Katie Perry, the Chief Marketing Officer of zerohash, joins John Furrier in the NYSE Cube Studios as part of the NYSE Wired program. Perry discusses how zerohash pioneers solutions in the cryptocurrency and finance space, coinciding with the BitGo IPO and the Crypto Trailblazers program. They reveal the strategic developments at zerohash and the broader cryptocurrency market landscape.
John Furrier of theCUBE and Katie Perry, alongside theCUBE Research analysts, explore various aspects of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Perry shares insights on the impact of regulatory shifts, the rise of stablecoins, and zerohash's role as an essential infrastructure provider in the crypto space. This discussion provides a nuanced perspective on how organizations navigate and leverage the evolving cryptocurrency landscape.
The video offers key insights into the growing mainstream acceptance of digital currencies. According to Perry, the integration of stablecoins into real-world applications, such as payments and tokenization in large-scale financial institutions, demonstrates the sector's potential. Furrier and Perry also discuss the challenges and opportunities of decentralized finance and its implications for global financial operations.
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Katie Perry, zerohash
Katie Perry, the Chief Marketing Officer of zerohash, joins John Furrier in the NYSE Cube Studios as part of the NYSE Wired program. Perry discusses how zerohash pioneers solutions in the cryptocurrency and finance space, coinciding with the BitGo IPO and the Crypto Trailblazers program. They reveal the strategic developments at zerohash and the broader cryptocurrency market landscape.
John Furrier of theCUBE and Katie Perry, alongside theCUBE Research analysts, explore various aspects of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Perry shares insights on the impact of regulatory shifts, the rise of stablecoins, and zerohash's role as an essential infrastructure provider in the crypto space. This discussion provides a nuanced perspective on how organizations navigate and leverage the evolving cryptocurrency landscape.
The video offers key insights into the growing mainstream acceptance of digital currencies. According to Perry, the integration of stablecoins into real-world applications, such as payments and tokenization in large-scale financial institutions, demonstrates the sector's potential. Furrier and Perry also discuss the challenges and opportunities of decentralized finance and its implications for global financial operations.
In this interview from theCUBE and NYSE Wired’s coverage of the BitGo IPO, Katie Perry, chief marketing officer of Zero Hash, joins theCUBE’s John Furrier to discuss the maturation of the crypto landscape from speculative assets to essential financial infrastructure. Perry unpacks Zero Hash’s role as the "operating system" for companies looking to integrate crypto trading, stablecoin payments and tokenization without regulatory friction. She highlights how recent regulatory clarity and the "boring crypto" trend are driving institutional adoption, with major e...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What is the current status of zerohash and its developments in the crypto space?add
What impact did the GENIUS Act have on demand for stablecoins and innovation in the industry?add
What are some current applications of stablecoins in the payments sector?add
What factors contribute to the trust and security sought by institutions in blockchain technology?add
What is zerohash's approach to serving end consumers and ensuring product reliability?add
>> Welcome back. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here at our NYSE Cube Studios, part of the NYSE Wired program. Of course, we have our Palo Alto studio connecting Silicon Valley and Wall Street, tech and money. The NYSE Wired program and CUBE Original connects technology and capital markets. Technology is the market. We've got our Crypto Trailblazers program here. Katie Perry, the CMO of zerohash is here on theCUBE. Katie, thank you for coming in.
Katie Perry
>> Thanks for having me. It's such an exciting day to be building in this space and here at the New York Stock Exchange on such an exciting day.
John Furrier
>> We had your CEO on, but he's too busy hobnobbing in Davos.
Katie Perry
>> I'm sure he's on a chairlift somewhere with a world leader or something, telling them all about stablecoins.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. We really enjoyed the last conversation because as we continue to thunder away in the mainstreaming of crypto, stablecoins, distributed architecture are huge. What's the update on zerohash? What's the status?
Katie Perry
>> Yeah, we've been building. So, for those that don't know, we're infrastructure. So, any company that essentially wants to do crypto in any capacity, that could mean unlocking trading, it could be payments via stablecoins. It could be tokenization. Sort of the operating system or the layer around that. Similar to how when you pick up a phone, there's different things you're doing on it. There's security protocols, there's applications. Companies that want to start using crypto in the day-to-day, there's a lot of friction to that. There's licenses, there's regulatory hurdles, and then there's the tech. So, we essentially make it very easy and safe and regulated for companies to level up into crypto as these companies want to start using it, not only as an asset to trade, but an actual technology, a new system of moving money.
John Furrier
>> We had the BitGo IPO this morning, stock's up, nice 20% plus up, nice trajectory. First crypto IPO of the year, last year with a nice second half rolling in. Looking good in the regulatory environment. A lot of enthusiasm, but there's still the skeptics out there. What does it all mean? It's sometimes hard to follow. As you said, it's pretty complicated. Unpack what's going on in crypto right now because I think you're already seeing digital. We all have a Venmo-like service. If we have an iPhone, we got Apple Pay. I mean, we pay for the subway in New York, hit up Apple Pay.
Katie Perry
>> No more card.
John Furrier
>> No one really carries cash, physical paper. I mean, so digital's there, but it's centralized, not decentralized. What is the current state of crypto right now in your mind?
Katie Perry
>> Yeah. Well, of course we had the GENIUS Act go through in the summer and that really unleashed a lot of demand. At zerohash, we actually just released a report. And our RFIs related to stablecoins, in particular, 5Xed year-over-year. All these companies had been thinking about this from preparing and waiting for the moment. And so, a big trend that we heard a lot about in Davos when we talked to our CEOs there is how regulation unlocks innovation, not the opposite. So, now people are understanding the parameters they can build in and they're accelerating very quickly. And so, this year, a lot of the conversations at Davos, and I'm sure back here in New York at all these banks down the street is not if they can do it, but how they can do it, how quickly, how they can do it securely in a way that adds customer value.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. If you look at Davos, one thing I was observing yesterday, I was talking to Brian Baumann at the NYSE about was that if you look at Davos, it's almost the mirror of our society. You got politics and tech pretty much is the main discussion. And it used to be regulatory capture was a strategy. Now, regulatory policy is more entrepreneurial, enabling, trying to accelerate that value. What's your reaction to that? Do you agree?
Katie Perry
>> Yeah. I mean, it's interesting when you get into it and get into the conversations with the experts. For example, our chief compliance officer, there's a lot of nuance to legal conversations. And so, it's very interesting to hear those types talk about these topics. We had an event with a bunch of brokerages back in the fall and had some big law firms there talking about all these ways that there can be nuance. And so, it takes a lot of collaboration working together and talking things out. And I think you're seeing more of that as everyone is starting to embrace where this place is going. I was at CES last week. I talked to the Blockchain Association and I asked them, I was like, "Well, what happens if there's an administration change? Are you worried things are going to revert?" Now, it's almost apolitical that crypto is becoming an apolitical layer that things are being built on. And so, her point of view is that it's hard to go back at this point.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. As they say, the genie's out of the bottle, the horse is out of the barn. Mainstream is seeing it. It's a great sign. And it's not just us versus them, the old OGs and crypto. It's like, okay, fighting all the time, pushing a rock up a hill. It's really now more of the integration of existing systems and then financial technology platforms. BitGo's a tech platform, so you're seeing a lot more services, but I want to ask about your zerohash opportunity. What specifically are the use cases that you guys see right now that you're going after? Where's that beachhead? What's the main balance?
Katie Perry
>> Yeah. Because it's a foundational layer, what's really interesting is there's so many different ways you could use similar pieces of the tech or the compliance structure. But the big places right now, and we heard a lot about this at Davos, was payments. Using stablecoins to accelerate, remove friction from payments. Earlier this week, we announced an integration with Gusto. They are a payroll provider. They have 400,000 US-based small businesses. A lot of US-based small businesses are hiring contractors overseas. They now can pay overseas contractors near instantly with stablecoins when that used to take three to seven days on the old rails. So, finding ways to just move money quicker and more efficiently, payments is one. Another is just the large scale financial institutions of tokenization, you've probably heard 20 times come up at Davos, whether it's Larry Fink or other people, how are we tokenizing things like funds, real estate? It's another big area of growth for us.
John Furrier
>> On the crypto side, one of the hot areas is early adopters, clearly. Online applications, it has community. Gaming is obvious one, creatives. So, you're starting to see these currencies already kind of in play, but the businesses are now leaning into it. How do you see that and how does zerohash fit into these markets?
Katie Perry
>> Yeah. It's a network effect, right? Because as the platforms move to these systems, whether it's for treasury or B2B payments or settlement or for their own customers, they're bringing all their users with them. So, one thing in our stablecoin report we just put out, we calculated how many stablecoin-ready accounts are there? How many possible individual accounts could use stablecoins? And based on the current platforms adopting, it's the lower end of that, it's like $1.4 billion. Whereas we walk out on the street and go up to Canal Street, maybe people don't know what stablecoins are. There's a good chance that one of the apps on their phones is allowing them to use those and they might just not know that's what it is. They're just sending money faster.
John Furrier
>> Okay. So, who is your customer? Explain the customer. Who is your customer? How are they engaging?
Katie Perry
>> Yeah, our customers are wide-ranging. We work with Morgan Stanley, interactive brokers, Franklin Templeton, some of the largest, most complicated institutions in the world. We also work with Kalshi. Anything real time where money needs to move quickly and safely. And so, it could really have a bunch of different use cases from brokerages, gaming platforms. And then, to your point, digital marketplaces is a really interesting area to watch as well.
John Furrier
>> So, your differentiation is the speed of payments, that's a key aspect?
Katie Perry
>> Our differentiator, I would say the speed is coming from the underlying blockchain technology. zerohash has been around since 2017, which is a very long time in crypto. I know BitGo has been around since 2013. So, some of these people have been building for a long, long time. And so, you accrue a lot of expertise, a lot of licenses. We were licensed in 50 states, in MiCAR in Europe. And so, having the experience, which used to not be as cool in crypto, when these big institutions come on, they want the trust and they want the security, they want the uptime. And so, going with someone who's been around for almost a decade is a very big differentiator.
John Furrier
>> It's interesting. Hearing the settlement, payments, these are key differentiators for many of the companies we interview. One of the biggest trends on real assets, stocks, you mentioned real estate as well. These are the low-hanging fruit use cases. BitGo's stock went public. Now, it's on Solana as of today. You got X stocks with Kraken. And so, you have now the tokenization of stocks.
Katie Perry
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> What does that mean for the average person? Explain this phenomenon.
Katie Perry
>> Yeah. It's fascinating. So, my prior life, I worked at a brokerage called Public.com, and there, I was doing issuer relations and I got really interested in retail investors and how they interact. I'm actually working on a book right now with Wiley called Ticker Shock, and that's going to talk about how retail investors are changing how companies operate. The second to last chapter is about-
John Furrier
>> What's it called, Ticker?
Katie Perry
>> Ticker Shock.
John Furrier
>> Ticker Shock?
Katie Perry
>> You can't buy it yet, so this isn't a real plug. It's a half plug. But the second to last chapter is all about tokenization. I just emailed my editor last night and I was like, "I got to rewrite some of this because the New York Stock Exchange."
John Furrier
>> Because they had their news.
Katie Perry
>> Yes. So, this is really big for global audience of investors. And I talk about this in the book where the way culture moves globally and the US has always been a cultural leader. Trading stocks is a very American thing to do that now other people in other countries are exposed to it, but sometimes they don't have the infrastructure to do so. Tokenized stocks allow them to do this. It also unlocks 24-7 trading, which is going to make a lot of IR teams potentially nervous, but with more access, you do get more opportunity there.
John Furrier
>> I can't wait to read the book, Ticker Shock, because you mentioned trading is a cultural thing in the US. We were talking before we came on camera about the Super Bowl and online betting. You don't have to name what you're working on if it's confidential, but I do want to bring it up. One of the cultural things that we see going on now is all the betting, the polymarket, Kalish all these areas. You got a prediction market. So, you start to see the culture. So, it's getting worse or better, depends on how you look at it, but we're not done trading.
Katie Perry
>> No.
John Furrier
>> Does ticker shot go into trading stock or Ticker-
Katie Perry
>> Yeah, the book focus is mainly on the retail investor movement, but how that impacts companies. So, how IR teams are structured, how to think about things like... I just walked down the street and saw all the amazing activations for BitGo. An IPO moment is like a product launch now when you're talking about retail investors. It's not just analysts. You got to have merch, you got to have props, you got to have commercials. And so, changes the skills you need within the org. So, focus is on public companies, but as you call out, it's all sorting to blur into people might own part of a tokenized stock, a real stock, part of a real estate tokenized. It's all in the same thing. And many times in the same portfolio, and that's what Robinhood's trying to do, building a super app with all that.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, just so you bring up the IR piece and investor relations. One of the benefits of having decentralized environments is the middlemen go away, okay? So, one of the things we've been talking about on theCUBE, related is that these classic company functions, public relations, analyst relations, investor relations, all had these like groove swings. They had like the playbook.
Katie Perry
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> It seems upside down now. The old rules aren't applying. Not only is it you stay in your lane, it's, "No, no, we have to work together." So, what's your view of this whole roles of how people talk to the public? If everyone's here online-
Katie Perry
>> It's so different....
John Furrier
>> you don't need the old school investor relations strategy. Like you said, it's a product launch.
Katie Perry
>> Yeah. Well, what's interesting is you need both, right? You still are taking the big bank meetings and the analyst meetings and that's a specific type of thing, but then you got to build this whole consumer marketing plan. And what's really complicated, which trips a lot of companies up, is where people are getting their information about stocks is so disparate. They're in LLMs getting information. There's a strategy to show up there. They're in social channels, there's a strategy for that. They're following YouTube videos. And the mix of these channels is different for every company. Palantir huge, huge YouTube creators covering them and big on action.
John Furrier
>> Telegram owns crypto. I mean, 300 million people on Telegram, that's a huge network.
Katie Perry
>> Yeah. Discord. And so, figuring out not just how and what to say, but the distribution plan is really hard for people who are used to focusing on, "Okay, these are the five people that matter. This is what they care about. I'm going to put together my little pamphlet. We're going to have a nice..." It's not like that anymore. And it's scary for a lot of companies, but the companies that are seeing the opportunity are really embracing it. So, Palantir's doing an amazing job at connecting with their retail investors. They have one person and his whole job is that, every day his job is to connect with their retail investors. I think you're going to see more of that in the future.
John Furrier
>> So, if the game is still the same in terms of objective, you want to influence the buyer, or in this case, the retail investor, the tactics have changed. What would be your advice for an IR team or someone trying to go public? Is it an omnichannel? There's too many channels.
Katie Perry
>> It's very omnichannel. I think there's a couple of things. One is you hear a lot, you have to lead with a personality at times. A lot of people say, "How do I get a following like Dr. Karp at Palantir?" You have to lean into who you are as a person, but if you notice the companies are doing it right, Vlad Tenev at Robinhood, Spotify does this. They're doing their earnings call and then they're doing a selfie video that they're putting on Instagram. Walmart even does this now. So, figuring out like a broadcast strategy, you're now a media company as well, which is really hard. And I think the other thing is just understanding that retail investors have matured. So, for the book, I actually did some research looking into why people follow companies or like their leadership. Number one was trust and a belief in their credibility and their skills. The so-called cool factor, "Oh, I like this person. They wear a leather jacket," way down at the end of the list. So, people might think Jensen Huang is a cool guy-
John Furrier
>> I was going to say Jensen Huang, of course....
Katie Perry
>> but he happens to also have a lot of street credibility in what he does.
John Furrier
>> And mojo.
Katie Perry
>> And so, I think a big opportunity for these companies is being a thought leader and helping educate, whether it's semiconductors or some of these healthcare stocks. Helping educate people about the space in a way that's compelling and interesting and gaining traction that way.
John Furrier
>> It's interesting. Jensen Huang, I've interviewed him and I've been on many times. I've spoken to him many times and the company. He's original. He never has the same canned answer.
Katie Perry
>> Oh, wow.
John Furrier
>> He answers every question, whether on a one-on-one or an analyst group meeting, with an original answer. So, he's original, he's authentic and he's trusted. So, he's like checked those three key areas-
Katie Perry
>> Yeah, I'm sure his comms team loves that. He's mixing up the talking points every time. They love that.
John Furrier
>> They are scared. They try to keep me away from him. I ask the tough questions. Okay. So, I've gone on the book tangent here. I love the book. What was the motivation for the book?
Katie Perry
>> So, I just became fascinated with all this. My first job in finance was at Public and I was there during the GameStop wave. And so, I started in 2019, was there through 2020 and 2021, and it was a community-based app. So, just seeing, hearing the stories and just living it. My dad taught me how to invest when I was 18. I had friends my age that were doing very well in sales and just putting their commission checks in a bank account because trading wasn't something that was commonplace among certain types of people.
John Furrier
>> It wasn't like you had school and training, unless you had someone mentor you.
Katie Perry
>> Yeah, and it all changed. To your point about trading is a part of culture and now it's more things, but back in 2021, stock trading, I had group chats with my girlfriends talking about cosmetics brands they were investing in. This kind of thing never happened before and I became fascinated by it. And my background's in marketing, and so I began to think about, "Wow, marketing's going to play a very interesting role in this future where you're talking to individual human beings who are consumers and investors, and not just analysts."
John Furrier
>> Yeah. Well, you're awesome. I think you're right on it. I think the challenge is get as much content out there in the voice of the brand, the people... The people are the brand.
Katie Perry
>> Yeah, within the regulatory guidelines, which is the other challenge, right? You got quiet periods. The internet doesn't know what a quiet period is, right? Reddit doesn't care.
John Furrier
>> If you have a micro community of hundreds of millions of people, they're not quiet.
Katie Perry
>> Yeah, especially 24-7 then.
John Furrier
>> You feed everyone all the food and then go quiet, let them have the content.
Katie Perry
>> I know. There's a lot of-
John Furrier
>> Ways to get around that.
Katie Perry
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> I shouldn't have said that. Maybe I should take that back. It doesn't matter. No, this is the strategy. I mean, content is not yesterday's content strategy, but you could actually leverage the asset of everyone on... And with AI coming, it just gets better.
Katie Perry
>> And going back to crypto where we started, a lot of this is inspired by the early crypto communities, which is so interesting to now see them converge. When I talk to people who have been in the community for a while, whether it's Bitcoin, they're like, "I used to go to conferences and people were in costumes. Now, everyone's in suits." And that's been the shift and it's come full circle with both sides inspiring and helping the other along the way.
John Furrier
>> I still remember when we used to give Bitcoin away to people just to get them hooked on it. Like, "Here's a Bitcoin-"
Katie Perry
>> That never happened to me.
John Furrier
>> This is like 2014. Like, "Here's a Bitcoin."
Katie Perry
>> Wow. Yeah.
John Furrier
>> But I think the community angle's great. Talk about how that affects you guys because I think word of mouth used to be the buzzword, but now it's simply community.
Katie Perry
>> Sure.
John Furrier
>> Communal activities is about relationships. How are you guys seeing community play in zerohash?
Katie Perry
>> Yeah. It's interesting because zerohash, we're B2B, we're the infrastructure, so we're underlying, but still, end consumers... We serve about seven million end users are doing something with crypto or stablecoins using zerohash. And so, we do have the B2B2C piece. And so, for us, it's just about trust, reliability, uptime. It's not about necessarily being cool or doing the best stunt or having a huge billboard in Times Square that's consumer facing. It's like, "Does the product say it's going to do what it does? Does it work? Is it regulated? Is it safe?" And that's to the credit of our tech and engineering team.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, you bring up a good point. I remember when I first started covering AWS when it just started, Andy Jassy was an unknown executive. Now, he's the CEO of Amazon. I've been here many times, but it was one comment that stood out that I think relates to what you just said is in the early days of AWS, they were very frugal. They didn't have the swag. Google would give out great swag by the way. And they were always criticized. And his view was, "Our products were infrastructure. If we create value, that gets around fast." So, the community for them was product value.
Katie Perry
>> Yeah, and the stronger the product is, the more invisible it is, which is an interesting dynamic for a marketer. But you shouldn't really know, especially with stablecoins, you should just think, "My money's getting there faster." You shouldn't think about all this. And so, part of what we do is abstract away that complexity, which it's an interesting challenge for a marketer because you want to talk about all the things we're doing behind the scenes.
John Furrier
>> And what they do, I thought was clever, I think you guys are in the same boat, is that their customers did the talking. So, their confab, their event, their annual event, which started out small, 6,000 people, that was the marketing. And everyone was like, "I want the better mousetrap because it's so early in the growth," very similar to where you guys are at.
Katie Perry
>> Yeah. And I think we're in the era of boring crypto, right? zerohash has been around almost a decade, amazing marquee clients. Some people haven't heard of us yet. And so, my job is to help-
John Furrier
>> We'll help to get the word out. Where can they learn more? Put a plug in for the company.
Katie Perry
>> Sure.
John Furrier
>> What are you guys working on? What's the key thing? Get it out there.
Katie Perry
>> So, basically any regulated company that wants to trade, transact, tokenize, build with crypto, we've been around for a while, we do it for some of the most complicated companies in the world, as well as some of the fastest-moving companies in the world. It's a great team with and a great culture. You can learn more about us at zerohash.com. And we just put out a 50-page report book on stablecoins. If you're into charts and data, there's a lot there for you to geek out on.
John Furrier
>> And the most important benefit of stablecoins is what?
Katie Perry
>> I'd say the speed at which money can move in a secure fashion without the friction. It's just a new system of rails that money can move on. And most people will never have to worry about the blockchain technology underlying it.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, invisible.
Katie Perry
>> It'll be built in.
John Furrier
>> And boring can be good and lucrative. Katie Perry is here on theCUBE. Part of our Crypto Trailblazers and our BitGo IPO coverage as crypto continues to go mainstream, things that go invisible that we all want to go away, but the ease of use comes to payments. When you're doing a simple transaction and having it reliable and distributed is the key. Thanks for watching. I'm your host, John Furrier.
John Furrier