KAST Is Becoming a Money App: Reserve Rewards, Business Accounts and What's Next

Max, what's going on, man? Hey, man. How are you? The two Zachs? I'm good. I'm going solo today. I thought I was gonna have other z, but he had a call he had to hop to. So you're you're stuck with me, but, you know, Drew says hi. He just had his, his third kid coming into the world. Amazing. Amazing. Well, I'm glad we were able to get you on. I know, so we had Justin on. He's normally in Taiwan. You're normally in that part of the world too. You're in you're in DC for StableCon. Correct? Yeah. I am. I am. Exactly.

Awesome. Anything that's, like, you're excited to go to? Are you more excited for the conference, or do you got a more more fun meet and greets, set up on the side?

I think yeah. The conference has been okay. I think it it's probably better done in New York, to be honest with you. I think DC by the way, DC is beautiful. I haven't been down here much. It's it's amazing. Probably a very clean city. But, yeah, there's a lot of people in town and and lots of meetings we go over, regulators, numbers, media, and others. So, yeah, it's very useful to be in Washington, amazing place. But I don't know. For instance, it's, like, crazy energy. It's a little quiet.

Sorry. So, Nick, if you're listening right now, the people want New York next year, which I'm sure they'll do. I know. It's like it seems like there's some people that get tired of the same place, but sometimes if the same place works, maybe just do what works.

I mean, half the people I'm talking to are, like, getting on the train to New York tonight, tomorrow morning. So it's the middle of fashion week in New York. So I was like, I had a good time. I should be in New York. Well,

I was excited to talk to you because one of the core, I think, inspirations inspirations with with with starting this show was being able to follow companies kind of from ear the very early days throughout their fundraising rounds, throughout the product announcements, and you were all the way on in in stable season two of Stable Minded shortly after your your seed round, You've since raised your series a. We talked to you then. We talked to you around launching of your Stablecoin.

I kept on seeing all this cast news and I was like, okay. We need to get Rags back on for an update because since we've last talked, we've seen the reserve product and we've seen the banking product. So maybe give people just kind of a lay, like, what are those two product lines that you've that you've brought to market since then? And, yeah, give us kind of the overview of those.

I mean, reserve is a so we already had vaults where you could put in money to save. But the one downside about vaults is just the complexity. Like, one day it's x-ray, another day it's y rate. And so, you know, there's that downside to where there's potentially lockups for a few hours. And so what we wanna do is bring a product that's really simple, that's closer to what you'd feel in sort of fintech.

And so the reserve account is just an account where you can move your money from your standard account to reserve, and you earn rewards in there. At the moment, we've got a promote rate, which we just extended from end of the year to mid next year. I think I'll probably end up extending it till the end of next year. It cost it cost us a lot of money though, so that's why I'm being cautious. But, yeah, it's 8% for standard, 10% for premium, and 12% for private. Wow. Base paid as rewards into your rewards balance.

So as opposed to, like, a rate where you earn in a savings account, your savings keeps going, we just pay it directly into your rewards balance. And the reason we that is is because it's a reward. We just keep it in standard stable coins or yield bearing treasury back stable coins equivalents, and then we cover the gap. So, basically, you know, let's say it's three and a half, 4% you get. We're paying you 10.

We're paying the six, you know, straight as and it's basically, like, customer acquisition, customer loyalty, membership, you know. So it's a cost to us, but we think it's worth it just for both growth as well as, like, just customers like it. And so we wanna bring more AUM to the platform, so that's why we do it. But it's really, really simple. You just literally move money into that. You start earning it. You can spend direct from it as well.

So, yeah, it's a great product. When when was this kind kind of like when did you have this light bulb moment that this was the iteration of kind of the savings product that you need to have? Because way back when, it was the spend account, kinda talked about vols, kinda talked about the stable points. So there's been a there's been a few iterations of this, like you said, within the Yeah. So generally, like, it's actually in my in our new marketing

that's coming out. I've given a direction to the marketing team to soon never show our app, never talk about stablecoins, never talk about crypto. I'm gonna go out a limb and say, like, stablecoins are dead. What I mean by that is that is that people actually really care about money. It's just money. Right? Everything's money. Like, whether it's cash, whether it's stable coins, whether it's crypto, whether it's tokenized stocks, it's all it's all money. Right?

And so we really, we wanna move cost to be the the money app, and and so we we just we're not talking about it in we we're gonna leave, I guess, that neo bank space for the current, you know, neo banks who are talking about stable coins and crypto and giving token rewards and all that. We're gonna leave that to the others to find out, you know, with vaults and Mhmm. You defy and all of that.

We are gonna go become much more of a mainstream app because we think that's where the future is, and that's where the the maximum addressable market is. That's where more than 50% of our customers exist today, and we think it's gonna become 80 or 90%. As I say it, like, it's crypto where you need it. So if you wanna send something, you can. It's seamless.

If you we're just releasing self custodial as well so you can actually, I think it just got released, but the full version with the export your keys comes out in a couple of weeks. And so if you are a crypto person and you wanna have a self custodial version, you wanna export your keys, you wanna send stable coins, you wanna deposit crypto, you can do all that. But the app looks and feels and is presented as a general mass market app, and that's what our focus is on.

Where where do you start this kind of I don't wanna say it's a full transition because I think if anybody has followed Cas, like, I you've always felt this kinda coming in. Like, you kinda feel like these layers stripping away of, like, because, again, you you you kinda knew your first truck customer, deeply ingrained in the Solana ecosystem. These are the people two years ago that needed the product, and that's changed drastically. So now in this next evolution, where does it start?

How does that change maybe your go to market, your marketing functions? Where do where is your focus on, like, where where are the next, you know, 100,000 cast users at?

Yeah. I mean, look, we I I'll give you, like, a quick example. Right? Like, we've got, I think, 70,000, 80,000 followers we've built organically to something like that on x, and then, you know, a few tens of thousands on Instagram. Like, of our marketing is now gonna go into Instagram and TikTok. Right? So if I'm gonna do, you know, focus on UGC and Instagram and TikTok and social, then essentially, the product has to be something that someone can pick up who doesn't know anything about crypto and use. Yeah.

So so that that's where we're moving towards. We're moving towards, like, brand partnerships, celebrity partnerships as well. You'll be seeing a whole bunch of stuff coming. And then and so for that, the app you need to pick up the app and like, the average person doesn't know what the fuck DeFi is. I'm sorry. Excuse me, Mike. No. You're fine. They don't know what DeFi is, and they don't really care. Right? Like, I don't know about blockchains and all this other stuff. Right?

And so we are just really focused on on using all the underlying rails and the efficiency that comes with it, but not, you know, making the app extremely simple. And that also extends the fact that now we've got business, which is our other product as well. So we're onboarding a lot of companies who are using it for for business and, you know but these businesses are not necessarily crypto businesses. The majority are not. Right? So Yeah.

We we essentially wanna become a global ramp up practice, you know, effectively, a fintech for for global businesses. And, yeah, that's what we're focused on.

I'm gonna go down the business route maybe after this question. Who do you study? Who do you pull inspiration from when you look at, like, hey. These brands have crushed it on Instagram and TikTok. This is who I'm telling my marketing teams to really start, studying. This is how we wanna go down because I I really admire that that approach, that strategy. I wish more brands we've essentially talked with a few teams that are focusing on the consumer apps. I'm like, look.

There is a fintech community on x, but the problem is you get really trapped in that in that crypto sphere. And I think us even as a brand to some degree, like, we're thinking, wait. Where's the larger fintech money crowd that just cares about these products, not just about, you know, the stable points of their on chain finance? So what does that start to look like? Any really interesting campaigns that you've maybe run on Instagram or TikTok you wanna call out?

We haven't that much yet, but we had, you know, for example, John Vlogs Brazilian blogging. He's got 30,000,000 followers or something, and, you know, some of those stuff had millions of views. We recently very quietly, you know, working with the European kid.

People may know he's like that obnoxious little trust fund baby kid, and so he's doing some skits, you know, with his cast card, which we've seen out in a while, which we haven't tagged his cast, but it's like, you know, it's it's interesting to see what he's doing. And he's just doing it kind of on his own. But it's it's these are just, like, general these are not, like, crypto names. And, actually, what we find is that, like, we really like the crypto KOLs, but they're a little tapped out at this stage.

Like, it's a bull market. I think the bear market's going for a while. I think a lot of crypto KOLs are kind of, you know, frankly not that interesting anymore. You know, I think people just wanna go to mass market now. You know? So that's the transition. And I think the people who are stuck, you know, dealing with the crypto crowd are gonna have an increasingly narrow audience, you know. I think the people who figured out there's much bigger audience for this are the ones who win.

You see today, like, new bank release their stablecoin, their bank, you know, only 35 countries. But you can see if everyone everyone sees the writing on the wall, this is the future.

Yeah. Now let's go to the business because it's funny. We've seen some companies go personal than business, business than personal. Was this always part of the road map? Was this a, hey. Our users are using this like a business account. Let's give them an actual business account.

What is the personal to business relationship that even look like with one person? Yeah. I mean, saw accounts. We saw heaps of people using it for business like stuff, whether it's paying for subscriptions, whether it's other things. So we just saw we saw that demand there already. Right? And and so that's why we're we're we're we were like, yeah, this is just like a natural logical step. We're probably about six months late.

We kind of last year, we're building it, and then we were like, oh, maybe we should do, like, Outcast, which is a purpose training. And then we're like, okay. No. Let's stop that, and let's go focus on business.

We kind of had two ways to go with limited resources. We I will say I loved Outcast. It was a great experience. I did use it a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And my It was a nice it was a nice nice era.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, like, maybe we should have kept going on it. Maybe. But the problem is is, like, you've gotta garner the team to go on. It's hard as a start up, man. Like, I I I think we could have kept going on it, but the thing is, like, trade hyperliquid, you've got so many options. Right? Like, you can literally pick, like, 800 builder codes or something. You know? So so but, yeah, the question is is whether people wanted to build that or, you know, whether we go and focus on business.

And I think business ultimately has a lot more value, and so we focused on business. You know? We thought we're not gonna beat everyone at trading perks because there's gonna be a lot of competition here. But in business, we can be very special, you know, and so that's why we've refocused on business. We will introduce stock tokens into our task platform for depending on the region. Now that our app is largely self custodial, so that will allow that to happen. So you see but that's gonna be more in wealth.

You're gonna be having stock tokens, being able to borrow against the stock tokens. That's coming imminently as well.

Yeah. On on this topic of stock tokens, I've I've we've kind of we've talked with a few teams more in, the, kinda neobank saving space as, a wealth building tool. How do you even, like, start to segment and think about, okay, savings and, like, a reserve count, and then you might also have your stock tokens that you want to just easily DCA into to just continue building wealth? Like, is that is that trading? Is that savings? Is this is it a little bit of both?

Do you need to have 500 stock tokens, or do you need to have a 100? How do you start to you know, how does that product come to?

I mean, this is what we're trying to consider, but I think it'll be a more limited offering to start with, like, maybe a a web version where you can do more. But, yeah, it should be pretty limited. You can DCA in. You can borrow against that. But we we we we're just very cautious in keeping the app more like I wouldn't call it like a trading. It's more wealth, you know. So we're looking it should enable people to buy that or or blended s and p 500 or or maybe like Yeah. But it used to be the max seven.

I don't know what the latest iteration of that is. People buying it. The the only fans I've heard is the other one. You know, it's the latest. But it's like, you know, mix of these seven or eight stocks, you know, and I think that's what people want. You know? So, yeah.

One thing we talked about last time you were on that, just the the credit. Credit is a hot topic. We're seeing more and more. We've seen the the the news with, Ray and Visa. They got more public with some of their work on these credit facilities. How are you still thinking about credit and the role that it plays in a larger larger wealth app?

Oh, I mean, so we just hired someone to be a global head of credit. He starts imminently, and we are introducing a charge card style function. So, essentially, you'd be you'd be able to spend from your reserve account. What you spend will become unavailable for you, but as long as you pay it back by the before that, the tenth day of the next month, then you earn all that interest that you normally would on reserve. So it's a pretty cool product, but it's our first step towards moving towards full credit.

And so we think that credit is the killer product, but it also comes with a lot of complexities. Right? So Yeah. So, yeah, we'll have to work through that one step at a time.

What do you think people are doing right now, like, in the credit credit world, credit card space? What what or and then maybe the other side of that coin is, like, what needs to get disrupted and what really needs to get left behind?

I think the thing is is, like, credit in The US is very sophisticated. So you got credit agencies, you got debt collectors, you got the whole ecosystem. Right? But if you're building an air bank that's open to, like, people in a 150 plus countries, like, how do you rebuild all of that infrastructure of credit rating, debt collection, recourse, all of that in on chain, you know. How how do you build that, you know?

And so but the demand for credit is generally huge, like, LatAm, across Africa, across people need credit, you know. It's it's the killer product. How you do that, I guess, is the question that we haven't resolved for yet.

Outside of you know, you're very active on Twitter. You're still like I said, you have this feels like this foot in the larger ecosystem. You like to trade. When you zoom out and you kinda look at the macro trends right now, how do you generally feel about the space? I think you're even making comments about the bearable cycle. I'm just curious to get your thoughts. Like, how how do you feel about the space from a macro perspective right now?

Look. I think from a macro perspective, from, you know, the wave of tokenization, stablecoins, and access to US dollar banking and banking rounds in general, it's never been better. Right? It's as as good as it's ever been. All the all the things we dreamt about are slowly starting to come true. But that doesn't that's different to my opinions on, like, where crypto prices are. My view is that crypto prices are rebounding and they've come up Bitcoin's come to 80 k. It's floating in and around that.

I think it'll keep progressing, and we'll see another lift up and a push towards, like, $90.95 k, maybe a 100 k. And then people will think, oh my god. The bull market is back, and then it's gonna come dumb straight back down.

It's by it's by We've never experienced that before. Not financial advice.

Yeah. Not financial advice, but it's it's I'm just from a personal training perspective, you you know, I'm I'm believer in the four year cycle. You know? So I think '21, we saw the boom. I think in '25, we saw a peak, and I think the next peak is few probably around '29, which means, like, latter twenty seven, '28, we'll start moving again, you know, towards that bull market, you know, and we'll probably bake in maybe '28 or so break the record highs, you know, that we've seen. Yeah.

But but I don't think that we're gonna be you know, I mean, people are just like, yeah, the bull market's back. We're gonna be a record highs and, like,

time. But at the end of the year, you know, like, oh, I've I've been through this a few times. Yeah. Yeah.

So what we're doing for this bull run? We think it's good because it's like I like, bull runs just create, like, huge amount of distractions. You know? So I think, you know, I think it gives I I I I'm okay with a longer bear market because it allows builders to build.

Yeah. So that's actually a perfect segue because I was gonna ask. So while we're waiting for this bull run-in 2028 or whatever year it may become, builders are building. You hired a global, global head of credit. Your team has been scaling. You've been vocal with us on the last few on the last few appearances. You're building a 100,000,000,000 company, and I think you probably have you know, if I if if we've learned anything, you probably have your set your site set higher to to a trillion.

What what's the next stage? What are you looking forward to 2027? What are these key roles maybe that you might need to hire for for anybody that might be watching? How are you continuing to scale and grow the team? Because I think last time we talked, you were at a 300 head count, give or take, and you're projecting more. So what yeah. Give us the update of of where you're at there, and maybe a call to any builders that wanna join the rocket ship that's cast.

Yeah. I mean, look, we're looking for people who can operate very lean and build something themselves. I would say that, like, the one lesson I'm learning in business is that if I could rebuild the company again today, we wouldn't need as many people. It's really hard, you know. But then we you know, like, if you have the benefit of building from the ground up, you'd put agents on everything. You know? But those agents also need to know how to assess things. You know, there's a lot of work that goes into it.

So I think my view is, like, we'll probably triple the revenue of the company and stay the the workforce will stay pretty much near the same. Right? I think AI, we can just drive a lot of efficiency. And so the next year will be a year of efficiency and cost control whilst we, you know, really invest in just, you know, you know, growing more and more. So we won't we won't necessarily spend more and more in terms of headcount or grow the headcount more and more.

I just think that our people can just becoming more and more efficient with, like, got better AI tools, etcetera. Kinda scary for the broader economy as to what it's doing for hiring. Because if Yeah. The company like us is scanning supply should be able to hire, you know, we'll be hiring more and more people. But yeah. I mean, the flip side is, like, we're also competing against people who are built extremely lean. And so they've got a much lower cost base, and so they're able to spend more money on other things.

And so if we wanna keep up with that, then we have to

we have to do the same. Yeah. In this age of AI and as a founder, like, where do you think AI is more impactful? We've seen teams. We've seen banking products continue to, you know, innovate and implement AI as well, like, externally, meaning it's things that go outward, it's it's agents using their cards, it's, giving AI tooling within their apps or their products, and then there's the teams that are saying, actually, I don't think that's where AI is valuable. It's valuable internally.

It's valuable for how we just scale the business behind the scenes. How much do you think the end consumer actually cares about stable I mean, not stablecoin. Sorry. AI? And is it more is it more of a powerful tool internally or with externally with how it is from a client base or consumer facing perspective?

I think both. I mean, we we're building what we call codename Kim AI, which is our AI tool within the app. So that I've given the team the challenge to basically say, like, anything you can do like, if it takes you five screens or four screens or to flick through, like, I want you to be able to do that from the AI quicker. Right? Like, so for example, if I'm like, hey.

I wanna get a and I wanna get my you know, from all my spending from September one to ten, you know, for this month and how much I spent on hotels during that period while I've been on trip in The US. So just giving the cost for The US hotels. I've just told you that verbally. I should be able to say that's the AI, and it should just get tricked for me. Right?

As opposed to to bit by bit, you know, you know, like, flicking through the screens and clicking date range and then sorting and, you know, like, all this stuff, it should just be able to give it to me. You know? So or, hey. Like, send me let me send money to Zach, you know, and I should just look it up, and then it says, well, to his bank account or or his Slana address Slana address done, you know. So we we're building AI outward facing to be quicker for customers to do things than using screens.

And then internally, I think it's just massive amounts of efficiency can be driven from having agent to assess things like, for example, if you got compliance assessment for someone, they've submitted information, being able to, you know, sort sort of manually looking at it and judging it, it should be able to be done much more efficiently.

Yep. Last thing I wanna call on before we wrap up here is is this this report by, Artemis and then the thesis that, you know, Andrew wrote about, you know, cast stable point opportunity, which, you know, maybe the the next one we'll have to to revisit to not be stablecoin centric because it's it's just the underpinning here.

But anything that you specifically wanna call out, anything that as you've dug into the numbers over the past six to twelve months that might have surprised you a bit, whether that's geo volume, what maybe what users care more about that you didn't really expect, or do you feel like you've been pretty spot on with with your thesis maybe from day one?

My thesis is always correct. You know, I'm a genius. Dude, I can tell you, in start ups, you're always learning something. Like, it's a continuous learning process on on all sides. Hiring, firing strategy all the time. But I think the thing is is that we the things that I've really learned is that I think taking this product mainstream and getting away from the crypto audience is the most important thing.

And I think it, like, leaving that to, you know there's some great products out there, you know, with everyone from Plasma to Athena. Like, I'm a massive Athena fan, by the way. Like like, an I know guy a little bit, you know, congratulations on launching your product. You know, he's a guy's out there and, you know, there's trio and there's all heaps of people within the space, you know. And Yeah. And but I think for us, we get we're on a path to do something different.

And, you know, I think there's plenty of market opportunity out there, but we're not gonna be like we started our ascension from Solana and, you know, through our partnership with Solana, and we're really, really close to Solana still. But, you know, we're not we're now just an app for everyday people where we're still, for example, still very much deep in Solana, very majority Solana in terms of how we move money and where, you know, we use a chain, but you don't need to know Solana is there. That's the beauty.

And I think you'd agree with them. Right? That they're delivering they I just saw they just tokenized Nike stock on Solana. So they they Yeah. Was really cool. Yeah. They're delivering all the tokenized stocks there. They're delivering stable coins there. They're delivering all those features. But when you're consuming it as a user, you don't need to know that it's sitting on a blockchain. It's not it's just there for you. Right? And so I think that's yeah.

That that's essentially, you know, the path that we're taking that's different to others. You know, we pay out our cash back in USD. We've seen others move towards tokens. And so we we're just gonna stay on our path of becoming a broader mass market product where the DeFi and everything else is not visible to you, but it's there when you don't want it.

Yeah. You know, it's funny we just had Lido on from Athena on it's Tuesday this week. Yeah. And it's interesting to think through the parallels right now because he was very clear. Like, hey. Actually, we're okay right now knowing that, like, our core users are gonna start as the, you know, USDE power users that have been using us for two years and are extremely crypto native, but then evolving that experience over time. But that's that's encouraging.

Like I said, there's there's there's two different paths to take, and who knows? Maybe in two or three years, they'll be we'll be having this conversation with them that they're like, hey. Actually, we're gonna go more mainstream now, but they obviously have a great underpinning within the the crypto native crypto native community right now. Yeah. But, Rex, I did your your post was interesting. I did see that you called out, the Dragonfly Portco play with with avalanche, Athena, and, and rain cards.

So definitely great to see that.

Yeah. The ultimate ultimate Portco play. You know, it's a good good to good job to Rob Haddock. I know what he's doing there.

Perhaps we'll have to get him on the show show soon. But, Rags, I appreciate you coming on today. I'll let you get back to the action in StableCon. Hopefully, you enjoy enjoy the rest of your day, your days in Washington DC. Are you going to New York next?

I'm going to New York for a few days. I'm back here for next week for the QED CEO conference, which is our Awesome. Lead investors. I think the Rams CEO is gonna be there, but I've heard. So and a bunch of others. So, yeah, that's that's really good. And, you know, I think we're just super lucky to have some great investors, very institutional investors who've been backing us and and and helping us as we scale.

Yeah. I think we owe you a thank you because we got introduced to the QED team through your last fundraise, and we had a Maiaison recently. We did an event with them in Mexico City. So really awesome team. It's such a such a rich, just deep background in in the broader fintech space, and of course dipping your toes into the stablecoin world. But, yeah. Love that team.

Yeah. Exactly.

Awesome. Alright. Thanks for coming on, Rex. Well, decided to follow on the journey, and I appreciate you coming on today. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thanks. See you next time.