Charge it! Putting Crypto on Debit Cards Featuring Brice Berdah of Monolith🎙️ — The DeFi Podcast Episode #6
Hey DeFi’ers,
This week’s episode of The DeFi Podcast features Brice Berdah of Monolith. Monolith is a decentralized banking alternative offering a non-custodial crypto debit card.
In this episode, Brice explains how crypto debit cards make it easier to use cryptocurrency for payments, describes what makes Monolith’s non-custodial solution unique, and explains the role of crypto debit cards in accelerating the adoption of cryptocurrency.
Kerman Kohli: [00:00:00]
Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of The DeFi Podcast. Today we have Brice from Monolith, who’s their Head of Community. Brice, can you briefly explain what crypto debit cards are and why they’re useful?
Brice Berdah: [00:00:14]
Of course. So, hi Kerman and thanks for having me around.
So, one thing that is very critical with crypto debit cards is - essentially, if you look at how many markets are accepting cryptos worldwide right now, you have a figure in the hundreds hundred thousand. So, you know, you go to London or around Paris or whatever city andtry to buy your coffee with Bitcoin or whatever cryptocurrency: Wow! Good luck.
You know, you’re going to have to look specifically online. Coffee accepting Bitcoin and so on. So essentially my point being you cannot spend your crypto as freely and as easily as you need to read. No. And if you want crypto to be a currency, we need to be able to do things with this currency.
And so crypto debit cards are solving this issue: how do you make your cryptocurrency usable in the world right now? Like today, get millions of users worldwide and not 10 years from now when mainstream adoption happens.
Kerman Kohli: [00:01:18]
Of course. Of course. That’s a good overview and, I guess, how does Monolith work underneath the hood to integrate with the traditional point-of-sale systems to kind of creating a new form of payment system, and you’re bridging it with the traditional mainstream.
Brice Berdah: [00:01:36]
So with Monolith we had…the goal of a project is to solve two main issues. Essentially the first one being making crypto usable, spendable with the Smart Card. But the other one it comes with is securing the crypto you’re going to use with this card.
So we have two core parts of the project essentially the first being and you see him contract it. So I use a smart contract to store the user spends and it allows the user to implement a logic as to how the money can move around and essentially a user can replicate something similar to what a bank would offer, you know, limit how much money would move from his wallet every day, all to find a white list of people that can assist me and things like that.
I know it’s fuzzy — this making crypto usable part — but when we have this arena is going see it. But this visa card — So it’s essentially. So he’s got his bed with your your mother, his contract wanted you can you can load it up into. And it won’t. Just like a regular visa card. You can use contactless. You can works with GooglePay. Know you can use it on mine. Of course. I mean, you can use it all across the globe, too. Right. So, you know, I’m going to DevCon really soon and this is gonna be my main way of spending, I guess, when I really there.
Kerman Kohli: [00:03:07]
It’s really, really cool. And I guess, like, what are some other approaches to crypto debit cards seen in the industry? And why is Monoliths choosing the path that they’ve chosen?
Brice Berdah: [00:03:18]
Yeah, it’s quite a crowded space. So it’s all about, I don’t know, 20…20, 30 card providers or over and, you know, new ones popping out all the time but I think the key about here is there is only one that is a non-custodial wallet tied to your credit card and I think that’s really critical because, you know, essentially it’s done to the point of who you’re willing to trust with your money.
We would love for our users to trust us but they don’t even need to — and that’s the beauty of what we do, the service. We could disappear tomorrow. The money isn’t, they’re going to be able to recover it. Someone could try to attack us. They won’t have access to the user’s money because he uses money. Never left the phone, never left their wallet. They are the only ones who have access to their private key.
And think this is video critical difference because is all services grow not having access to use a spoon. Also, more than just a question of pure, you know, oh, I’m going to lose my money if the service provider is happy or not. It’s also if the service provider, the card service provider has access to the user spends, then they can start doing things that are kind of fractional reserve essentially. You know, is what guarantee do you have that we indeed have one ETH for ETH the users have.
Kerman Kohli: [00:04:41]
Yeah, completely. No, that’s a really interesting point that I hadn’t thought about. So you guys definitely couldn’t be running a fractional reserve banking scheme in the back-end.
Brice Berdah: [00:04:51]
It’s technically impossible for us. And I think that’s the key difference. It’s going to be more and more apparent how important this is as the industry grows.
Brice Berdah: [00:05:06]
Most of the other approaches running fractional reserve banking schemes or any names that out and I don’t want to get into this.
I’m just saying it’s a possibility — as soon as there is custody of users' funds. This is technically impossible with a non-custodial wallet.
Kerman Kohli: [00:05:27]
Sure, sure, sure. And I guess, when can people around the world use what you have and what’s next on your roadmap?
Brice Berdah: [00:05:36]
So it’s been already live since October and we started on [inaudible] so essentially anybody living in Europe can order a card right now to just go have an iPhone. They go on the offer. Star Search was a model is what it is. Our Android, we’re running [inaudible] of the app right now.
You can reach out to us and we can figure out something that they know and then they would be able to order the costs for the up. Of course, there is KYC because, you know, it’s Gateway Condorcet Gateway but yeah, it takes about 10 days from you ordering your own wallet, going through the KYC, ordering the card and then getting the card and being able to do your own spending.
Kerman Kohli: [00:06:21]
Perfect. Yeah.
Brice Berdah: [00:06:27]
And the card, again, I want to stress he said because I don’t know, some people don’t care about htis but he county is shipping to any European resident and works worldwide, so when I go to go to Japan, which is not in Europe. I’m going to use my Monolith card.
Kerman Kohli: [00:06:38]
I one of those really, really cool. And I guess, like, why did you or say the founders choose to solve this problem in particular?
Brice Berdah: [00:06:50]
So I think the gist here is essentially — with crypto debit cards, you go from a hundred thousand merchants worldwide accepting crypto to 45, 50 million and you enable really living your life on crypto.
So for instance, for me, I’m from Paris. I’m not working in London. I don’t have a bank account in the U.K. I don’t have an immediate bank account. I have my card and essentially, I’m living my life fully on crypto. My travel, all seeing huge coffee drinks. All of this is paid as we speak here. And we saw a whisky and see and a few of the talking.
Kerman Kohli: [00:07:37]
So you’re a full crypto digital nomad?
Brice Berdah: [00:07:40]
Yeah. In London, I still have some expenses in Paris that are on my regular bank account, but I’m looking forward to about more.
Kerman Kohli: [00:07:51]
That’s really cool. I mean, I guess, like, is there anything that I haven’t asked about Monolith or yourself that you’d like to add and share to the audience?
Brice Berdah: [00:08:00]
Well, I guess, you know, we could dive a little bit more into what’s coming next, because I think we have quite a few interesting things around the corner, so I don’t know how familiar your audience is with DeFi and what’s happening in that scene was and all of the servicesbut this is something we’re looking closely at and walking to into great with the car.
Well, essentially, it would be able to lend money to, you know, decentralization and come on and make some interest on the stablecoin. But at the same time, being able to spend them on the card at any time.
So I’m pretty excited about this because as soon as this goes out, we become the bank or the bank affinity with the most interesting rate there is by a very wide margin, you know, because I think the current APR on Compound is around 7%. I haven’t checked in a few weeks. I don’t know about you, but my French banks are giving me 0.5% on their savings account. So that’s that’s 16 times the rate of my French bank. Yeah. And I mean, I know some banks are more in a 1-2% range.
For instance, Monza in the UK you see up 1.5% on, which wants to be like five times over Lonzo in terms of one way or two to provide or userspace. So I think that’s something that’s going to rbd.
You know, I think essentially my point was that is so far we’ve been trying to replicate a banking experience on crypto and I think we reach a level where we’re very close to parity. When we have those DEFI company integrations, it’s on: we would go way above parity. We just we offer something that doesn’t exist in the regular banking world.
Kerman Kohli: [00:09:43]
Exactly. That might explain our interest. Yeah. You know, fully that that’s really, really cool. So if I guess. Was there anything else or is that about it on your end?
Brice Berdah: [00:09:55]
No, I guess I guess for me. Thanks for having me around. And yeah. If you.
Brice Berdah: [00:10:00]
Are interested in what we offer, we can just go in the store and get them on ice up. Check out our Web site and let us know what they think.
Kerman Kohli: [00:10:07]
Perfect. I’ll include links to Monolith in the descriptions. They can check out your product in your community and take it from there. Thanks for your time. It was great having you today.
Brice Berdah: [00:10:21]
Thanks, Kerman.
