From De-Banking to Building Your Own Rails | Partner Content

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:01][music] >> Hello. We are here in Miami at the end of day one of consensus and I'm back here with Todd Alt. He is the founder of Alt blockchain. It's a company building purposeful infrastructure for trading, settlement and real world asset flows across blockchain and AI systems. Did I get that right?

[00:00:24]>> Excellent. All right. So, but this is the not the first time we've met. We actually spoke at Consensus Hong Kong back in February.

[00:00:31]>> That was fun. And it was an exciting time for you because you were approaching Genesis mainnet. Yeah. And you've since launched. So, give me the update. Tell me what's been happening.

[00:00:40]>> live with mainnet. I think we we had a little couple delays, but we just double-tripled checking kind of things and uh we went live with mainnet and we then launched mining uh about a month ago and mining's going really well cuz we're really uh we're we're what I I think we're one of the few software-based miners that the miners do a lot of work. You know, we really it's proof of work is real. Yeah.

[00:01:03]Um and so that had a little bit of a rough start, but really smoothed out within the first 48 hours. And I think we've mined about 1% of the blockchain so far. So, we're one of the unique uh blockchains where we gave out no token. Everything is mined.

[00:01:19]You have to earn it after actually legitimately doing work.

[00:01:23]There's no like free coins to anyone. We didn't do it, you know, an ICO or anything like that. It's all mining.

[00:01:28][music] I was going to actually ask you about that because um you know, when you've actually got a system that is designed to incentivize in that way, how do you make sure that you've got legitimate people within the community within the ecosystem, you know, they're not just mining for financial incentives or does that matter? Well, I don't know if it matters. I mean, we we sold millions of dollars worth of nodes to people individuals around the world, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sri Lanka, all over the world, US.

[00:01:58]Uh and then but most of it went institutionally cuz it's a really an institutional layer product.

[00:02:04]>> Okay. I mean I come from TradFi and we were were were really trying to build something that allows if if your basic thesis like we have is that all the blockchain will ultimately be the entire network and all the blockchains will eventually talk and be part of a like I I consider it like a cellular ecosystem like cell phones.

[00:02:24]That this blockchain will be like a con- a bunch of connected computers around the world that know how to talk to each other. Yep. Then then you want to build a sort of a high-level institutional layer with proper auditing and pro- So we really focused on all the vendors, multiple audits, you know, obviously you want to be careful in terms of cuz we're going to have a lending platform, uh a spot decks, a perp decks, Wow.

[00:02:47]>> a bunch of other technology around the ability to trade real world assets like tokenized stocks, tokenized loans, tokenized bonds, uh ETFs, everything. We we we think of anything that can financially trade. We're launching a um what you similar to securitize, we're launching a a tokenized platform where you can tokenize on any any blockchain, pretty much the top few of them but not any but like the larger ones including ourselves. So we're we're putting a lot of money in infrastructure. And so we didn't we didn't go out and raise capital to build the blockchain. We spent our own money. So we this is our own cooking, all of our own money and we use all the money we raised from the nodes to go into the lender which supports the ecosystem. So we we it's a unique situation. Very unique.

[00:03:34]>> Every dollar went to the lender. Yeah.

[00:03:37]So so one of the things that you emphasize a lot is the need for purpose-built infrastructure.

[00:03:43]>> Sure. Um and and that's for trading and settlement. But I was wondering what have you learned uh now that you're actually looking at it you you got real usage patterns to study. Is there anything that you've learned that might have even challenged initial assumptions? Yeah, I thought that with all these blockchains launching, it was a lot easier.

[00:04:01]>> [laughter] >> It is not easy at all, not even a little bit. And then that's the the scary part about the lack of regulation is that I would say to you like 1% to 2% of them are legit, audited, real blockchains.

[00:04:14]And the others are all fake, and not real, not audited, you know, it's it's just the wild west. Mhm. And so it reminds me like of studying history like the car industry, which when cars were first made, there were thousands of car companies, and they all made different products. They were substandard. The ones that built standardization and production rose to the top, and the other ones all went bankrupt, right? And so I I see a shakeout of the lack of quality L1s, you know, and these L2 projects that are not really relevant. Just they just launched to launch, and they don't really have So we did it completely different, and that is we built a bunch of infrastructure first, >> Mhm. and then we didn't do the field of dreams mint thing, which is like, "Hey, build a blockchain, hope people will show up." So we're dog fooding the entire process, and our goal is to because I was debanked so many times.

[00:05:03]That was really the issue. You mentioned that when we were in Hong Kong, right?

[00:05:07]This is a huge driver for you. Yeah.

[00:05:09]>> Yeah, it's a big driver for me, and I and I funny, the clip runs about the Girl Scout cookie account. My wife's Girl Scout cookie account got shut down cuz her association with me being married to me at the same bank because we're Bitcoin mining, right? Are you serious?

[00:05:23]>> Yeah, oh my god. If I I literally have letters from banks saying, "We're shutting you down. We can't tell you why." Over and over and over again, right? And the irony of the banks entering the crypto space now after they tortured us is just it's really um Yeah, I So we're we're designed we designed the entire thing to where we eventually believe we can build our their rails.

[00:05:45]Now, there's certain things you can't build your own rails on. So, our relationship with we have two banks we'll probably going to announce that we have relationships with that will that are they're a lot more accommodating now. So, what we think we're building the full stack of of from soup to nuts in terms of all the payment rails, on-ramping, off-ramping, or partnering with people so that that de-banking process doesn't happen again.

[00:06:08]It's It's really the driving force for me to allow entrepreneurs and stuff like that to go build it Listen, if you're doing something illegal, you should be shut down. But, if it's legal and and a random person decides that they don't want that that that business or that space.

[00:06:23]>> they don't even give you a reason. They give you no reason.

[00:06:26]>> Yeah. And they just you get a notice and it's happened to me. I've had to go through it. It's an absolute nightmare.

[00:06:30]You're being in crypto. You You know exactly what I'm talking about.

[00:06:32]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's terrible.

[00:06:34]>> So, so, you know, the primary application right now is trading, trading of real-world assets. But, once again, we don't put a real-world asset on our chain that we don't want to own.

[00:06:45]Mhm. So, a lot of people build a real-world asset, then it doesn't trade.

[00:06:48]And like, what's the point of it, right?

[00:06:49]So, I you know, I I I hear people talking about wanting to finance but use it to raise capital.

[00:06:56]And my thesis is own the asset, then tokenize. If you're trying to raise capital uh by tokenizing, it's going to be hard because you got to build a marketplace.

[00:07:05]You got to have a market maker.

[00:07:07]It's not ready. We're not ready for that. Some things are, but I think that the RWA craze, which is really important, I think it's going to I think it's going to disrupt all the stock markets. I think every market in the world is going to trade 24/7.

[00:07:20]>> the biggest topic here? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:21]Well, I I I've I've had a thesis for years that it's going to They're all going to go away or they're going to They're going to metamorphosize into a global network, right? So.

[00:07:29]>> Mhm. It's a you know, I'm not a politician, so they're going to have to figure it out.

[00:07:33]All right, shifting gears a bit. I wanted to ask you about the party that you recently hosted in Vegas. I saw it on Twitter, the Only Bulls After Dark.

[00:07:41]Had massive FOMO. It looked amazing. You should have come. It was very fun. That was really one of the best parties I've ever had.

[00:07:46]>> It looked incredible. Um but I wanted to ask you about it because you're obviously really heavily invested in community. Sure. But something that a lot of crypto projects struggle with is, you know, how do you actually distinguish between engagement that translates into real network utility versus something that is just social?

[00:08:04]Well, you know, so OnlyBalls, that OnlyBalls After Dark party, OnlyBalls is a real application. You can go download it in Google's store and in the Apple store and App Store.

[00:08:13]And only the difference with OnlyBalls is that is a Think of it as a global consumer funnel into you get starting your digital journey, right? So we focus on the I of the 97% of the world that doesn't have crypto. We We We want everyone that has crypto. We love all the DGENs. We love everyone that's in the crypto community.

[00:08:33]There's nothing wrong with that. But there's a huge >> They're They're already converted.

[00:08:37]>> And there's a huge unmet need. Like so I was on the panel with Tether yesterday with Francisco and and he talked about the 500 million users they have globally. We want to be part of the 500 million users that have 50 bucks, 100 bucks that they make two or 300 dollars a year a month. People don't realize like And so there's 300 million people or so in my opinion that are in crypto that are there, right? And they're part of the community. Maybe it's a little less.

[00:09:04]But when you go outside of that and you go like what what's it like to be in Africa where you have a a Google phone and you can have a crypto wallet with Tether in it you really change the dynamics because they get these micro loans, they pay them back, they they interact with Tether, they don't use their own currency and that's changing the global landscape of their their own wealth and their ability to create and move money around, right? So if you think about my 20-year-old kids, they've never known a life ever without a cell phone. They don't know their life without a cell phone. Well, people in Africa and around the world that are in in of more impoverished countries or ones that are third world, when they get a cell phone and they get tether, they don't know anything else. They They know that their own currency doesn't work.

[00:09:44]But tether sort of setting those people free. And And so we want a service with only bulls people that can have access to everything. They'll be able to buy a stock, they'll be able to do it for $5, they'll be able to put two or three $10 into something, and also to borrow too.

[00:09:57]So we're going to be building a micro lending platform on only bulls too, where they can go to the super app and they're bullish about their own self.

[00:10:04]It's like it's not It's not It's a little bit of a play on words, but really it's being about bullish about what you're doing, that you're taking control of your financial future. And so the the only bulls after dark party it it we're going to have them all over the world. It's just designed to invite people to learn about it to and just it's a little it's a little spark. It's more of a marketing thing. Yeah. It's built It's built for our blockchain. So we we build it for people to get uh the consumer to on-ramp to uh Web3 and enjoy it. I guess it's lowering the barriers to entry and kind of doing it in like a non-intimidating way, so people just kind of come and have fun. So I have people that work for me that are like, "How do I swap something?" Even I mess it up all the time. Like you're nervous.

[00:10:43]Crypto's still nervous. You still can make a mistake. I mean, I have a friend of mine who I got involved in a project and had $274,000 of crypto in his Phantom wallet, and he gets a new phone and he doesn't keep his codes and he lost all lost all the money. Oh. And it's gone. Like, you know, so it's it's scary, you know? It's still scary. Oh, it's true. Every time I bridge, I you know, I'm sitting there waiting for it to happen and I'm thinking, oh god, you know, did I stuff it up? I bridged off a a a Phantom uh perp decks and I it took 40 minutes for the money to show up in my wallet and I was freaking out.

[00:11:12]>> checking it and there's nothing you can Yeah, you just have to wait. You're lucky you're in a you're That part scares the hell out of me. So I guess at these kind of community events, you know, how do you address things like that to to make people not feel so scared to jump in and get involved?

[00:11:25]Well, we kind of uh we kind of believe that just doing something. So like we have this new product called Bitcoin Max, which is Bitcoin's tokenized at the Satoshi level out of Switzerland.

[00:11:36]Uh we want people to start off as small as they want. And so, we don't we we we're like we don't discriminate like whether you have $5 or $500,000. We want to show you how to to have a wallet, how to move stuff around. So, we're really slow about that adoption. We're not like in a you know, a fast-paced you got to be doing trading tomorrow on hyper liquid or something, you know.

[00:11:56]So, it's it's um it's just a way of of of people meeting and and getting to know how to what they're doing on the app. And then they get invited to more and more parties.

[00:12:03]And then sometimes like everyone at the Only Bulls party is getting a you know, a present in their wallet, right? It's usually some form of crypto. Yeah. Just to get them started. That's nice. Very inclusive.

[00:12:13]>> Yeah, very inclusive for sure. Well, so that's the consumer side. I guess back to the institutional side cuz you mentioned that's that's a big focus for you as well.

[00:12:20]>> Right. You mentioned some of the frictions that you have on the consumer side. What are the frictions that you get with institutional flows?

[00:12:27]I feel I feel thing banking is still an issue, although that's opening up a lot.

[00:12:32]I think that um uh custodianship around the assets and the the um the oracles and making sure that you know, there's still that issue like you know, back to October 10th where Mhm.

[00:12:46]>> you had this big clip on on pricing and and sort of a collapse that happened and it's really still not recovered from that, right? Obviously.

[00:12:55]>> It's funny cuz we're kind of we saw Bitcoin at 81 five today almost 82. But it's still way low off the highs, right?

[00:13:01]And and uh Solana 85 down from way higher prices, right? I remember buying a little Solana at like 140 thinking I got a deal from 200. And then it went and goes and prints like you know, 60, right?

[00:13:14]>> Yeah. So, I I think institutionally that while there's adoption, there's also a lot of expense around it because people it's still the wild west. Yeah. So, for us we want to make tokenization of real world assets really simple. We don't need a a really complicated tokenization process around economics, meaning make it as simple as possible, but be realistic with institutions that you're not suddenly going to just tokenize your piece of real estate and it's all ever going to trade around the world. There's still marketing involved. At the end of the day, you're just converting web 2 to web That's what I tried to say on this panel the other day. The idea of going from web 2 to web 3 and Robinhood and all these big institutions that are doing it, it's great.

[00:13:57]But, it's the four or five billion people that have never been in crypto that matter, not the 300 million that are there today. The institutions are going to take care of themselves. And having a fast settlement layer, having a transfer agent, and a broker dealers, and corresponding clearing firms, and all that settlement and defining settlement, that's going to happen institutionally, no matter what. It's it's the consumer that is going to transform itself and have this permissionless relationship. Most consumers want a bank, they want someone they can go talk to, and the idea that they're in control of their own DeFi wallet is makes them uncomfortable. I 100% agree, Tim.

[00:14:31]>> Right.

[00:14:31]Look, before we go, I've just got one final question for you. I was thinking we I just saw you in Hong Kong a few months ago. Here we are in Miami. If I see you again, hopefully in a year from now, >> see you in the Philippines. Oh, you're going to come visit?

[00:14:45]>> there, too, so I'm sure we'll talk before then. So, well, next time we meet up, let's say it's a year from now, what kind of success metrics are you going to have to share with me so that we know that Alt is on track? So, we're tokenizing silver, gold, platinum, palladium in a way where you can buy a token, if you want to redeem it two days later, you get the silver delivered to you like overnight, two-day overnight.

[00:15:06]Wow.

[00:15:06]>> Yeah, so it's very We're We're doing really consumer-friendly uh Now, granted, you got it's a thousand ounces of silver, so you may not want that thousand ounces of silver >> [laughter] >> You can't You can't You can't uh You can't redeem on just like, you know, for 1 oz. It's just it's not realistic.

[00:15:22]>> Yeah, yeah.

[00:15:23]>> Um but by then we hope to have tokenized silver, gold, platinum, palladium by next year. Uh Bitcoin max is up and operational. Success for us is going to be what's the trading volume like, what's the TVL, how big is the TVL? Is it a couple billion dollars? That's kind of our goal. And and are we incentivizing people to build on our chain? We're launching an accelerator program with um with a fairly decent size firm that will vet thousands of applications around the idea of us providing acceleration for them to launch on multichain, including our own, right? So, we don't we don't need money in the traditional sense. So, we didn't use our crypto project to raise capital.

[00:16:03]>> Mhm. So, we're investing really strategically. I I would equate us to more of a Canton type, you know, it's more of a the the JP Morgan sort of privacy uh blockchain. Whereas, we're going to have a privacy component, too, but but right now we're completely, you know, regular web 3 and and completely trans- you you know, wide-open access, right? Permissionless, etc. Um but I think just building on the rails is where we want to be. Like, making sure that it's very efficient. And my goal is to make it so it's really simple. Mhm. Swaps are still difficult, right? All these things are still can I connect my wallet? All those things still make people really nervous. So, we a year from now I'd love it to be where people thought like Amazon did where it's one click and you could buy something. We want to be like the Amazon of the crypto community where it's really simple, we're customer-focused, we're obsessed with what the customer is experiencing, and we're making a better experience for them. Because right now web 3 is like, "Hey, learn about it.

[00:17:02]Figure it out." Like, you know, you got 13 steps, you got a bridge here. No one That's just bridge this, lose that. Uh is the bridge okay? You know, how do I borrow on Ave? All that stuff. We want to simplify the whole process. It's going to take time. So, hopefully the next time you see me, I can tell you we made this way simpler. We We're We're onboarding about I think around 3 or 4% of the network grows per day every day, right? Sometimes 10%, sometimes 1%, but I'm hoping that number is a few million in terms of onboarding consumer-wise.

[00:17:34]My My ultimate goal is to have 50 million, very similar to I was just on a panel with eToro president, and they have 40 million globally, about 6 million engaged, right? So, 36 34 million that are on their platform that are just communicating in a network.

[00:17:49]There's a huge opportunity for the entire world to convert to Web3, and sort of Web2 gets kind of left behind.

[00:17:56]That's why I think the banks are going to change forever. It's going to change This is what's happening here is not the first inning. We're We like we're literally not up to bat yet. It's we're in We're in triple-A ball. We're not even playing a a major league sport yet.

[00:18:08]It's We all think this is major league.

[00:18:10]It's nothing compared to the global financial community, but it's going to be big.

[00:18:14]Well, hearing you talk about it like that makes me very excited for the future, and to be the Amazon of Web3 is an incredibly ambitious goal. So, I very much look forward to I kind of just made that up there to to give you a description because they because they made it They made it so simple to shop online. We want to make it so simple to use Web3.

[00:18:32]That's what we want to do. Well, I look forward to hearing how you track on that product roadmap. Todd, it's been so good to see you again. Thank you for making the time. [clears throat] >> Anytime. Thanks.