Huge place. [laughter]
It's a stadium. It's not just a stage.
Awesome. So actually we did a fireside chat last year in Singapore as well. So happy to reprise that. So Ben, what's new in the Bit world?
Well, a lot of things. I think this year for me is really focused on compliance and getting license. The exchange space since we launched in 2018, the first three years we were focused on building product, doing innovation. It was really good fun time. For the last two years, it was really about licensing. We were the first to get the UAE ESCA license, so we're also here in Abu Dhabi. Then we have the MiCA license from Europe. Overall in Southeast Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, everywhere is getting ready for onboarding onto crypto. I think the role of the exchange now is how do we connect to the local banks and become the place for the massive people that haven't been onboarded into crypto to own their first $100 into crypto. So that's our job and focus now.
Got it. And productwise, it's much more than an exchange now. I know the private card has been a huge success for you guys. So product-wise, how are you expanding?
Oh, yeah. So a lot more focused on payment, especially in emerging markets. Our biggest growth this year is in Latin America, CIS region as well as Africa. So we have licenses in Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, South Africa. For these places, you see the adoption rate especially of the unbanked population; they treat crypto and the crypto exchange like a bank. We give them a crypto card they can use, and at the same time they have earn programs they can buy structured products and things like that.
Got it. What has your focus been? Has it been shifting compared to the first part a few years ago?
I think that we're fundamentally builders of infrastructure first and foremost. We joke that Solana really is just a GitHub repo, and that we as foundation are a human interface for a GitHub repo. We're not building companies, we don't operate companies. We advocate for a GitHub repo, which is kind of weird because there isn't another precedent for that. Over time, there's a progression to how you build an ecosystem. If the network doesn't exist, there's nothing for anyone else to do. The most important thing after having a functioning network is attracting developers. No developers, no apps, nothing for users to do. So we think about building the network, attracting developers has been the core thing. For the last four or five years, it was network and app developers. This year, there's a huge broadening into institutional investor audience, institutions issuing assets, and this whole stablecoin, RWA thing. We added many different audiences this year, way beyond just developers.
In my world, I spend half my time meeting different regulators. I was just in Indonesia meeting JK, talking about licensing. Does this regulation framework and environment change affect you at all? And how does the Solana Foundation interact with regulators?
Yeah.
We certainly interact with regulators a little bit different from how you guys operate or how operating businesses interact with regulators. We were the first blockchain to set up a policy institute, the Solana Policy Institute. We've got a full team of about six people in DC focused on US regulation, given that it opened up from a fairly hostile place to a fairly collaborative environment. But we care about different issues than you might, because we're not seeking a license. We're not an operating business. But we care about things like whether developers are going to be prosecuted for writing code. That's something we care about disproportionately more than an exchange might. When we talk to countries, we talk about less of any individual piece of regulation, but more about how as a blockchain we support countries with token formation, capital formation, and the theme of internet capital markets. So we go talk to countries around the world, but it's more policy and how to grow the economy together.
Yeah. Kind of ecosystem focused.
Yeah. Ecosystem. Countries are ecosystems, too.
So, bybit launched a DEX on Solana called Byreal, and the Byreal team is here today. They gave us this little thing. Thanks, Byreal team. So, I also talked to my team. It's kind of a good thing and also a curse when a centralized exchange, especially a big one, launches a project. I think the team wants to be independent, and people see Byreal as a real DEX rather than a sub-thing of the centralized exchange. Obviously, I think the team is trying quite hard to attract projects in a completely decentralized way. They don't view bybit's resources as part of the requirement. What's your view on that, and what's your advice for a project incubated by a centralized exchange?
I think that especially in the earlier days, which is right now, people are going to see it as having been incubated by bybit, and that is part of the appeal. That is part of the startup part of it. But ultimately, like any product, it has got to win on being a competent, good to very good product itself first. Over time, the balance of those things has to shift. If people only see Byreal as bybit's Solana DEX project, then it hasn't really done its job and hasn't earned its way out of that starting point. There's a halflife to that characterization. That's a challenge for the Byreal team. I think they're doing quite well right now, but they have to out-earn that over time and grow at a pace faster than the halflife decay of being an incubator project.
Yeah.
Very good. How do you see that?
