Stephen: This is your host, Stephen Sargeant, the Around The Coin podcast. I figured I'd get into Superform by dressing up a little for our next guest, Vik Arun. He's a CEO and co-founder of Superform. They're bringing a whole new level of decentralizations via an app to help you know users earn swaps, send crypto and digital assets in an easy way, a little bit more than you could do with some of the centralized players in the game.

And we talk all about like the investment cycle that we're seeing with the younger generation potential regulations impact the technicalities of how they're able to the technicalities of how they're able to deploy some of this amazing blockchain technology and the use cases who's using Superform and why those users will be attracted to use Superformm app versus some of the other players in the game. This is a really fun and interesting concept, and it's very important if you're looking to get into Crypto, especially into DeFi. This is probably one of those apps you wanna at least engage with. Test Out, try and see how they're taking customer and user fund safety as one of their main priorities.

Check the Vik out. He's an amazing speaker, and this was a really fun conversation. Talk to you soon.

Stephen: This is your host, Stephen Sargeant, another episode of Around The Coin, and this one I got extremely excited about doing the research. We have Vik Arun, the CEO, and co-founder of Super Forumm. Vik, why don't you go into a, a, a little bit of introduction of who you are. Then we're gonna dive deep into the current state of investing, the current state of, you know, owning your own and sharing your own wealth and the gap and inefficiencies we see in that.

And then dive deep into what Superform is building, which is one of the most unique apps I've seen coming out of the wealth space probably within the last couple of decades. But introduce yourself, Vik, and who you are.

Vikram: Awesome. Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me, Steven. Uh, excited for this as well. Um, so yeah, I've, uh, been building crypto since 2017. Been through a couple cycles, like, like yourself, um, back, uh, before Superform was, uh, running a DeFi strategy back in 2020, right after DeFi summer. Um, you know, was trading on all these amms.

Uh, creating a bunch of strategies for it to be easier for retail users who are investing in the fund to be able to make more money on chain and eventually wanted to turn that into a whole product, um, for people to generally discover and execute and just find stuff, um, to do in crypto. Um, but yeah, have a, have a pretty long background through, you know, I was, started from engineering and then, uh, worked in finance for a bit, worked on Wall Street and then eventually came back into, into crypto in, uh, 2020 to.

Start all this stuff in DeFi.

Stephen: It's funny, I think it was your medium bio that said like engineer turn, finance, turn crypto, and anyone reading that is like the perfect recipe for a founder in 2025, right? You have the engineering chops, you understand finance and essentially investing in economics and, and now you're getting into digital assets.

What was gonna be your early career, like when you were in as an engineer? Was there certain aspirations, like was working at Facebook or what are the, the fan companies like, tell me about your early aspirations before you were introduced to crypto.

Vikram: Yeah, uh, I really wanted to be a trader. Um, and well, in the very early days I just was really fascinated by math and, uh, I thought that I was gonna use that, um, in some academic profession somewhere. Uh, and then I realized that, uh, there's a lot more fun ways you can actually apply this stuff, and trading kind of caught my attention through through college.

Um, and that's, you know, first, uh, you know, bought ETH back in 2016. And, uh, trading crypto was an entirely different, uh, kind of game to anything else I traded before. Um, and yeah, coming outta that, um, realized that, uh, a lot of how. We're thinking and constructing, um, crypto markets could be done in a much more systematic fashion.

Um, and that's kind of in 2017. What I, what I worked on at first was, uh, a bunch of like patterns and behavioral stuff. Um, just mostly like actually psychology, which is fascinating too, and like quantifying that. But crypto markets have always been very irrational, but, uh, irrational in the same rational ways.

If that, if that makes sense. So.

Stephen: this, this is not your first venture. You know, I looked into a doctor on, you were working on that for almost seven years, and it seemed to like almost retrofit smartphones into like medical diagnostic tools. Uh, can you talk about that first venture, maybe any lessons, learnings, or challenges you're able to pull forward into your current career?

Vikram: Yeah. Um, I, new technology is always something that's hard for people to wrap their heads around. I think if there's one thing. That I picked up from that. So pretty much what we did, um, we created smartphone attachments, um, to actually, uh, diagnose, you know, more, uh, complicated diseases that were, you know, being at that time being done by, you know, $10,000 equipment.

Um, and, uh, but the issue was that most people were so used to actually using that old stuff. Um, that it felt weird to them to just have this like plastic device that, you know, had a couple of chips in it that would just put in their phone and then it did, did the same job and someone else could do it.

It wasn't even a doctor, you know, someone could just come out in a, in a van and do it for you. Um, so I guess, uh, realize that what was even more important than technology was actually just education. Uh, and for someone to trust something, it's uh, it's just a different, it's a long game. Uh, and I feel like we're in the same situation right now for crypto is like we have all the tech there, but now it's about creating that level of trust, you know, um, so that people can actually finally see the benefits.

Stephen: I think that's a great comparison. I think if you could have lasted throughout COVID, you would've been okay. Right? People, people were testing everything using thermometers. If there was that phone attachment, then I think it a little bit bit easier for people to find, you know, uncommon ways to do medical diagnosis that we experienced during the pandemic.

But you talked about your earlier investment days, especially around crypto.

One of your past articles mentioned NVT. So I would love for you, that's not a common term maybe with traders, but it also has some like real world applications, especially, you know, in this vastly more decentralized world of DeFi and investing in crypto.

I'm curious if you can explain what MVT is and is it still used today? Are these still some ratios that you think about today?

Vikram: Yeah. Um, to throw back fire can remember it stands for network value per transactions. Um, and it was a very simple thing. It was actually not even proposed. That initial one was not proposed by me. That was, uh, Willy woo. Um, and pretty much what it does, it's just looking at, you know, the, the value of any L one blockchain and it's just comparing activity value pretty much.

So it compared that to, you know, what PE means for a company is just like activity equals earnings for a blockchain. Um, this is before blockchains or even had revenue, really, right? Like this is 2017. All you could look at was, uh, like 10 different numbers on, on a public explorer somewhere. Um, and yeah, so then there's another one that we created on top of that, uh, which was like NVTG, which was pretty much looking at like how quickly a network was growing, uh, which is similar to the peg peg ratio.

Uh, I don't know. If you would've made that much money using that to value blockchains? Um, I think it definitely would tell you that a blockchain does not have activity going on on it. But, you know, uh, crypto at that time in 2017 was not valuing blockchains based on if they're actually being used or not.

Right. Um, but I think it was a, it was an interesting experiment, um, and certainly some other things that came up from that research on fundamentally valuing crypto that. Uh, I think, uh, are still, you know, used today and I, people still do use that. Like, it's in, I think the glass nodes, dashboards, and everything.

Uh, it's cool, you know, there's all kinds of stuff that people can look at, but, um, mostly just part of like a holistic, you know, understanding of what a blockchain is.

Stephen: That's super interesting. I'm curious, like when you talk about ratios, one ratio that I hear a lot on business podcasts is it's like revenue per employee. Are these, you know, with your math background and love for math anyway. Is this something that you think about now, especially with automation and ai as you're building out your team at Super Forum?

Or do you tend not to go, you know, stay away from maybe some of these ratios? 'cause to your point, they could be utilized in so many different ways. It may not be the best predictor of, you know, revenue or business. Or maybe you think it is.

Vikram: Yeah. Uh, for crypto, I think it's a little bit, it's been tougher to do that historically because a lot of crypto protocols have not until, you know, maybe the last two years actually made a, made a bunch of money. Um. But certainly, you know, we're a DeFi protocol. Like we, you know, we are going to be judged by not just TVL, but also how much we can monetize that TVL and revenue.

And, um, I know the like stat that gets thrown around for hyper liquid a bunch is, you know, like they have the highest, uh, revenue per employee, even higher than the tether, I think. Um, but Tether was also maybe like number two. Uh, yeah, I mean. I'm not sure if, uh, VCs are gonna be looking at revenue per employee and, and, uh, investing, but it certainly would be a, a fun thing to see for a lot of public companies.

Stephen: And some of that worked at Bitfinex, I could tell right away that Bitfinex and 10 should be pretty high up there based on their ability to run extremely lean with small, competent teams. So they're always gonna be, I think, topping any list that has anything divided by the amount of employees that you have.

Before we jump into super forum, like we're just seeing an emergence of a new type of investor. You know, the younger generations we saw a GameStop and a MC. They're shorting stocks, they're trading crypto, they're buying NFTs, they're buying meme coins, they're using prediction markets. We're seeing gambling on like individual plays at like people literally crying after every pass or throw or fumble.

Can you provide your opinion of the current state of like wealth and investment and how maybe it's evolved over the last seven years since you had started working at something like Ledger Group that focused on investment research and trading? You know, for digital assets,

Vikram: Yeah. Uh,

I think there's something that is changing very quickly, uh, is. You know, call it like the, the gen gen one of these investment products. Um, whether it's, uh, well, we'll call it the newest generation. So I'll, I'll include Robinhood and like this generation one of, of, uh, newer investment products, um, is that they are a new interface around something that, uh, has historically been, you know, a very profitable business operation for a lot of people on Wall Street.

Um, you know, before Robinhood we had your older brokerages and everything that's like Gen Zero, right? Like, um, even in Gen one though, uh, a lot of those operations were not something that could be monetized. Um, and users were still the product, right? They weren't part of this network or anything. Um, if I was onboarding to a centralized exchange, you know, back in 2017 when we were at Ledger group, we had, you know, uh, we're investing in a lot of different projects on some of these new exchanges.

Crypto topia actually comes to mind. So crypto, crypto topia was, you know, a very small exchange that you would mostly buy privacy coins on. And we were hearing rumors of this exchanges going under. Uh, and, you know, we were able to, to take our funds up for, um, for it went insolvent. But even to this day, there's still.

Um, requests from people to, uh, and, and it's all, you know, backed up in line. They're now court proceedings in Australia still like eight years later. Um, and that's kind of what I, how I see the investment space back then was, trust me bro. And, uh, we're, you know, all these great opportunities are out there, but it's still kind of wrapped up in a old legacy experience.

Um, because it's easier for people to actually access, right? Like even if I told someone, Hey, you can buy my Coin on this privacy blockchain. I'm never gonna move my funds over to the privacy blockchain and buy it, right? Just give it to me, you know, secure it through some nice UI and I don't care. Like I'll be able to sell it at some point.

It'll be fine. Um, Robinhood definitely moved even further, you know, down in, in the good path, right? Um, but they still didn't get there even now, you know, uh, GameStop, all that stuff that people were equally. As upset at them for just being able to pull the trigger, um, you know, uh, stop, uh, protect certain users on their platform.

And, you know, as usual, retail gets the short end of the stick. Uh, same thing has been happening on stuff like Venmo for ages of my Venmo account. It's still suspended. They've given me no reasons why it's been for two years. Um, maybe something to do with crypto transactions, I don't know. But this happened to a bunch of different people.

Uh, I know a bunch of people that have had their chase accounts and everything that they've had, um, you know, those, they've been paused and then their Coinbase accounts, they get linked to that bank account, and then even their Coinbase account gets paused. So it's just like a really hairy mess when you try and, um, you know, impose like any sort of, um, restrictions on what people can and can't do with their money.

Um, and that's, I think that was consistent from 2017 all the way up until, call it, you know, DeFi. Uh, and then DeFi was like the, uh, the catalyst for people realizing that not only can they put their money on chain, but it's actually fun to use this stuff on chain. Um, and, you know, all those, all the food farms, um, people were making a bunch of money.

Uh, there are a lot of incentives for people to try new protocols and, and give crypto a chance again, right after this three year bear cycle. And it introduced that like much needed energy for people to start taking self custodial finance seriously again. Um, and then yeah, that went, I would say that experiment went great and we onboarded people.

And then, you know, last three years has really been like standing out all the rough edges, making sure that, um, these protocols are sustainable. And then making sure that these are as secure and, um, and building up that trust. Uh, and, and that same feature set that made it so that those protocols, those exchanges that were successful in the 2017 era, um, we can make people feel the same way about these properly decentralized bill protocols of today.

Um, and yeah, like it's night and day compared to how we were investing back in 2017, even night and day compared to when we were investing at Block Tower. Uh, I think, yeah, self custodial, decentralized finances is the future and, you know, most people are positioning that way. But, um, yeah, it's exciting to see this stuff as a builder now.

Uh, actually being able to like, uh, compare the experience as an investor, um, on all these different platforms now and, uh, yeah, quite incredible.

Stephen: I'm curious, what is the biggest pain point you think you're solving for? You mentioned a couple things there like. Just taking off, you know, a consumer look at your product and your solutions. Like, Hey, I can only go so far with Robin Hood, right? I can, it is like Robin Hood's like the safe bet. You can you, it's like, okay, you're outta the pool, but there's no diving boards.

Like you can, you can jump in, but you can't really dive in deep into what's. Hanging out and you know what's on DeFi. But there's also the issue of like, Hey, I wanna own my own stuff. I don't want to be trading, you know, maximizing. And then all of a sudden, you know, a company says, oh yeah, by the way, your, to your point, your account suspended.

Where do you think, or is it a combination of all of these problems? Like there's no place that you can go. You can do the decentralized stuff that you need to do. There's no central intermediary, but you can still get access to safe investments. Where the risk is not gonna be exponential, like some of the leverage products we've seen in crypto over the last five years.

Vikram: Yeah, there's gonna be undeniable limitations of, um, you know, what is currently a centralized platform coming in and trying to become decentralized. It's very hard to go that way, but you can go on top of a decentralized protocol. You can build something centralized. Um. And that's what we're, that's what we've done, right, is like Superfund Protocols, entirely decentralized protocol.

Anyone, you could build a Robinhood on top of the Superfund protocol if you wanted to. Um, obviously like our front end and mobile app and everything are, um, appropriately, uh, you know, decentralized. But, uh, it's possible to build like a, you know, um, any sort of experience you want to on top of a protocol.

But I'm concerned that, you know, a lot of, uh, you mentioned, you know. Robinhood users coming in, doing something that is conventionally DeFi, it would actually be very difficult, um, for them to participate in a Uniswap pool, for example, because, uh, they'd have to like KYC all the people that are providing, uh, LP into that Uniswap pool for, you know, sanctions and all kinds of other regulatory reasons.

Um, but if you had a non-custodial wallet and there was, you know, it was just up to me to do that and Robinhood was not, um, playing any part in facilitating those transactions. Then, yeah, I could provide LP to this Uniswap pool and make 20, 30% on this. I could market make, I could do a lot of things that I can't do in the open up.

So, um, yeah.

Stephen: What I saw on your website is like you have the ability to create a virtual bank account that's powered by Stripe and bridge. Do you believe this is the way the world is going? We're all gonna have like these digital wallets and everything's gonna be in there from a, a combination of digital assets, crypto tokenized investment products, and people are gonna be able to see certain things and not see certain things that are in your wallet.

It may not be as transparent as a Bitcoin wallet, but it's gonna house a lot of your digital asset experiences, all with one wallet, like what you guys are providing in your virtual bank account.

Vikram: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I guess there's two paths, right? Um, decentralized protocols can integrate, um, entirely centralized products, uh, that are representations of the real asset, or there could be protocols, and they're working on it right now that are just entirely tokenizing those assets, putting them on chain.

Um, and some of them are regulated, some of them are semi regulated, some of them, you know, depending on the nature of how synthetic the asset is, there might be different abilities for them, um, to do that without KYC. Uh, but eventually, you know, yeah, we do have stock. We already have stocks on chain. We will, we'll be able to have options, protocols built on top of them that can recreate the entire, you know, daisy chain experience that people currently have on Robinhood, um, we have ETFs, index funds.

Um, recently, like s and p was just tokenized, um, by, by another, uh, partner in critical arts centrifuge. And there's all kinds of like, really cool stuff, um, that, uh, the experience on chain is gonna be able to, to provide, that you'd be able to access right now in your brokerage. It's not gonna feel any different outside of, you know, you getting it 24 7 and being able to access it, uh, with little to no cost.

Stephen: You know what's interesting? We've been doing this podcast for like over a decade. I'm just recently the host and operator of it. But we've hosted hundreds of FinTech guests and, you know, companies from anywhere from the crypto payment sector to, you know, automated workflows. We've covered every aspect of finance, I believe.

Why have we still failed? It seems to close that wealth gap that may be Superform is helping. Like why is there still this gap with so many fintechs operating at every niche of this space?

Vikram: Yeah, I think it's because most of the fintechs, you're, you know, web two solutions to this, they're still treating users as products, right? Um, I am, I view like, you know, users onboarding to my app as as customer acquisition costs. Um, I'm giving them, you know, giveaways and, and, and stuff, and, and they're expensive.

Like, you know, most of these credit cards, right? They're loss leaders. Um, on, on most of the apps, uh, users should feel like they are a part of the network. They need ownership in what's being created. And I think that whenever you give those users ownership, uh, and you know. Crypto allows people to use that ownership, not just to vote, but they can use those things, um, to compound their ownership in something.

Um, they can make important decisions on the future and how those products operate in the app. Uh, and yet most of those fintechs, uh, they're just creating a very nice product for people to use. The, the user at the end of the day is, is also the product. Um, I think crypto has the ability to flip that and make it so that, you know, users are both the product and the network, um, and be able to use that to create a much fair financial system.

Um, and you know, I would say like fintechs have done a great job of closing the gap in terms of like a product experience, right? Uh, but still the reasons why people are upset at them is because they feel like they're not actually being taken care of. Because again, it's still centralized. Um, there's someone else that is benefiting from everything that I'm providing to this app, and I don't think it should be that way.

Um.

Stephen: Which is kind of funny, which is the experience that we try to get away from not feeling taken care of by the banks. And now it's to, to your point, we've gotten like, we just feel like another number with these fintechs as well. Like early on it felt like, oh, we're getting the care and diligence and there are like certain applications.

I think RAMP is one that comes outta mind. It seems like it takes care of their customers very well based on the experience and knowledge I have from third parties. But saving and investing for everyday users seems like a pretty. Easy problem to solve. I'm assuming Superformm has to reimagine though the way they're approaching it.

Can you talk to me about like, do you have to kind of revolutionize the way people are saving and investing, not only to take care of them as a customer, as you just said, but to get them excited to be using your application versus like being kind of like stuck in the pain of using some of the other fintechs and traditional institutions out there.

Vikram: Yeah, the experience of using Superform is the exact same, if not easier to use than, uh, something like Robinhood would be, just because we don't have to wait for settlement times. Um, there's always a very liquid market for everything that you're accessing. It's 24 7, you know, uh, redemptions, um, uh, right markets.

Market's always open. Um, the thing that we have to close is, uh, for people that see these kinds of opportunities available to them, it sometimes feels a little bit too good to be true and. You know, we've done some product research on, on some of the opportunities that we have in the app. And, you know, we'll say, Hey, this is like a, you know, 18% on your cash right now.

Uh, and then we've also run experiments where we say, Hey, this is actually like, uh, 10% and, you know, there's like downside protection and some other things. And we get five, four or five times as many clickthroughs on the lower, uh, return profile with, you know, with some protection. Um, and. You know, maybe that might have been different four years ago on people that we've onboarded, but we've definitely felt that the kind, yeah, the kinds of people are, you know, if they're, they're comparing it to the rates that they're getting on Coinbase, right?

Coinbase says that you can get 4% by default. Recently, they have some integrations that'll let you get, you know, up to 10%, which is awesome in DeFi. Um, but again, that's still like, you know, deposited Coinbase, that's a centralized wrapper over the decentralized service. Um, so yeah, there's, in all of those opportunities, we need to show people what this stuff means.

And I've talked about like, you know, institu, institutionalization of the space, right? Um, I trust my stocks that I'm buying on Robinhood because I can view like the equity research reports for it, right? And like I see that there are these 10 analysts on the street who every quarter are like, you know, releasing these reports and they're rating these things.

That doesn't exist right now for DeFi, right? The best we can get is an A, B, or C from one institution, um, who definitely, like, they know what's going on, but still one person who's tasked with, you know. Doing this across, there are like 2000 opportunities right now on Superformm, right? Um, so our mobile experience looks a lot different from the desktop.

One. Mobile is far more curated, but I think that's the struggle is that, um, all the things that makes crypto and on chain great, like these decentralized, permissionless, anyone can create something actually makes it very hard, um, for your average user to feel as comfortable, uh, onboarding to it. So.

Stephen: What's your most common use cases? If you had to like bucket the top three people reasons why people are on super forum, can you categorize that? Like who are they, like what are they doing and, and why are they benefiting from it so much that they stay on the platform and continually to be engaged?

Vikram: Yeah, most common use case right now is, um, farming earning yield on top of stable coins. Uh, so roughly 60% of our deposits are in the stable coins. Um, stablecoin opportunities. Um, most of that is USDC. Some of it's in Tether. Some of it's, uh, USDS die. Um, and then the rest of it is in, in e and there's a little bit of Bitcoin as well, WBTC.

Uh, obviously, you know, we're introducing, um, the full mobile app coming out, uh, in the next few weeks. That's gonna be, uh, uh, you know, swap spend. Um, all of that in the mobile app as well, I imagine. The mobile, mobile user is far more likely to use the swap feature than someone on desktop. Um, but still like primary focus of us getting.

Of users on Superform right now. And what I think will continue to be the, the focus is people who want easy to access vault products. Um, so that they can make any assets that they have on chain productive. And, you know, we're like spoiled I guess. Like we can easily access some of that stuff through our bank account.

I can access treasury rates, like look 4% in my bank account. It's not bad. Um, I'm not gonna necessarily move all of it on chain, but I, but once I see, you know, 10% returns, uh, I think a good amount of people. Um, when they feel confident enough in it, uh, it will be something that they feel like it, it just feels like their bank account and they can do way more with the stuff on chain.

Um, but we have to cross that gap and, uh, uh, show that that difference in return is something that. Is risk adjusted, something that they can still feel comfortable with. And that's something we have to do through not just education, but insurance programs, funds, um, really recreating the whole banking system, um, but having this stuff all transparent and on chain.

Stephen: I'm curious, you know, you've mentioned yield a couple times. It's, you've been around long enough in, in the space to know yields, received a little bit of a negative stigma, especially everything that happened with, um, with Anchor Celsius. Uh, with all those huge collapses of well-known projects that, you know, people would've bet their life on.

Uh, but I think many regulators and users probably don't understand the difference between like a loan product that produces yield and like protocol activity that comes from like staking, which powers a lot of the blockchains that you guys support, including Ethereum and I think even Solana. Can you break down yield for us and how you approach bouncing out that risk.

And I think you said you have even, you know, some downside risk aggregators that can at least keep it, uh, that risk to a certain level.

Vikram: Yeah, so yield. Yield comes from a demand for crypto assets, right? Uh, demand for crypto assets, uh, so far has mostly been demand for leverage synonymous with demand for leverage. Um, and, you know, it's, it's people on lending protocols where I, I lend, I borrow at, you know, 90% LTV, and then I'm just swapping that and then I'm depositing again.

And then, um, it's been mostly rather endogenous. Uh, obviously that changes when, um, there's more ways for me to attest to. Um, my on chain balance and I can actually use that loan amount and, and use collateral elsewhere that's not necessarily on chain. Um, and you know, all of a sudden now we have stuff that can be potentially, you know, under collateralized lending.

Uh, but that's where, you know, yield's coming from right now is just, is just the demand for those assets. Uh, I think when you're looking forward to, uh, how we can make this more understandable. To people. Um, it's just simply, you know, like your, your bank is just charging a spread on everybody. And the difference is that the bank, because the user is the product, the bank's just gonna keep that money and they're gonna make their executives rich.

Uh, the DeFi protocol version of that is gonna return that to people who are stakers of the protocol and then that can automatically all encode be used to replenish. Pay people out. Uh, and there's nothing, there's no like human intervention in this, um, in a banque scenario that could, that could even stop that.

And I think the issue, you know, you brought up, uh, Tara and, uh, Celsius Block Fire, like the list goes on, but the list of those people were all selling this vision of, uh, you know, proper like on chain finance when there were actually still decentralized products that were taking advantage of stuff that was on chain.

They're never on chain protocols. Um,

Stephen: That's interesting that you say that they made you feel like you're dabbling in DeFi, but really they were just giving you access to DeFi and taking the V in a centralized manner. Is that what you're Yeah.

Vikram: As, as lipstick on a pig, right? Um, so yeah. And, and now we actually have the chance to do this. Right? And, and the reason why it's different is because there's infrastructure now. Smart account infrastructure. The biggest development on Ethereum, um, I think over the last year has been, um, ERC 4 3, 3 7, um, 7, 5, 7 9.

These are both massive like account abstraction standards, also chain abstraction that I could list out a couple more numbers. But, um, all this stuff allows people with, you know, just social logins with, with social logins. Um. Pass keys, whatever, um, to be able to access this stuff on chain, in, in, in the exact same way, and they can back it up to iCloud.

Um, so yeah, uh, these decentralized protocols are finally, you know, um, able to fulfill promises that, um. You know, users haven't been able to. That being said, uh, you know, you mentioned some of the stuff on stable coins before too, and I think it is a very important distinction heading into what I think is like golden era for, for these stable coins, is that we have to differentiate between like actual stable coins, which are backed, um, by, you know, whether it's collateral in a bank account or other collateral on chain and stuff that's yield bearing, that is taking on, um, that is, that is not necessarily backed at all times.

By Fiat, uh, and,

Stephen: Can you give examples? Like, I don't really know much about stable coins that aren't back Lafayette. I know there's the, the big tether fund, but other than that, like are there stable coins or like, Hey, we know they're promoting the fact that they're not back, but they may have higher rates of return or interest or yield.

Vikram: yeah. So I mean, there's, there's, uh, something going on right now on, uh. The DeFi, uh, sphere on, you know, stuff like XUSD, right? It's like being marketed as a, as a stable Coin, but really it's just a stable Coin vault that's, uh, you know, they're taking a bunch of leverage through these, uh, lending markets and there's no transparency behind what's going on.

And honestly, it's like very similar to what Celsius or Blackfire have done. But they, they just put the fund on chain, right? But it still, there's still not transparency behind it. There's no reserves. Um, and you know, a lot of people are, uh, it's, it's very easy now to just use the USD prefix and then throw that onto something and then say that now it's a stable Coin.

Um, but yeah, I think base, base layer of stable coins needs to be stuff that is backed by, um, collateral assets that can be priced in the real world, that don't have any oracles or anything, um, on chain that are for other crypto products.

Stephen: I'm curious 'cause we obviously mentioned banks and like what happened with Robinhood and funny enough on your website you have a testimonial that says, you know, I trust super far more than I trust my bank. And I think over the last four years we've lot of, we've lost a lot of trust. In centralized actors.

I think even chain analysis had a report after the FDX crash. How many people moved into DeFi just because of that lack of trust. A, how do we clean up this wild west image that comes with securing funds in Web3, some of the, you know, nont transparencies that you just explained right now, and why should people trust Superform more than a traditional institution or an institution that definitely has shown that centralized might not be the best way to store your funds.

Vikram: Mm-hmm. Uh, my answer would be don't trust Superform. My answer would be trust the, trust, the blockchain. Like, uh, you, you shouldn't have to trust anyone in, in, in crypto to, to keep your funds. Um, and you can verify all this stuff, right? Like, uh, this is whether it's your smart account, right? Where you're the signer, you can, you know, ver you can, you can back your own, um, key up multiple places.

You can verify that you're the only one that has it. Um, you can remove, uh, uh, you can export your private key as well if you, you know, just wanted to use like a old school wallet. Um, and most people honestly like, uh. Uh, are probably not in a position to, um, really think about all the different technical intricacies behind, behind ownership.

And we just wanna make it so that, uh, you can genuinely own something and, uh, and feel like you can do everything with that account that you've created, um, without giving up, you know, um, without having to trade off functionality with. Privacy and, and security. Um, but it's gonna come through education, right?

Like, you know, we're absolutely gonna put out some videos on like, technically what it means, right? To have like a two of two signer and, you know, to have like an NPC wallet and, and all of this stuff. And, um, what threshold these signatures are, like, how, what it means to have even have a smart account. Um, but yeah.

Uh, education then, and then I guess trust on. People to, uh, to make the right decisions and not trust us, but just take it on themselves to verify things.

Stephen: I think the hardest part in this industry is the people that have been traditionally educating you through TikTok or YouTube. Have always had that backend way of making money. That definitely conflicted with what they're educating you on. And I think that's been always the worry, especially with the regulators on how to minimize, like who's providing that education, how are they financially gaining from this?

And does that like, you know, dribble into being a security. Speaking of technicalities, I was on, you know, the white paper reading version two of Superform. I'm not a technical person, so there's a ton of terms there that don't traditionally come up when discussing digital assets, much less investing in digital assets.

Maybe I have a few here. Maybe you can give us a high level explanation of what they are and we can give our audience a little bit of. Some pre-education before you come up with the full DeVol video series. What is hook based ex execution? And maybe compare it to a term that somebody may know of or have heard of before.

Vikram: Yeah. Uh, it's pretty much just actions that you can do on chain. Um, so it could be like depositing, it could be withdrawing, it could be staking, it could be looping. All of those are codified into a hook. Uh, even on-ramping funds, um, from your bank account.

Could be a hook off. Ramping funds, could be a hook too.

Um, and then all of those get strung together into a single signature that's just, that's then signed by the user. So you could do infinitely complex things on chain, um, with, without paying any money. It's just. On multiple chains, just sign a single signature across all of them and then you can, you know, swap all of your stable coins on all these chains to some new Coin.

Um, it's, yeah, it's arbitrary execution. Pretty much. I.

Stephen: I'm curious.

You know, our company airdrop works with companies like Marinade Labs and even talking with some of their interviews with like Loop Scale, like a lot of these things are going over. Even the head of people that work at Marinade Labs, it seems so complex. What part of, like, if you had to put a percentage of the industry that's using loops and scales and hyper this and like, what percentage would you put it on based on the fact that you're in, you know, you, you do traditional VC with digital assets, but it also seems like you have this DGen side of you that's in all these different executions, uh, in every different type of protocol.

Vikram: Yeah. Uh hmm. It's a very interesting

estimated I, I could draw like a ballpark number.

Stephen: what would you be your, I'm not saying like exact number, but would you say like 10% of the people using your platform are engaged in these things versus like maybe 10% of the industry is engaged in these things?

Vikram: Yeah.

Stephen: ballparks.

Vikram: Um, hmm. Well, the vast majority of DeFi TVL is, you know, say in like Lido and Ave. Uh, most of those positions, I would say a good amount of those positions are actually unlevered, no loops. Uh, but then most of the newer protocols like Morphon oiler for sure, I would say like 80% of that TVL could be. Uh, looped in some way.

Um, but, but, but that's like for the newer, older ones, I would say like probably like 10, 20%. So like, blended, blended, maybe like 20% of, of TVL is like that. I don't know. Maybe I, I'd have to like talk about this with other people in DeFi. This would be a very interesting topic.

Stephen: Yeah, I think I would love to know, like show us some graphs, show us some pie charts and uh, and then like for everyone that like bought an NFT, put this in a different category if that's the extent of our crypto investment.

Uh, explain super USDC. 'cause you just made a joke about like people just adding letters in, in front of USD and now you have super USDC.

What is that and how do people utilize that on your platform

Vikram: Yeah, so to be very clear. Sup Super. SDC is not a staple Coin, right? So Super USDC is a vault product that makes USDC yield bearing. Um, and what it is, is effectively, uh, an optimizer between lending protocols. Um, and it can do all of those things. It can deposit into lending protocols. It, it can do stuff like looping.

Um, it can lend out to even an RWA protocol and then that they could use that for funding some private credit. Whatever it is. Um, they're an infinitely composable strategies. Um, so our v one version of that's been live for almost a year now, um, you know, range anywhere between eight to 20% a PY over the year.

It's variable rates. Um, we'll have, uh, a new version of that launching in, in a month. Um, that'll be, you know. Natively cross chain can access, uh, more of those opportunities. But again, it's like a, it's just a managed product that showcases, um, the strategist's opinion on the market. And, um, so these are transparent and, uh, verifiable vault products, but they are still centralized in the sense that there is a manager that is moving funds, but you can see everything they're doing and that's what makes it different from.

Your block five is new Celsius of the past.

Stephen: I'm curious because of the Genius Act, and I think there are some restrictions about charging yield to customers for these stable Coin issuers, do you think more people are gonna move towards products like this, that they can actually gain the yield, um, since the stablecoin issuers can't do it directly?

Like what are your thoughts about the Genius Act and how it impacts some of your products?

Vikram: Exactly. That's the idea. Um, is that. Issuers aren't gonna be able to market, um, even without the Genus Act, actually, they haven't been able to market yield on their stable Coin. Right. Um, so they've, they're always gonna have to go through some, you know, third party protocol, third party interface to be able to talk about, you know, all the added benefits to, um, returns, monetary returns on their, on their asset.

Um, yeah, genius Act is great because, um, you know, pretty much anything below, right, I think the number is 50 billion. Um, more or less has the green light to do a lot of, uh, to be used in more exotic strategies. Everything above that is like bank stable Coin, pretty much should, should only be used for payments.

But that's also good for us because, you know, USDC and USCT are in that bucket. Um, and if, you know, circle is in a position where they can't monetize yield on their stablecoin yet, they're gonna have to go through products like Super USDC. Um, so, uh, yeah, genius Act is gonna be great. And we also have a product, um, we're gonna be launching.

After vaults and everything, um, in 2026 called Super USD, where pretty much people can supply, um, individual stable Coin super vaults like super USDC, super, USAT. Um, and then there are circuit breakers and rebalancing mechanisms that are implementable by governance, um, and token holders, um, of Superform.

And they can actually direct and bootstrap new stable coins. So if I was new stablecoin issuer, all I would have to do is secure an allocation in super USD for me to launch my stable Coin with, you know, a couple million dollars of, of TVL, um, and then get that flywheel going.

Stephen: And we're seeing a lot of these, like payment service providers or anyone that has a community of like a hundred vendors are starting to think about their own stable Coin concepts and to them, like even an extra 2, 3, 4, 4. Percent of value that they can give back to anyone utilizing their stablecoin, I think is gonna be huge, especially when you're getting into talking about millions and if not billions of dollars.

I'm curious because Superform is noncustodial. You don't hold users' funds. Do you still have any kind of K-Y-C-A-M-L or regulatory requirements? And how do you think about things like risk mitigation, auditing, user protection? 'cause a lot of that stuff sounds complex, but it, it also sounds like there's a lot of financial transactions or calculations that are being made that may need to be captured in some sort of way by, you know, regulators or tax authorities.

I'm curious, how do you go about, about that?

Vikram: Yeah, so we are a non-custodial wallet, so you know, we make it possible for people to export their transactions and everything, and we would expect them to be compliant with whatever their local laws are. Um, on the, on the financial and operational side of it, but there's nothing that we necessarily have to comply with.

Obviously for some features like the card, we will ask that the user does have to KYC and do stuff like that. But that's a imposition from partners, not by us. There's nothing that we collect on users whenever they sign up or, or have to. Um, on a technical side. Yeah. Security's been what has resulted in, you know, uh.

I think that's argue Superform's. Biggest selling point is, uh, the fact that, you know, our protocol's been around and we've gone through all kinds of different processes for the V two, we're about to ship, um, on keeping this lightweight. Even all the stuff that I, I mentioned, it sounds very complicated, but the architecture is actually very simple, straightforward, and has, you know, very clear components, um, that are plug and play.

And even when people are contributing to this, um, uh, it's. Lots of things that we have to make sure that the experience for the user still stays the same and, and, uh, is safe for them. So, um, but yeah, like protocols are different when you build on top of a protocol, it's, you can't, you can't change, uh, the protocol logic after you ship it.

Right. Um, which is a good and also a scary thing. So that's why it's taken us, uh, some good, good time, good year and a half to, to go out and build our V two, but

Stephen: I am curious are like Vik, you've been in the industry long enough.

You saw the collapses in DeFi summer, then Winter DeFi summer seemed like it was a short, very short summer. Uh. Are you surprised that more users aren't talking with their wallets like digital or you know, physical wallets? Like we're still seeing users go into these very remote areas of DeFi where there's very little pen testing, very little, you know, cybersecurity audits.

And you know, the best method of risk management is offering to pay bounties to hackers that have stolen the funds and completely wiped out these protocols. I don't think it's talked about enough, because the ones that we see make the news. We see usually the protocols make the consumers whole, but there's hundreds of cases where the consumers aren't, you know, held.

Are you surprised that people aren't like, Hey, we are not going here unless you meet certain requirements, which is similar to what we do in the traditional like financial, uh, ecosystem space.

Vikram: the, the space is absolutely moving there. Um, I think, uh, recently one of our partner, um, or audit firm, uh, spear Bit and Cantina, they have, uh, an initiative. Now they're calling like Web3 soc. Um, and there's lots of other similar programs, um, to create these like frameworks and ways for institutions to understand the underlying risk of, um, of protocols.

Gonna see more of that. Uh, not just like I mentioned the risk ratings and stuff earlier, but, um, the, the bar for security and Web3 has never been, has never been higher. Uh, it's very funny to see, not funny, like, um. The way that some of this stuff still happens, right? Is like hackers messaging people on ether.

On, on, on Ethereum. They just like send bites and coded data of like a message with, uh, their requests. And it's very, uh, it's blackmail really. Uh, but a lot of that has been happening, um, to people who frankly are not, are, are not, have, didn't take the necessary precautions before they, they shipped. And a lot of people have been cutting corners because, you know, uh.

Stephen: be honest, Vik, they're take, they're cutting cords 'cause they don't wanna wait a year and a half to launch a V two. Right? Like, let's be, let's be fair, call it what it is they want. They want the TBL, they want the, they want the, the users now. They don't want to take the time.

Vikram: yeah. Uh, it's tough and, but there are just so many different things to, to consider. It's, it's like your protocol code and then there's off chain code. Um, but yeah, I think, uh, we're now in an era where there's, there's serious money on chain, you know, and, and, uh. People need, uh, everything that happens from here out is very much setting an example for all the funds and everyone who's coming on chain.

Um, so we can't, we can't be losing BlackRock a hundred million dollars, right? That's gonna set, set the space back, um, quite a bit. Not, not say that we can, we can't lose retail a hundred, a hundred million dollars either. We can't lose anyone money. But the point is, is that there's a, there's a certain level of, uh, um, rigor that, that protocols are already implementing to make sure it's safer.

Stephen: I'm curious, how are you gonna get users to leave their existing application? There's so many L one L twos, fintechs for every like, it is like similar. Basically you're saying, Hey, we have a new social media application we would like you to use. Uh, and we've seen that things like the Twitter files has opened up room for like blue sky and there, there are ways where or events that happen that people are like, Hey, I'm done with the way this is already done.

I want to go to, uh, it might not be as big, but it's a place where I feel safely communicating, or in your case, I feel safe, investing, earning, sending, swapping. How do you convince or how do you, what needs to happen for more people to come over the super forum?

Vikram: I think that fintechs have done a great job of, uh. Positioning against, against banks and, and using that same energy to, um, you know, give more value back to people. Right. Uh, Superformm just needs to do the exact same thing, but give ownership to people, not just value that the fintechs of, of less, like we're able to do.

Um, so I'm, I'm super excited to be able, like we're gonna not just be able to run similar. FinTech campaigns around, uh, you know, uh, uh, fun, you know, onboarding and, and giveaway stuff. But we're actually gonna be able to give out tokens, our up tokens, and, and, uh, people can immediately stake them. They can, uh, get revenue from all the vault products, from swap fees, from interchange fees on the card, um, all very much real things that, you know, that where, where the majority of those fees are actually paid out.

Um, to stakers, unlike, you know, uh, small dividend payouts that, that your, that your normal equity would be, would give if, if, if anything, because they're gonna justify it by they need the money to grow. Um, but here it's like the protocols. The protocols there, right? Um, what we as Superform are gonna be spending money on is really just growth and marketing and, you know, some ongoing security expenses.

And that's the beauty of having like this permissionless protocol anyone can build on top of is that, uh. This could, you could be a user and also be using AI to like, you know, write this new thing that you wanna do on chain. Obviously we'll have to have AI on the other side to make sure that everything that, you know, you have it audited and, and before you know, you use it, it's secure and everything.

But, um, yeah, it is, there's so many, so many possibilities for users to build stuff and participate in building stuff on top of this that make it a more fun experience to them. Um, and we're just scratching the surface of how quickly these protocols can evolve as opposed to the old ones.

Stephen: I'm curious, you're not a first time founder. You've obviously worked a lot to grow Superform to what it is today. But Web3, you know, always seems very interest, seems fleeting, right? We saw it with NFTs. The Web3 community seems to jump from one platform, especially when it comes to like L two protocols.

They, they collect as many tokens or grants as they can. Then they jump to the next one it seems like. What are your thoughts? Do I have it completely mistaken? And then what do you do to be more sticky as a solution to the industry?

Vikram: No, it's, it, it's tough. Um, I, I think crypto's just been ever since 2017, uh, I mean, very beginning honestly is, uh, Bitcoin started off as money. Um, you know, but even then, back then, people didn't necessarily buy into this money. They thought it was just like a way to store wealth. Um, and then we've kind of been going through these iterations of like, what actually is crypto's.

Product market fit, right? Is it, um, is it just writing applications on top of Ethereum? What are those applications? Is it prediction markets? Is it DeFi? Um, good. I I think now we have a, a clearer idea of what that is now than ever. But, um, in the absence of there being breakout applications, I think it was very hard.

Like, you know, 2021, the biggest breakout application was probably open sea. Right? Um, so. Yeah. And, and now I think the breakout applications are gonna be, you know, prediction markets and neobanks. Right? Uh, and when people have those like product categories that they can finally see all the benefits of crypto in, I think they stay involved in those sectors and there's a lot less movement.

The NFT crowd doesn't become the AI crowd the next, the next month, right. Um.

Stephen: what? What are they now? The digital asset treasury crowd. I think now they're all, now, they're now they're all experts on securities. Funny enough.

Vikram: yeah. Yeah.

Stephen: Can you share your thoughts on like financial inclusion? You talked a little bit about like this new paradigm that we're in, like who's ga?

Especially in crypto. I remember when I started like heavy in 2016. Every crypto company was gonna, you know, solve the unbanked and underbanked problem. And that number doesn't seem to be reduced by much. Right. And I know like regulations and KYC is a big part to play in that. Uh, what are your thoughts about where we are in financial inclusion?

How does your neobank help or, you know, your app support this movement to get into financial inclusion? Some of those areas where it just seems almost impossible at some point.

Vikram: Yeah, we definitely have a lot of potential to do that. Um, we are, we would love to launch at some point and, you know, we have, uh, launches planned in, in South America and we have a large community of. Superform V one is, um, you know, have 50,000 active users, um, throughout the world, Southeast Asia, Brazil, um, the CIS region.

Um, and I at some point, you know, would love to dedicate resources to, specifically to growing out, um, those operations. But honestly, a lot of other projects are doing a great job of this in a very localized sense. You have like, um, lemon, uh, lemon, you have tio, um, a lot of like dollar app, um, in, in South America.

Um, you have a couple, um, of these, you know, crypto Neobanks, um, in, um, in, in Africa and, and, uh, there's probably gonna be a focus on just onboarding those communities first in a very, like, localized version of these, um, stablecoin neobank apps first. That Superform wouldn't get to first, but I think the more people that we can onboard and get.

Onto crypto wallets and hopefully their smart accounts, you know, they have the ability to, to expand and grow, and they're not centralized versions of, of the past, which none of those apps that I mentioned were, uh, that, you know, we can eventually upgrade them to this multi chain complicated hooks, execution, everything that, that super has to offer.

But, um, I think a lot of people are, are focusing solely on that problem of, of, uh, onboarding. Um. The unbanked into those new stable Coin neo banks that are entirely unchain. So.

Stephen: Can you put your investment bank on your investor hat from like a VC standpoint? What metrics are you going by? We've talked about how many users, you said 50,000 users around the world. We've talked about, you know, total value lock tv l like what metrics do you have to go by 'em, like even like a little personally, a little selfishly, like where do you wanna see the numbers being hit by your organization?

Especially with the momentum that we have right now in the us uh, over the next year.

Vikram: Yeah, for any financial business, cash is king and we're gonna have to judge ourselves at some point by revenue. Um, and, you know, I think most, most de mature DeFi protocols at this point are, you know. Being asked, uh, to be valued at some multiple of, of revenue. Um, so just having like diversified cash streams, you know, the same way how, how you'd, uh, how you'd value one of those financial services businesses, um, show that there's, you know, an ability to scale into larger preexisting markets.

For us, it's like the broader consumer finance world, right? It is like, how do we crack into the, like SoFis. Um, that kind of, you know, be able to use your on chain wealth to secure things off chain. How do we, how do we link the two? Um, what sort of infrastructure do we need to enable stuff like, uh, under collateralized lending?

Um, but yeah, uh, I'd, I'd say revenue and obviously as a, as a consumer play. Uh, you're looking at at users and you know, what percentage, for example, for Superformm, it's like what percentage of global Neobank users are actually have, have converted into being on Superform. Um, first, how many are being converted on chain?

Hopefully that number

Stephen: How many being converted, period. Let's start with that.

Vikram: yeah. But it's a huge market, right? Um. And, but going up against companies like, uh, Coinbase and, and Robinhood is that the first funnel will always be mostly people finding out about them. And then, um, yeah, what more do people want after, after their, their account gets, uh, after their trades get paused and, and, uh, they can't withdraw from their, from their account, then they're interested in something else that, uh, provides, you know, a safer feature set for them.

Oh,

Stephen: No problem. Take your time. I'll mark it so that we clip it up.

Vikram: okay. Sorry man. I've, I've gotten, I'm getting so many calls right now doing this. Okay. Uh, we're good. I just,

Stephen: I usually remind people at the front, but usually people don't even get called. No one, no one uses the phone anymore. Uh, um, and I think you raised a good point because as someone that, you know, I'm in Canada, like the first time I had to buy, well, not the first time I had to buy an NFT, and it was like coming down to that punchline, didn't have enough either.

Like, Hey, let me use my credit card from the bank. Like, and then realizing the next morning when I went to go buy a coffee, like, and I called the bank like, why is my account block? And they're like, you made a trend. I'm like, oh yeah. Right away I'm like, oh yeah, crypto. You guys don't like crypto. They're so now my, you know, credit cards, pause my preauthorized, you know, credit card.

Payments to vendors are like, there's so much downstream effects that people don't realize 'cause it doesn't happen all the time. But when it does happen, similar to when, you know, Amazon's ad AWS go down, you don't know all the intricacies, but when it goes down and people can't buy your course on Eventbrite, you know, you're up in arms.

You want, you want answers. And I think to your point is like, can we avoid those moments from even happening, um, by using Superform and others to be able to conduct those trades.

Vikram: yeah, it's, it is crazy like your, the credit card story, right? Um, the same thing happened for me on, on our company Ramp Card. Um, and, you know, one of my, my co-founder was in Turkey, uh, and, uh, we got a fraudulent charge in Turkey and I just assumed that it was him. Um, so I didn't do anything about it.

But then next day, wake up and, yeah, like our, all of our company accounts were, were frozen. Um, we had like payments going out to deal and like our employees and everything, and people like got, had to get their paychecks a couple weeks later. Um, but yeah, I mean, again, how much of this stuff, uh, can we solve eventually, you know, we could onboard businesses and institutions to go on these smart accounts.

We can create these automations. We can definitely do a lot of stuff for, for businesses too. Um, but you know, first, like retail's, retail's struggling the most right now. Um. To be able to access things safe, fairly. Uh, and at some point, you know, institutions can onboard to that too, the same way how Robinhood, uh, did that for people first, and then now everyone wants their data, so.

Stephen: I'm curious, any excite, I know like partnerships and integrations and APIs are very important and you know, part of any kind of like financial ecosystem, whether on or off chain. Any exciting announcements regarding partnerships or even thoughts of what companies could build on Superformm or build with Superformm?

Vikram: Yeah. Um, so obviously. You know, Superform already works with, uh, like almost 70 plus DeFi protocols. We're gonna continue working, um, with them, make their yield accessible across all chains, make them composable, you know, mobile distribution, all of that. We're gonna have more and more, uh, RWA protocols that, um, that we get involved with.

Also equally excited on, uh, like the chain and issuer side of it. So our V two is entirely permissionless to deploy on new chains. So now it's out there like, you know, if I was, uh, I don't know, plasma or, or bear chain stable, whoever, um, could actually just go to our repo, deploy it on the chain. We'll, do you know those, most of those, uh, that expansion ourselves.

But, um, you like instant distribution for both protocols, chains, and then the issuers for stable coins. Um, very excited about what circle's been doing. Uh, with their blockchain arc, um, and a lot of the features they have around making USDC, you know, globally accessible anywhere, no fees, um, all of that through their gateway product and, uh, lots of other cool stuff that, that they're working on.

And, um, yeah, I mean, I mentioned most of, uh, Superform deposits, uh, 60% in stable coins. Most of that like 50% in, in USGC. Um, I think. A lot of very cool circle products that have been built and Superform can kind of be a front end really for a lot of those, um, for a lot of USDC yield opportunities and everything.

And, uh, hope we can continue to do stuff with, you know, uh, issuers that wanna make their stable coins like we mentioned earlier in the, in the podcast, uh, wanna market yield on their products.

Stephen: Very selfish audience question. We have a lot of builders, you know, whether it's in payment, crypto tech, um, coming from a person that deploys capital to others, what are you looking at? Like, give us a maybe lay of the lamb of the market, just a quick, like what's the market look like for those trying to get funding?

What should they be focused on? You know, how much is the ai, you know, hype taken away from, you know, their pocketbooks and what investors are looking at? Can you give us a, take a put on your, uh, VC hat again and give us a little bit of, uh, infra, a little bit of alpha here.

Vikram: Yeah. Honestly, I'm not sure how good of an investor I'd be anymore in these markets. Um, I, I can tell you like from the perspective of, um, like us, uh, us allocating at Superform form, but I, well, I'm not sure if that would necessarily be useful. Um.

Uh, maybe, uh, I think there's a lot of like smaller, there's a lot of businesses right now that just, that can just make cash. And if those businesses need a little bit of startup capital, I think it's relatively simple. Um, to do that on blockchain rails, blockchains are the best place for capital formation.

Right. And, uh, if I, you know. If it was an ai, like a, an agent, um, uh, some sort of, um, plugin my brother was showing me the other day, like, uh, a website where people are pretty much posting like ideas. Um, it's like an idea of the day and everything for like an agent to build. Um, and there's, there's like bounties on it and, and people are taking those.

And I was like, dude, this is the coolest thing ever. He like, just graduated and this is, uh, um, now like what he wants to do for, um. Uh, for a job. And it's like, but it's like the, the, the pace at which you can, um, evolve on, on this stuff, uh, is incredible. And I think you just kinda, the tools are out there to be entirely self-sufficient and build your own company from just one person and, you know, windsurf for Claude or whatever.

Um, we use that stuff regularly at Superform and, you know, we wouldn't have had the pace of development, um, without it. And, uh, yeah. Uh, maybe just like. Be totally okay with, uh, shipping something small that just makes it a little bit of money and then see where it goes. I guess. Uh, lots of stuff in crypto that you could build.

Um, RWA products, like you could be a strategist, you could run your own, um, yield strategy that's allocating the people and take performance fee. Uh, I think like that model of, of yield managers curators is gonna 10 x over the next year

Stephen: That's super interesting and to your point, the idea of from like idea to conception to like an MVP has become so tight now with the use of ai.

You can put something scrappy out there, see how people interact with it, and then if needed, build bigger, faster with more capital. You've been in the game, like you can't be able to tell, 'cause you, you know, you've been in crypto long enough that you should have like a big gray, you should look like Gandalf, like you should have just a big head of gray air, uh, because you've been in crypto for so long.

Uh, but even just being a founder for so long, what's maybe one book, a podcast, maybe even an idea or concept or just even a conversation or, you know, a statement that you heard around the boardroom table that's kind of shaped your thinking going into 2026.

Vikram: Yeah, that's a great question. Hmm.

Stephen: Or even one thing you wish you knew, like, hey, when we start a doctor on, like had I had this in mind, like focusing on constraints or like how to deploy capital once we get money? Like is there anything that's like, yeah, I wish I could have gone back and used this. To your point about like building quickly and just kind of putting something scrappy out there.

Vikram: I think, I think the book that's given me the most conviction and I in crypto and some degree, like everything that's just being built in the space is a. Rise and fall of nations. Um, Dalio, uh, it's like pretty much goes through over the last, uh, 400 years. Um, quite literally rise and fall of like every currency, right?

Starts with uh, you know, like the, the franc and then the pound, and then the dollar, and then now like the next phase is gonna be replacing the dollar with stable coins. That's the really, the, the only way for the US US dollar to maintain dominance is to. Digitize it. And it happens like on clockwork every a hundred years.

Um, and I think maybe in another a hundred years, like after Stable Coin's pri me, then it'll finally be, you know, like genuinely crypto native value. Like Bitcoin or, or, or probably not even Bitcoin is gonna be something, something new by then. I dunno. Um, yeah, uh, that, that'd be the book. What was the other, uh, then like, uh.

Stephen: I think that's, you know what that's, I think that's perfect. And I've heard that book being mentioned, usually to say like the US is in trouble, usually that book to say like, Hey, the US is in trouble a little bit. But definitely have heard that book mentioned a couple times because it's fairly recent.

Right. Just came out if I,

Vikram: Uh, yeah, it's, it's relatively, um, a couple years ago, um, yeah, and it's like, it just perfectly lays out, um, in historical context, like eight, there's like 16 points on every cycle. Um. And it's, it's fascinating. You know, history, history always rhymes.

Stephen: That's, that's amazing. Or it sound at least sounds the same, at least sounds the same, has the same melody. Vic, where's the best place for people to find you? Are you more DJ Twitter? Do you like to hang out on LinkedIn? You know, give us some of that thought leadership. Where's the best place for people to find you?

Vikram: Yeah. Um, Twitter's probably the best place. Uh, I am vik_runa. Um. Recently, uh, mostly been Superform related tweets, but, uh, once, uh, once we ship this is, uh, excited to talk about a lot more stuff. Uh,

Stephen: You are like, once we get our our product out there, I won't have to talk about it as much.

Vikram: Yeah. Uh, and yeah, probably best spot. And then, uh, anything Superform is Superform X, y, Z. Um, also follow us on Instagram and TikTok.

We recently got that going. Um, and. Yeah. Uh, also discord is mostly where some of our like, product stuff happens, but

Stephen: I love it. Vik, thank you so much. Really enjoyed this conversation and excited for, you know, V two of Superform. It's gonna be exciting to see what you rolled out on the mobile.

Vikram: thanks. Yeah. Appreciate it. And uh, yeah, thanks for having me. Great conversation.

Stephen: Awesome.

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