jonans** (28:12)

alternative? I mean, like we use this capital. Well, first of all, we pull it all together of all users. Everyone generates their $300, $500 a year. We pull all of that money into like one big pot.

**Drew Rogers** (28:24)

Okay. And is that technically... I'm asking this question because I'm like...

**Markuss Jonans** (28:30)

That's the rewards protocol. Okay.

**Drew Rogers** (28:32)

Whose money is that technically in the pool? I'm not going to comment on that. 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 Vaults. Who owns what?

**Markuss Jonans** (28:47)

Are

**Drew Rogers** (28:48)

these funds together?

**Markuss Jonans** (28:49)

That's the thing, we don't want to necessarily disclose it as of now. But the term

**Drew Rogers** (28:54)

Vault might be the best way to think about it, is how a Vault

**Markuss Jonans** (28:57)

works. Smart Contract, Walt.

**Drew Rogers** (29:00)

Is there anywhere that a user, let's say I'm a user and I want to 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.

**Markuss Jonans** (29:12)

Well, I mean, it's tied to your score, so 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 yeah. 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, we must be extremely bold.

We must be crazy in some way. You know, so we are taking a relatively indigent approach to this. All the money goes into one vault. That wall 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 you trigger buy now pay number, which is the special notification with the Shopify, like, ka-ching sound to it, you know?

**Drew Rogers** (30:06)

AudioQ,

**Markuss Jonans** (30:07)

details, very important. And you are presented with a game. So you press on the notification and you're presented with the game. And the first game is coin flip, which 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 have developed is coin flip. Coin flip is 50-50. You have to flick the phone

**Drew Rogers** (30:26)

to flip

**Markuss Jonans** (30:26)

the

**Drew Rogers** (30:26)

coin. Like, you flick the phone?

**Markuss Jonans** (30:29)

I mean, like, you just, I don't know. Dude, okay. And the coin flips, and dependent on which side it lands on, you either get something or you don't. And you can get either full, partial, cashback, or some other things. So that's second. Buy now, pay never. But we can build multiple games. It could be a Plinko drop.

**Drew Rogers** (30:49)

It could be a dice roll. Are you developing the game side of this in-house as well?

**Markuss Jonans** (30:53)

Yes. We are thinking about it. There's a thing I feel like you could probably

**Drew Rogers** (30:58)

build so many nice... You should just buy, raise money and acquire a really great couple of people who are building games.

**Markuss Jonans** (31:05)

We'll get to that point. Give us like, you know, it's been three, four months only, like give me like 12 months. I think we're going to be, I mean, I can't even imagine where we're going to be at that point, but I think it's going to be massive either way. The third thing is these integrations are basically like we allocate money or instruct Megapop. to acquire entries for that particular user in their next day's call.

Because they are basically raffling out a million every day, or basically like you are buying entries into a million dollar lottery every single day. Then they are basically doing the draw. And yeah, I mean, you have a chance to win. We instruct them to basically acquire the entries. OK. 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 within Cero, 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 back, so you can rip it. It can be a regular card or it could be like, you know, some limited edition, like, you know, like Charizard or whatever. And suddenly it's worth like a few thousand

**Drew Rogers** (32:16)

dollars. Thinking about like one of the first introductions for me to see this whole conversation is more than just like speculation and meaninglessness was NBA Top Shot. That marketplace and what it did commercially with IP, with the user experience, with the marketplace of that, like that for me, it was like, I remember like I couldn't sleep one night and this sounds really dramatic, but like I could not sleep one night.

So I was like, there is something happening here that is going to totally transform the way that technology works. And I'm imagining that was

**Markuss Jonans** (32:49)

definitely the moment.

**Drew Rogers** (32:51)

And 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 Uptop and Rain and all these amazing neobanks for teams. And now teams can actually go to the stadium and do the thing that I mentioned earlier of like 50-50 raffle, but just like Two or 3.0 powered by Cero, where you guys are like actually doing the mechanics. Stuff like that

**Markuss Jonans** (33:42)

needs

**Drew Rogers** (33:43)

to exist.

**Markuss Jonans** (33:44)

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 admin... The other day, like I said this thing, basically, it's a protocol that administers the dopamine hits in an app. And there's like multiple ways on how it can be done.

And all of that with an aim to push users to use Cero 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 redshift. And just appealing to the raw desire of escaping the permanent underclass.

**Drew Rogers** (34:30)

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 going to be the thing that people think of when they experience this? Or is what I described maybe more of like the infra more interesting? Like where do you fall on that?

**Markuss Jonans** (34:46)

I want to build the consumer products. Like we have built like an insane amount of infrastructure underneath, like 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 whole point of an infrastructure build out is that there's going to be applications that are using it, right?

So application always is the end goal.

**Drew Rogers** (35:14)

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?

**Markuss Jonans** (35:21)

I don't want to 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 B2B.

**Drew Rogers** (35:32)

What are people missing that are doing that? Just

**Markuss Jonans** (35:34)

like building boring stuff. It's the same thing all over again. Like just copy-paste of something that has previously existed. And I think if you want to do something new or basically just make a thing consumer, 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. It's just like everyone's copying. If you do the application well, using your own infrastructure, you're in

**Drew Rogers** (36:01)

a way better position to sell the infrastructure. We've been talking to some companies, it's like, hey, you have the licenses, you have the tech, you have all these things, just go build the front end too. Don't wait for these customers to come to you, just go build what you wish existed and have that.

**Markuss Jonans** (36:16)

The thing is that in this way, acquiring a customer is very tough. And that's why I think it's maybe an easy way

**Drew Rogers** (36:22)

out to build an infrastructure sometimes. It's like, yeah, I'll just focus on B2B

**Markuss Jonans** (36:26)

customers. 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. 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

**Drew Rogers** (37:08)

there?

**Markuss Jonans** (37:08)

I mean, we kind of got slightly pushed into the market. Okay. Your

**Drew Rogers** (37:13)

wife wants to vacation there

**Markuss Jonans** (37:14)

more. No, 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 a very specific setup. We need to be able to externally authorize the transactions in order for this to work.

**Drew Rogers** (37:34)

externally like through another company no like let's say we are working with rain

**Markuss Jonans** (37:38)

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

**Drew Rogers** (37:45)

into this mix but otherwise if we

**Markuss Jonans** (37:48)

can also go with rain managed program but then rain is checking the user's non-custodial smart account for the balance and if he just doesn't have enough that's

**Drew Rogers** (37:59)

it you run into the problem that you're solving is what you're yeah

**Markuss Jonans** (38:01)

yeah 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 this influx of new companies trying to enter the market, new concepts, new ideas. I think Mexico is going through this right now. They have Plata, Nubank, 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, on one side, we have a pretty growing demand for upside. And on the other side, more than 60% of the population does not have access to credit. So it's kind of like a match made in heaven. Perfect.

**Drew Rogers** (38:40)

Did you talk to Cyril a little bit? Yes, I did. This is the power of Stableminded here. Okay, so good luck with the pitch

**Markuss Jonans** (38:49)

competition you have. That one is going to be insane. I think we're going to 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. Then we posted that the other day and it just like blew up a bit and just aligns with like what they are doing there. So we will be pitching and kind of like getting our product distributed amongst the crowd of iGaming people. So that's good. We didn't touch upon credit though.

**Drew Rogers** (39:17)

What did we miss before we close? I mean, for now... Part two? Yeah, part two.

**Markuss Jonans** (39:25)

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

**Drew Rogers** (39:37)

that?

**Markuss Jonans** (39:38)

Because it's cracked. Credit. It's the first attempt to unsecure 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. And then we can always, you know, just wake up one day and like, you know, create an API for this and, hey, you want to offer credit in your app? It's really interesting. There you go.

**Drew Rogers** (40:03)

You're getting the Stableminded 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 TechDollar coming up. But MJ, we appreciate your time. Thank you. And good luck on your global end of year tour. Let's plan on hearing how that goes. Top of 27. For sure.

**Markuss Jonans** (40:24)

It's going to be cool. We're doing the APEX circuit, Korean Blockchain Week, Singapore, Hong Kong. Awesome. Then returning back to the US and expecting the app to go live early October. If you haven't signed up for the waitlist, do it. Cool. Pre-seed round will be closed soon. No, I mean like any day. Any day. Let's go. By the time this comes out.