Vakul Talwar Discusses Crypto.com's Growth and Innovations in Australia

0:00 Chris Titley: You're listening to a Day One FM show.

0:07 Vakul Talwar: Pick My Brain is the podcast where founders pitch me their startup and I try to give them some useful advice so they can connect better with potential co-founders, investors, media, and of course, customers. My name's Alan Jones and I was a founder myself for about 15 years, and after that, an angel investor for another 15 years. So yeah, old. Some of my ventures have been successful and some failed disastrously, But I like to think I've learned a thing or two along the way, and maybe some of that can help you. So if you'd like to learn how to tweak your pitch, subscribe to the Pick My Brain show now, wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

0:42 Speaker C: If you're building a SaaS business, achieving compliance with SOC 2, ISO 27001, or other in-demand frameworks can unlock major growth for your company and establish customer trust. However, this process is often time-intensive and very costly. Vanta automates up to 90% compliance, getting you audit-ready quickly and saving up to 85% of associated costs. And Vanta scales with your business with a market-leading trust management platform to help you continually monitor compliance, unify risk management, and streamline security reviews. Join 7,000 global companies like Atlassian and Dovetail that use Vanta to build trust and prove security in real time. My listeners get 10% off Vanta when they go to vanta.com/fun. That's vanta.com/fun. Hi, I'm Chris Tittley, and this is FinTech Fun, the podcast where I speak with Australian fintech founders and executive management and have some fun along the way, gaining insights about the person behind the brand. FinTech Fun is part of Day One, the network dedicated to founders, operators and investors.

1:51 Chris Titley: I'm joined by Vakul Talwar, GM of Australia and Head of Product for Trading at Crypto.com. Vakul, thank you so much for being part of this series.

2:00 Speaker D: Thank you so much for inviting me, Chris. It's really nice to meet you.

2:03 Chris Titley: Vakul, I'm interested to know a little bit about you firstly and your journey into Crypto.com, but also for the listeners out there, a little bit of an understanding of what Crypto.com is and what it does.

2:13 Speaker C: Sure.

2:14 Speaker D: Like, listen, my journey basically started, I started in a company called General Electric. You know, in 2006, I joined the leadership program. I was in GE for 8.5 years, basically moved around a lot around the globe, like worked in Singapore, worked in UK, many other countries like China, right? After that, I joined PayPal. I was in PayPal Australia, and then I went to PayPal Europe in UK, then came back and joined Afterpay, you know, very early days in Afterpay world. Launch multiple markets, led their product teams globally for all the consumer products, right? With the co-founders basically involved in scaling and then selling the business to Block. After that, I joined Crypto.com, right? I always had an interest in cryptocurrencies. The opportunity came, you know, the conversations were great with the co-founders and the teams in Crypto.com. So basically joined Crypto.com and, you know, currently, as I said, like, as you said, my role is on GM of Australia and Head of Product for Trading. So yeah, that's a bit of my journey.

3:19 Chris Titley: Yeah, fantastic. And when it comes to Crypto.com not being an Australian business but also being in so many different countries, can you talk about the journey of why you're in Australia and what your role is here, particularly to grow Crypto.com in a local market?

3:34 Speaker D: Yeah, like, listen, Australians love technology and Australians, you know, recently survey came out like there's a huge investment and huge interest from Australians in cryptocurrencies. We're in 130 markets. Australia is one of our most important markets globally. And, you know, like, we basically are here to give consumers the opportunity to be able to trade and work and, you know, use cryptocurrencies as they see fit. So that's where really we're providing them the opportunities. Look at it this way, like, in Crypto.com Australia, we're like a one-stop shop for all kinds of crypto products. Consumers can come in, trade more than 250 cryptocurrencies very simply and easily in the platform. Then after that, they can even use staking capabilities to create a passive income. They can use our CDC Visa card, which is one of the best Visa cards out there in the market. And also, you know, they can do crypto payments and NFTs. So there's a lot of things consumers can do in Australia holistically from a Crypto.com perspective.

4:39 Chris Titley: In terms of the trends of crypto adoption and usage, obviously over the last few years it's been sort of a, oh yeah, oh, what's this thing? It's pretty new to now sort of most people understand what Bitcoin is or all the cryptocurrencies out there. How are you seeing that sort of mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency awareness and also from a trading point of view?

5:03 Speaker D: Yeah, the adoption is really, really growing, right? Like, you know, end of last year we had around 580 million consumers.

5:10 Chris Titley: Globally. That's a lot.

5:13 Speaker D: Yeah, exactly, right? Like 580 million consumers is a ginormous number, right?

5:18 Speaker E: Yeah.

5:18 Speaker D: And this year the number is predicted to go to like around 700 million, right? So it's a huge growth that consumers are having. And over the years, like if you see crypto themselves or cryptocurrencies have come a long way, right? Like now with the announcement of the ETFs for Bitcoin, in Jan by the SEC was a huge monumental shift. Like, we saw great interest from consumers, and that was a big one for getting just retail consumers into cryptocurrency, right? And, you know, going over a billion consumers, basically. I think that was really the catalyst. And now we're seeing huge renowned interest and interest from consumers coming into first half of the year, right? Like, after the ETFs, we saw a lot of the Bitcoin price basically go up. And the cryptocurrency market really started coming back into the bull market there. And now there's news like, you know, the Ethereum ETFs are also going to get approved and there'll be other coins getting approved. So I think like the ETF was huge in terms of getting normal retail adoption. And, you know, the number is going to keep on increasing, right? It's going to keep on getting bigger and bigger as more investment opportunities basically come in for consumers and more use cases or products sold happen.

6:35 Chris Titley: Yeah, just on that note, in terms of some new developments, you mentioned staking before. I remember recently the, I think it was the Bitcoin halving, and there's lots of terminology in and around cryptocurrency that some people may not understand. Can you talk about some of the developments in the cryptocurrency space, I suppose, and some of the terminology at a basic level?

6:57 Speaker D: Yeah, look at it this way, right? Like staking is in a very simplistic manner. There are lots of cryptocurrencies that basically work on different kind of algorithms of how those cryptocurrencies secure traffic and basically process traffic, right? And staking is one of them where basically they say, hey, one person or one group can basically, you know, secure the traffic and process the traffic coming into the blockchain. And for that, they have to put in, as like, you know, a carrot-stick approach, all their coins to stake so that if they don't do a good job, then, you know, they have a stick approach that, you know, the money will basically go away.

7:34 Chris Titley: Right.

7:34 Speaker D: So staking is a very simple way for anybody in the world to basically help in that, in securing the traffic and pretty much getting rewards in return, right? So when you basically mine any blocks, you get rewards back. And from a staking side of it, normal retail consumers can help in that staking world and get like passive income in terms of rewards coming back in the coins. Solana, Cronos, there are a lot of chains basically that do that, uh, and look at that like it's like a passive income of rewards basically coming out.

8:05 Chris Titley: Fantastic.

8:06 Speaker D: Hopefully that explained it a bit.

8:08 Chris Titley: Yeah, it does. From a point of view of paying with crypto, obviously there's a famous story about a pizza that was bought, that was purchased, it was— and houses that were transacted in the past that are now worth billions of dollars, etc. Um, from a payments point of view, about going down to the local coffee shop and using cryptocurrency as a mechanism to pay for your coffee, How do you think that's going versus someone going, oh, let's buy some Bitcoin, make some money and sell some Bitcoin, and it's treated a bit like a share as opposed to, you know, a use of currency?

8:38 Speaker D: Listen, in this one we basically made some really, uh, and especially in Australia, right, like we made some major advancements and innovations on that. Last year we launched with, uh, you know, gas chain called OTR, On The Run. They're based out of Adelaide, but they have gas stations in New South Wales, and Queensland, we basically enable consumers to pay with the cryptocurrencies to buy gas, right, or over 420 stores. This is a huge milestone, and especially a thing like gas, right, like where everybody has concerns, oh, crypto platforms or blockchain platforms are slow, and you know, how do you basically resolve all the, you know, settlement and money movement side of it. We made it so simple, like it was one click literally for the consumer to transact. right, scan a QR code, see which currency you want to have, and then that's it, you basically pay. Then this year we even took it to another level where for the first implementation in the world, we basically did it in Adelaide Oval, right, during the big footy week in Adelaide.

9:38 Chris Titley: Yes, the Gather Round. Yep.

9:40 Speaker D: Exactly, the Gather Round, right, where you could buy beer and chips, or you could buy your burger and chips by your cryptocurrencies, right? And this was another big announcement. And, you know, it's early stages, but it was really exciting to see these advancements And consumers are more and more receptive to, you know, basically use crypto payments and, you know, pay with goods using the crypto.

10:02 Chris Titley: And if we repeat this podcast in 12 months' time, as the GM of Australia, where would you like to see the Australian business go? And in terms of flourish, and also, I suppose, some sort of like medium to long-term goals?

10:17 Speaker D: Yeah, I'll say like, you know, for us, the key is like we keep on solving consumer problems and creating products for consumers.

10:23 Chris Titley: Right.

10:24 Speaker D: We'll keep on innovating in that front, right? Like basically in the global market, we launched a product called Prime, which is for high net worth individuals. This is an amazing trading platform we created, especially specifically for high net worth individuals. We're looking at how do we bring that into Australia. We are going to keep on bringing more and more new products. Like we have a huge product pipeline over the next 1 year of creating amazing products and investment opportunities and payment opportunities globally. Right, and in Australia for our consumers. And then, you know, basically, you know, solving consumer problems will help us getting more consumers and more partners into the platform. So that's basically the simple goal here.

11:01 Chris Titley: And, Varun, before we go on to a little bit of fun part about yourself, I'm interested to know that Crypto.com does sponsor a number of sporting teams and stadiums and events, etc. How have you gone about sort of gallivanting around the country to all the Crypto.com sponsorship events Are you a footy fan or a basketball fan in the US?

11:21 Speaker D: I love footy. I played for a couple of years in my local team out here in Fitzroy. And, you know, I'm a Dees fan, the Melbourne Demons. But, you know, like, I love footy and we go to the footy often and, you know, everybody likes it. Even our partners basically like it. And the footy teams are amazing, right? Like, we sponsor amazing teams. We love our partnership with the AFL. And again, it's a very exciting partnership, one of our most strongest partnership globally also. And you know, like roaming around the world, yes, enjoy it. It's sometimes, you know, going through airports and getting through delayed flights and stuff is fun. It's really nice meeting everyone.

12:00 Chris Titley: I don't know if it's fun or not. Sometimes it's a little bit stressful, but—

12:04 Vakul Talwar: Exactly.

12:04 Chris Titley: Bakul, for those of the listeners out there that don't know you or don't know much about you, is there When you're sort of not talking about cryptocurrency, when you're not talking about staking and growing the business here in Australia and products on the trading side of things, what do you get to wind down? What's the secret hobby that some people might not know about you?

12:23 Speaker D: Man, I have a 7-year-old daughter. She keeps me busy. She has a bigger social calendar than I do. Right. So, yeah, yeah. Right. Like, you know, like my social calendar will be like half or one fourth of what her social calendar is. Yeah.

12:37 Chris Titley: Right? Yep, yep. And what about the TV shows? Does she get into some Bluey or something, some shows that you know? Some movies?

12:46 Speaker D: I've seen all Bluey. I've seen My Little Pony. I've seen all Bluey, right? I remember the episodes by heart, right? I even know the characters by heart right now.

12:56 Chris Titley: All right, let's go for a test then. What's your favorite episode then? Come on, go on. What's your favorite episode?

13:01 Speaker D: Oh man, the favorite episode for me will be the latest one where, you know, they were basically trying to sell the house and there was a whole basic—

13:09 Chris Titley: Yes, The Sign it was called.

13:11 Speaker D: Exactly.

13:11 Chris Titley: The Sign, yep.

13:12 Speaker D: So I really enjoyed that one. That was really good fun.

13:14 Chris Titley: Yeah, that was about, that was the extended episode, it went for 27 minutes, my kids informed me. But I'm a big fan of the cricket episode.

13:22 Speaker C: Yep.

13:22 Chris Titley: Which was fantastic. And then also early days, early days, The Takeaway where Bluey's dad gets stuck with the two girls ordering some spring rolls. But yeah, fabulous show that out of Brizzy, which is good where I'm from, and a Lions fan here.

13:38 Speaker C: Yeah.

13:38 Chris Titley: But cool, thank you so much for giving us an understanding about what Crypto.com is doing here in Australia, the different types of products that you have, the adoption of cryptocurrency here locally, and some of the products, as you mentioned, about paying for your burger and chips at the footy using cryptocurrency, which I think is very, very innovative. I really look forward to catching up, and thank you again for the podcast.

13:59 Speaker D: Thank you so much, Chris. Really nice to be here.

14:03 Speaker E: Listen to the Unfunded Podcast, brought to you by the Day One Network and hosted by me, tech writer Joan Westenberg. We're sharing the no-holds-barred untold stories from entrepreneurs who have decided to build a business on their terms. I'll be interviewing successful founders and operators on the grit and ingenuity it takes to build and scale independent startups without the support of traditional venture capital funding. Subscribe to the Unfunded Podcast now, wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the Unfunded Podcast now, wherever you get your podcasts.