The Stablecoin Is the Wedge: Drake Evans on Agora, AUSD and a National Trust Bank Charter

0:00Kinsa Durst Oh, welcome to Panoramic Content Suite Singapore Token2049 edition. We have Drake Evans, co-founder and CTO of Agora. Welcome. Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to be here with us. We got the Token2049 conference happening F1 going on. Nice hazy backdrop of MBS in the back. Yeah. Welcome on. Thank you. Yeah, cool. Excited to be here. Likewise. Yeah, wanted to kick off the podcast with kind of a self introduction from yourself. Wanted to learn more about how did you end up where you're today and with Agora?

0:35Drake Evans Yeah, I mean, the story is kind of an interesting one, but also one that's normal for crypto. I started off working in finance. I was working in private equity, special situations fund, Decided I wanted to do software, went to ADP, was working there for a few years. Had a really good friend who sort of was saying to me, you got to get into crypto, got to help build. We started a small blockchain company 2019. And then after that, it was at Frax. And while I was at Frax, a really good friend of mine came and said, you got to meet Nick. He's, you know, wants to start a stablecoin company. I told him you were the best one to do it with. So yeah, I got lunch with Nick. And probably four or five months later, we were raising and the rest is history.

1:19Kinsa Durst Nice. It's a crypto is a super fast moving space. So I'm sure this is this timeline is a matter of months or yeah.

1:26Drake Evans Yeah, it's it's funny. So Agora, technically, we incorporated October 13th of 2023. So we're coming up on three years. Congratulations. Thank you. It feels like a both a lifetime and just a few weeks. Gotcha. Gotcha.

1:41Kinsa Durst And you guys are live now. You can use AUSD on multiple chains. But maybe before we get into the details there, if we can get a brief introduction about Agora, AUSD or any other products that You guys might have.

1:56Drake Evans Yeah, so really, AUSD and the Agora platform is really meant to be a single and sort of final entry point for internet native Month. Right. So whether you want access to earning on your float with AUSD, white-label issuance, Wallets, And soon with the OCC charter custody, US dollar bank accounts, you know, third party payments, other fiduciary activities. So the whole idea is that, you know, whether you started your business yesterday, or you're doing, you know, 100 million dollars a month in Revenue, like Agora has the tools that you need.

2:28Kinsa Durst Yeah, so congratulations on the OCC charter. I think that's a very unique path that you guys are taking compared to other stablecoin companies out there. Given that I was wondering, Maybe if you can provide a brief intro about explaining your core stablecoin stack, either regulatory stack, tech stack. But basically, how do you guys differentiate yourself from other stablecoins out there? Yeah.

2:53Drake Evans So I think that one of the unique things that we did in the beginning was focus on the stable. So one of our, you know, key pitches from the very beginning was you want to be close to the metal. And I think that's always, you know, we started low and went sort of have grown upward. A lot of people start closer to the user, and they sort of need to rebuild the infrastructure as they go. This is actually, I think, going to be even more important as AI progresses, right? Because I think that the, it used to be that you take the building blocks, you organize them into a nice product that you can Then sell as like infrastructure, sell as a dev tool. But now that, you know, combining the LEGO pieces, people will do that themselves. The cost of doing that is just dropped a lot. So our strategy has always been give people the LEGOs while at the same time Having things pre-built for them so that they can do that.

3:43Drake Evans So I think for us, it's like we want to be the single and final entry point into, you know, internet-native businesses who need Financial products and financial services. Yeah. And so we want to be, you know, as AI sort of takes hold, I think you're going to see this sort of aggregation effect Where you're not competing on a slick UI, you're competing on fundamentally the things that can't be replicated. And I think the OCC charter obviously plays into that. Like licenses, you know, getting a license is not a token problem, right? Building software is a token problem. And so I would say that's really what differentiates us is really just starting at the lowest levels of the stack while at the same Time serving a little bit higher. Right.

4:21Kinsa Durst Well, that's great. I think those are extremely, extremely valuable moats that you guys are building out. And you guys have the correct LEGO pieces. And now it's just about distribution, almost like through both B2C as well as B2B. Like, I know I'm personally a user of crypto credit cards. I have multiple. I know that's really a hot trend right now, crypto rails payments. You mentioned agentic payments as well. I know that's in progress. I think I'm still not sure if I can trust my AI agent with payments yet. Well, yeah. Maybe give it a year or two and we'll. Absolutely.

4:58Drake Evans I think the models are only getting better, right? Yeah.

5:00Kinsa Durst So you guys are are you guys more focused on the AI agents or what's what's the future that you're betting?

5:06Drake Evans I think we're betting on two things. One, that tokenization and stablecoins will eat an ever increasing portion of global financial. And it's actually we're at like one one hundredth of a percentage of penetration. You look at all global money and especially around payments. So I'd say we're betting certainly on that. The other one is that you're going to have more the barriers to starting a business and to innovating are just lower. So there's going to be more people entering the market, like top of funnel, right? There's going to be just more entrance in every space. Competition will increase. And also, and so you need to be able to serve. There's a lot of power in horizontal scaling, right? Where in the same way that if you have an e-commerce site, you can go to Shopify on day one.

5:53Drake Evans You can stay there until, you know, they both offer the like ease. There's a very low effort to value in the very beginning. And that's super valuable when you're first starting out. And as you grow and you want to own more of the stack, they offer more of that. And I think that's very much aligned with our strategy because we just believe that there will be more new entrants. And at the same time, there will be more people building their own custom versions of what used to be SaaS. Right.

6:20Kinsa Durst Shopify, I like how you mentioned Shopify. I really like the CEO there. He's been on top of emerging technologies.

6:26Drake Evans He's great.

6:27Kinsa Durst I read his takes on AI.

6:29Drake Evans Yeah, yeah, that's good. Good. Really solid. Cool.

6:32Kinsa Durst That's really cool. And given that it's, you know, Token2049. I don't know if you're at Korea Blockchain Week.

6:38Drake Evans No, I wasn't.

6:40Kinsa Durst With curious what you guys are looking to do here or looking with your major milestone coming up. What's the next exciting thing for Agora?

6:50Drake Evans Yeah, I mean, here is just like to get access to all the people that we don't get to see normally that are all over Asia. I'd say that's like the biggest thing. I also have an opportunity to speak on a few panels and talk about what we're doing and how the OCC charter really unlocks a Ton of products, not just for US people, but for our global customers. Right. So US dollar bank accounts, crypto custody, all those things are now available globally. So a little bit of that, a little bit of just seeing everyone face to face, which we don't always get to.

7:20Kinsa Durst Before we dive deeper into Agora, there's been some exciting announcements. A couple of weeks ago, I think you guys just announced or actually the OCC charter. Yeah. Was announced by the US regulatory. Yeah, yeah. The OCC. Oh, the OCC. Yes. Yeah, yeah. For you guys. I think some of the audience might not know what that exactly means. Yeah. And for you guys or the stablecoin industry, maybe you can explain. Absolutely. Yeah.

7:46Drake Evans So the OCC is the federal banking regulator for the United States. There's really two types of charters. There is a national trust bank charter, which is what we have. And then there is the full charter with depository institutions. I think our focus has always been B2B. And as a result of that, Having gone for the full charter, which is B2C and comes with a little bit of extra stuff. But what this really unlocks for us is a few really important things that we've been hearing again and again from our customers. One, US dollar bank accounts, Named US dollar bank accounts that sit side by side with your crypto accounts. They want the experience of, I log in, I say, send my money here and it happens. I don't have to think about the chain.

8:31Drake Evans I don't have to think about this or that or whatever. And then there's also some other fiduciary activities that it allows us to do. So to the extent that people want to get access to treasury management, they've got a bunch of float. Obviously, if they use AUSD or their own stablecoin that we issue, they're earning intraday, while in motion and at rest by default. But if they want to go for something more than just the stablecoin revenue and yield, We can now offer them additional financial products to push that even a little bit higher. So it really unlocks the things that we've been hearing from our customers that they want. Also, third party payments. And we can always, It's interesting because there's certain services that there's multiple regulators in the United States. So the OCC is kind of like the core banking license, but then there's also the Federal Reserve.

9:19Drake Evans So if you want access to SWIFT and ACH, you actually have to go to them and ask for it. And so we'll probably offer that through a clearinghouse or a correspondent bank, which is pretty normal. But over time, we can, you know, We walk and then run. Wow. Oh, that's incredible.

9:36Kinsa Durst You guys would be the one of the first or the first stablecoin company to offer a U.S. Banking infrastructure.

9:43Drake Evans I think that's right. I think that's right. You know, we did believe always that starting with a stablecoin was more difficult, but worth it, and that ultimately yields would compress around stablecoins. It would be commoditized. And so over time, you use the stablecoin as a wedge to get distribution and to start. And then ultimately, it has to be synergistic with the rest of the products. And I think that's what we're hoping to build. Nice. Super exciting. Yeah.

10:12Kinsa Durst I think these are the core LEGO blocks, building blocks needed to make truly adoption truly happen. Yeah.

10:18Drake Evans Yeah, we're excited.

10:19Kinsa Durst So if the audience wants to learn more about Agora, if businesses want to integrate Agora, how can they learn more or get in touch With you?

10:27Drake Evans Follow us on Twitter @withAUSD and our website is agora.finance. We have a ton of information there and you can reach out to the sales team.

10:36Kinsa Durst [unclear] exclusive, so how to start it?

10:39Drake Evans We also have our doc site, which you can look at for our API and stuff.

10:42Kinsa Durst We will add the links below. Excellent. Love it. Well, thank you for hopping on.

10:46Drake Evans Thank you for having me.