EZA's Role in Blockchain Education

Tell me about EZA and how you got started.

Well, first of all, thank you very much for having us on,

Remy.

It's pleasure to be here in the Stock Exchange, and when we first got started, I

wouldn't have imagined that we'd be here.

When we first got into the space, that was 2013, through Bitcoin mining.

Mm-hmm.

And it was very much

the street against crypto, and the crypto sort of likewise.

Um, we started EZA a couple of years ago now,

because we believe that blockchain

is one of the single most important technologies in the history of humanity.

Perhaps even the most important. And so we know that we need to get more

and more people into this space. So what we have is two things.

Mm-hmm.

Number one, the EZA app, where we have over a million users who

learn about the world's leading blockchains, like the XRP Ledger,

with our amazing

partners like Ripple.

Mm-hmm.

And also other blockchains like Stellar, with our awesome partners at the Stellar

Development Foundation. They learn about it, and we

are basically onboarding layer

onto the world's leading decentralized networks, and dis- distributed

networks. And the second thing that we do is, because our mission

is to bring a

billion people into Web3, and into crypto and blockchain, we

recently started the EZA Labs, which is building out some of

those core products and primitives, which are going to enable people

to actually come into this space like nothing we've ever seen before.

Mm-hmm. And Phil, you've brought up a lot of key points

there.

First and foremost, both of you are early adopters, 2013,

getting into Bitcoin mining. And looking at how far we have come

in terms of the crypto marketplace, and I understand that hackathons are

part of your DNA as well. So tell us about the inspiration for

EZA.

Definitely. So Phil and I have been in blockchain for many,

many years now.

Mm-hmm.

And before founding EZA, uh, Phil was actually a lawyer, um, and

I myself work in finance, so at Blackstone, Goldman, um,

and a couple of other

places. And we really saw, through our work at those amazing

firms, and also through our sort of daily lives-

Mm-hmm

... that people really need to get educated on

crypto.

People need to get educated on blockchain.

This is gonna be one of the most transformative technologies of the decade.

And if we don't educate people, they're gonna get left behind.

Wow.

So for us, we wanted to share what we had learned

with the public, which is why we

built the EZA app, which is super easy.

Mm-hmm.

100% free for anyone to actually download and use.

Um, and then obviously host the amazing

hackathons that we host-

Mm-hmm

... uh, which really attract a lot of people to

the space, and actually give them a

platform to launch their ideas. And to this date, over $4 billion

worth of projects have come out of our hackathons.

Mm-hmm.

Which is super cool.

Yeah.

Uh, and we invest in those, we nurture those, we mentor those.

We work very closely with our partners to actually make sure they become

game-changing companies in the blockchain space.

Mm-hmm. So the EZA app and the EZA Labs,

I want to know first and foremost, uh, have any unicorns come out of

EZA Labs?

Yeah. So we've, um, we've actually had, uh, a big one come out

recently called Cognition AI.

Mm-hmm.

Um, they are one of the biggest AI companies

out there right now.

They recently acquired a couple of other AI companies too.

They were founded by people who learned about, you know, Web3 AI through

EZA, and then actually went on to go and, uh, you know, raise

hundreds of millions of dollars from the world's best VCs.

Peter Thiel's founder fund, uh, and many others.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so now they're changing the game for both

AI, but also developers who are

building in the blockchain space. So super cool things, uh,

that they're doing.

Mm-hmm. And Dom and Phil, you're siblings.

That makes you very unique as a organization.

But also at the same time, when we think about how we use technology,

we're

constantly on our smartphones or our devices,

and we're not necessarily in front of

our laptops all the time. So tell me what's going on with the

app, and your vision for growth.

Great question. You're right. Pretty much, about...

I think last I checked, about 70 to 80% of all internet traffic

goes through a

mobile phone. That's why we designed EZA to be

mobile-first.

But I think in terms of where the future is headed, what we wanna do is we wanna

make it a lot easier for anybody to use Web3.

So if you talk about crypto, pretty much the only surface area or touch

points that normal people have is essentially buying the stuff.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And speculating on the price.

That's obviously a huge part of it, but what we want to do

is we wanna make sure

that normal people can also access it.

And so that's why we've always gone mobile first.

And in terms of what we're doing with the EZA Labs as well, can't share too much

exactly right now, but we have the EZA whitepaper,

which we're working on with some

of the world's top leading researchers and academics on.

Uh, and that's gonna make it a lot easier for

anybody to start using crypto, and

start using the blockchain, as opposed to just speculating on it.

So think about anybody using their smartphone to,

uh, actually access this whole ecosystem o-

of things, and that's really the

beginning of what's gonna take this industry from essentially

a niche of people who are sort of experimenting or using it, but

very, very technical, to just the everyday person.

Anybody can use it as simply as they can, you know, go to Starbucks and buy a

coffee or use Uber.

And both of you are here at the New York Stock Exchange, the

center of traditional finance, or TradFi as we like to

call it. So we have come a long way, and the,

uh, IPO of Circle really brought stablecoin to

the

forefront when it comes to American retail investors.

And I understand that you're looking at XRP here,

so tell us

why, and the use case.

Definitely. Um, so we work very closely together with

Ripple.

Um, we work very closely to actually bring our

massive community of over

one million developers onto the XRP Ledger.

Um, and so we've been working with them- Uh, really to actually foster the

next generation of companies to launch, um, both in the financial services

sector, um, and all the way, you know, from, like, the biggest institutions, but

actually down to, you know, startups as well, uh,

through the hackathons that many

people have seen we've hosted, um, on social media, et cetera.

Um, so for us, you know, we're really bullish on Ripple, uh, on,

um, XRP in particular, uh, because of the inroads they've already

made into the TradFi sector. Um, they've been, you know, really,

really sort of diligent about getting tons of different licenses all across the

world to actually make sure that they are positioned to own the space, uh,

when the institutions actually come into, uh, blockchain, into

crypto, which they're already starting to do with

stable coins.

Um, that's obviously a huge use case, uh, and Ripple has their own RLUSD stable

coin, which is awesome, and we've already started educating our

community on them.

Um, and ultimately for us, uh, we're just super bullish on, uh, the

mission, uh, what they're doing, uh, already, uh, in terms of, you know,

bringing all these big institutions.

Hidden Road acquisition, for example, is a great example of how they're going to

actually be utilizing the XRP ledger in the real world, um, settling

trades, et cetera, uh, much faster, cheaper than otherwise would be possible.

And then obviously also international money payments.

Um, all of those different aspects really make

it, uh, one of the

formative, uh, companies of the next decade,

in our opinion.

Um, and I know a lot of people have been

asking for my, uh, price targets on

XRP, and I think it's the first time I'll say

it, uh, but I think

XRP is heading to $1,000 by 2030. So for me,

uh, it's, you know, a, a super, uh, important project,

and actually probably one of

the most important projects out there at the moment.

And finally, we have less than 60 seconds here,

but here we are

about to head into the second half of 2025, so what are you paying attention

to in blockchain as well as crypto?

I think I'll kick it off. Um, I'll take the first 30 seconds.

Number one, I think if we're talking about XRP,

if we're talking about XLM as well,

Stellar, Ripple, what they're doing in the space, um,

really neither of them

have yet had a DeFi summer or DeFi revolution.

We've seen it with Ethereum, which took its market cap into the

hundreds of

billions. We're looking at Stellar, we're looking at XRP,

uh, as well, which really have market caps o-

of around, you know, 150

billion, uh, still sitting under 200 billion,

and they haven't had that DeFi moment

yet. So as we come into the second half of this

year with what we're doing as

well with the EZA Labs, we're looking at priming this whole

ecosystem to be set

up for this DeFi summer, uh, or DeFi year.

Dom. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, I think you look at Ethereum, a lot of

stuff has happened in that, um, ecosystem already.

Um, and now I think we're gonna, you know, start to really see it, and also we're

working, you know, very hard at EZA to bring all of

that onto things like the

XRP Ledger, you know, Stellar, and other world-leading, uh, blockchains.

Okay, Dom, Phil, thank you so much for joining me.

Great to have you on.