Bentzi Rabi from Utila on MPC wallets for digital assets operations

[00:00:00] Umar: Welcome to episode 69. An episode which I recorded at the Paris Blockchain Week in April of this year. I usually record my podcasts from the comfort of my home, so this was a novel experience for me. Thanks to Cryptoworth, who invited me at their booth. If you need help with the bookkeeping of your crypto transactions from more than a thousand connection sources, including wallets, exchanges, custodians, DeFi protocols, be sure to check them out at Cryptoworth.com and benefit from a one month free trial. Next, you'll be hearing me speaking to Bentzi Rabi from Utila on using MPC wallets for digital assets. Enjoy.

[00:00:41] Umar: Good morning, today. I'm joined by Bentzi Rabi, the CEO and founder of Utila, an enterprise grade solution for companies managing digital assets. So for this conversation today, I'll speak to Bentzi about some of the challenges that Web3 teams have when they manage digital assets. What are the differences between choosing an MPC wallet and a multisig wallet?

[00:01:03] Umar: How to get started with Utila? How companies today are using Utila for their treasury management to move funds and what are some of the integrations that they have? And lastly, I'm going to be asking Bentzi about how does he see mainstream adoption happening in the upcoming months? So Bentzi, welcome here.

[00:01:23] Umar: The last time we met in July, 2023 at ETHcc, you had just launched. Ever since you launched then, you've been through a remarkable growth of recording $3billion in crypto transactions in just six months. You've also just closed a seed round financing of $11.5 million. I want to ask you, are you surprised by the growth you experienced and what, in your opinion, were the main challenges that web3 teams were facing that you've been able to solve?

[00:01:53] Bentzi: Good morning, Umar. Nice to see you again. Yeah, so it feels like yesterday, right? When we met here in Paris on the boat. The event that we hosted and I think that I'm not surprised to be honest. I think that from the very beginning of Utila, we were bullish on the need of , you know, seamless operational wallets. MPCs in the end of the day, just the key management system that is laying down, it's a good branding, but in the end of the day, operational wallets, I think the main challenge that we saw there, that there wasn't any solution that is seamless in the way of operation, right?

[00:02:26] Bentzi: Like solutions were mostly built for very large organizations or for, very small teams, but there is nothing in the middle. And when you think about it, the challenges that a lot of organizations are facing today, especially around payments, tokenization, it's how you do security on one end, but how you do it also in an efficient and easy way on the other end.

[00:02:48] Bentzi: And I think that it was secure or easy. But we are trying to bring the most of the things to the same plate. On another note, I think that the main institutional wallets were mostly focused around trading. That was like the main use case. Trading is, maybe the biggest use case in crypto so far, but I do believe that the next few years, the main use case will shift into payments and tokenization.

[00:03:15] Bentzi: And we already see the growing demand there, and that's where we are trying to position ourselves at Utila. Even if you're like a trading solution, when you are trying to move into payments you start understanding that actually you need to do a lot of changes. And changing cryptography, changing the wallet is not an easy mission.

[00:03:33] Bentzi: If you build Utila from day one, for these kind of things, it will be much easier in order to enter this space from this vector, yeah.

[00:03:40] Umar: A lot of teams I speak to, whenever they start to interact with digital assets, the decision they have to make is, what do I choose, an MPC wallet or a multisig? 

[00:03:51] Umar: Of course, there would be factors around the chains they are on. Maybe the price, the features of the product. So just to give the listeners a very quick refresher about what multisig and MPC are. So very briefly multisig wallets, they would require multiple private keys to sign a single transaction.

[00:04:11] Umar: Compared to an MPC wallet that would usually split the wallet's private key into multiple parties. So each type of wallet, they have their own way of storing and managing private keys, but for someone starting out, what would you say are the pros and cons of MPC versus multisig? 

[00:04:30] Bentzi: Sure, so I think that everything started with multisig.

[00:04:33] Bentzi: That's like the basics, right? And I think the good thing about multisig is that it's proven to work. This is something that was there for most of the years. And also you don't rely on like a centralized entity in a way. And I would say mostly for early adopters, for the degens in a way, I would say that might be like the go to solution today.

[00:04:54] Bentzi: Because, in crypto, there are many people who just want everything decentralized. Till the end and usually MPC providers they are not decentralized. The first thing I would say is that our kind of solution fits more organizations who care more about security, customer support more than decentralization.

[00:05:14] Bentzi: So for custody, they actually prefer to get a bit out of the basic idea of crypto. But besides that, I would say that the main advantages of MPC, they come first of all, by taking the key management system off chain, okay. By making it we bring a much better flexibility to the solution because in the end of the day, a multisig is a mechanism that sits on chain.

[00:05:37] Bentzi: Which makes it very difficult to create flexible user flows around it. Okay, when it comes to MPC's, doing the cryptography off chain allows us, first of all to be able to connect to more ecosystems easily. 

[00:05:50] Bentzi: When crypto started, it was Bitcoin, then ETH. Today, it's a way bigger world. You have many different ecosystems and especially when it comes to payments, trading, tokenization. I think trading is a good case. All the time people are looking for the next big thing, right? Like Solana, like Cosmos, et cetera. And for them, MPC is like the only solution that can also actually support them all. While still providing institutional grade security, right? Besides that, I would say that MPC also brings more flexibility, like the ability to set advanced policies. It removes the need of every team member to now manage and all the key, et cetera. And have only policies, which are like M out of N, you know, 

[00:06:28] Bentzi: In MPC, you can make it much more customizable. You can set limits daily, weekly. Even a better user experience than your own bank account or corporate spend management solution. That's regarding that. Besides that, there are like another pains when it comes to multisig wallets. Especially when it comes to, let's say payments where you need to deploy a lot of wallets, imagine that you are like a large organization that received crypto payments from, multiple users for attribution many times or for privacy, you will not use like one treasury.

[00:06:59] Bentzi: You will actually prefer to use many wallets just to understand who is paying you, or if you do a payment, you will prefer to use a different wallet for each payment that no one can actually track how much you pay to others. And I think that with Multisig it can be very expensive when it comes to gas fees, et cetera, because in the end of the day, you need to deploy like a new smart contract for every wallet, et cetera.

[00:07:21] Bentzi: An MPC is actually removing this need. In a way, MPC can also save you costs, especially as you scale. 

[00:07:28] Umar: I was looking at the day of this recording, the AUM and ERC20 tokens tokens stored on Safe is $60.6 billion, approximately. Now, a lot of people I speak to in this space, use Safe. It's become the gold standard for multisig wallets.

[00:07:42] Umar: You've just touched on many points, why an MPC wallet is more customizable and the features it offers. For example, some of the pain points of using Safe is let's say I'm the signer of a specific wallet and I'm managing, let's say a team of finance people. One of the constraints is that as the signer, I have to be the person creating the transaction, but most of the time it would be maybe the CFO of the company, which is someone who is pretty busy.

[00:08:07] Umar: So you cannot really have someone else from the team create that. Also sometimes you might have more urgent transactions that you quickly need to sign and the UX right now is not really intuitive for that. Those are some of the recurring pain points I hear people saying when they use a Gnosis Safe alone.

[00:08:23] Umar: If you had to summarize everything that you just said to a Gnosis Safe user, why should they consider switching to maybe an MPC wallet? 

[00:08:31] Umar: What would you say? 

[00:08:33] Bentzi: Yes, I would say first of all is the amount of features that, we bring, that are missing. Like again, Safe is a very limited solution in the end of the day.

[00:08:42] Bentzi: It works, it's simple but it's not sophisticated, right? I would say it can be maybe a good solution for a very small treasury, maybe for a very small organization, but I think especially as you scale you want, some people to be able to access your wallets and, to be able just to view stuff or just to initiate stuff, but not to sign stuff.

[00:09:01] Bentzi: And you want to create different Quorums for different amounts let's say up to $50,000, you want like maybe two approvers from some group but more than that, you need another person with the CFO, for example, to approve it. So as you advance and you want to create more customized rules, I would say that's a good place to start maybe considering moving to an MPC solution when you are going multi chain, Safe.

[00:09:24] Bentzi: In the end of the day, it's like more EVM-ish. If you do things around Solana, Bitcoin, Tron, Stellar, Cosmos, you will need probably other wallets and then your operation will be very complicated. Now you need to manage multiple private keys. You need to deploy multiple smart contracts.

[00:09:41] Bentzi: You need to manage all of it. Utila provides you something where you can manage great wallets in a click under one umbrella. And besides that, we are all the time adding features so you can interact easily with DeFi from Utila, right? Some treasuries, they are pretty active in DeFi and are getting some yield.

[00:09:57] Bentzi: You can do staking, you can connect exchange accounts. You can do on and off ramps. You can do batch payments, recurring payments. So we are building like a much more robust systems. And I think especially if you are scaling your operations, you are bringing more team members, you have more money, I think that's the right time for you to be able to consider an MPC solution and in the end of the day Safe, is a cheap solution, right?

[00:10:23] Bentzi: So for institutional grade provider, you do need to pay. But in the end of the day, in Utila, we also put a lot of focus on building packages that are also good enough for like small teams. And we are looking forward to onboarding them and then grow with them as they scale. So I would say that Utila is an affordable solution, but again, it's more expensive then Safe.

[00:10:47] Bentzi: But as I said, as a part of the reason that we built Utila is to make enterprise grade wallets more accessible, more seamless, and a part of it is pricing models. So we also have packages that are very good for small teams who are just looking now to move to an MPC provider and start from there. And yeah, so it shouldn't be an issue, I would say, if you start scaling your operations. 

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[00:12:40] Umar: Okay, let's speak a little bit more about Utila. You've already mentioned some of its features. We'll speak about affordability in a bit. But, I want you to provide the listeners with a very practical walkthrough of how they would manage transactions on Utila. So let's say, I've already moved my funds to Utila and now I want to move the funds out.

[00:13:01] Umar: What would be that user experience like? And earlier you mentioned a word called Quorum. Could you please explain what that means? 

[00:13:09] Bentzi: Yeah, sure. I will talk about two use cases about payments. Okay, one use case is let's say I am a CFO, Director of Finance, managing a treasury. By the way, it shouldn't be necessarily only like a web3 company.

[00:13:21] Bentzi: We do have some customers who are just web2 businesses and are utilizing crypto for payments, mostly stablecoins actually. So the user experience will be first of all, setting a utility account is five minutes. That's all like people are amazed by the ease of onboarding. It just, following a link, completing a few steps and that's all.

[00:13:39] Bentzi: And then basically what you have, you get a workspace where you can manage multiple wallets. So you can add by clicking a wallet. And then you can also connect this wallet. A wallet can be connected to multiple addresses or to multiple blockchains. You can connect one wallet to multiple EVMs, like Solana and Tron and Bitcoin, and then all the EVMs, they will have one mutual address, Solana will have a different one, etc.

[00:14:03] Bentzi: And then you can start adding team members, okay? So you can add some members who are just viewers. For example, if you're like an auditor, accountant that just need to view or just some, LP in your fund or something. This will be a viewer. So this person can log in into the system. By the way, the logging is also by MFA.

[00:14:23] Bentzi: So it's Google, but also a biometric or passkey, et cetera. You can also bring a YubiKey. So we put a lot on security, right? You can add a signer, like a person who can like initiate some transactions and you can add admins. Once you have users and you have wallets, you can whitelist addresses via our whitelisting mechanism, which basically allows you to sign basically to say, okay, this address belongs to Umar, and the next time I'm doing a transaction to Umar, then I just don't need to type it, right?

[00:14:52] Bentzi: And this can be also relevant for interacting with DeFi, because sometimes you want to whitelist a smart contract, like an address, and create a rule that the people in the team can only interact with this group of addresses. So when it comes to Quorum when it comes to security there are two things that we do. First is the key management via the MPC, right? This is already, we discussed when you create a wallet. So it's secured by our MPC. The second layer is the policy engine. Okay. So for teams managing crypto, it's very important to make sure that they have the rules on how they transact. Same like a bank account, right?

[00:15:29] Bentzi: They want to make sure that if someone is trying to do a transaction, there is a Quorum, like a group of people in the organization that needs to approve this transaction in order to happen. Because of security, right? To make sure that's the right amount to the right address, et cetera. But they want also to have different quorums, like different groups for different transactions.

[00:15:47] Bentzi: If it's a very small transaction, maybe they don't want anyone to approve it, then that's okay. But if it's a very big transaction, they want even the CEO to approve it. So in Utila, they can actually customize rules, and these rules, not necessarily only on the value of the transfer, it can be based on multiple filters that we build.

[00:16:05] Bentzi: So it can be based on from which wallet they do the transaction, on which blockchain, for which assets. So it can be even very specific. You can also set limits in Utila. So you can say this user or anyone belongs to this group of users can do up to this amount per day or per week or per transaction or per month.

[00:16:24] Bentzi: Yeah. You can say if they do less than 50 dollars, so no one needs to approve. So that's the policy engine. Some of our customers, they create only one policy, which is like any transaction, you need at least two or three people from this group. And that's all, no matter what's the size. Usually it's like smaller teams, but as they scale, as they grow, so they will have like more rules.

[00:16:46] Bentzi: And they will also be able to create different workspaces for different departments, okay? They might have a department with a few employees, and they will create a workspace with wallets for them. And they might have a nostro account with trading activities, and they will create a workspace for there, and these workspaces will be also segregated from the others, etc.

[00:17:04] Bentzi: It's a very flexible solution which allows you to control your crypto operations. 

[00:17:08] Umar: That's beautiful. So you can really, for the listeners, use Utila as your bank account. It reminds me when I was an accountant. So let's say we would have a signatory A and signatory B, a signatory B would only be able to sign transactions, let's say less than 10k, between 10 to a 100k you could have one signatory B and one signatory A and let's say above a 100k you'd have two signatory A.

[00:17:32] Umar: So this is something exactly that you could implement with Utila and now with crypto on different chains. 

[00:17:39] Bentzi: Now the second use case is not managing a treasury, but also receiving crypto payments from multiple payers.

[00:17:46] Bentzi: Okay, so it's like more like a Paymaster use case. We start to see more and more PSP merchants, non web3 businesses that start to receive crypto payments and there the need will be mostly about creating multiple wallets. And this is actually the main challenge of privacy if we talk about it one moment.

[00:18:04] Bentzi: So when it comes to crypto, the main benefits are like the ease of use, the fast, right? But the main disadvantage is actually privacy. And if you think about privacy and payments, so first of all, it means that if you do payments you will probably need actually to maintain multiple wallets because if you do all your payments from one wallet, then everyone that you are paying to will be able to track how much you pay to others.

[00:18:28] Bentzi: For many treasuries, it's a big issue. In Utila, you can actually easily create like multiple wallets for different receivers and then just tap these wallets by crypto and that's all, right? So no one can really understand how much you pay to others. And by the ability to create them like by one click under one place it's already like a huge improvement for their life.

[00:18:50] Bentzi: Besides that, if you receive crypto, so imagine that now you need to receive crypto for 100 people. Okay. So in many cases, you will need to create unique addresses for every payer. Because that's the way for you to understand if this person is paying you, right? If it will be to the same address, and one other people are paying to the same address, you will not necessarily know who is paying you and who not, right?

[00:19:14] Bentzi: Imagine that you are receiving money to the same account, but everything is coming from anonymous wallet, so it will be very difficult to attribute this payment. So this is why usually in payments, organizations, they need to create like unique addresses for every payee. And then they will get the money there, but then they will also need to move it to some internal treasury because in the end of the day, they need to run their operations for one main wallet.

[00:19:39] Bentzi: So when it comes to one challenge, besides of creating multiple addresses, which can be done easily by Utila, by the way, is how you manage gas. And Gas is a big thing also when it comes to payments, because for every wallet now that received the payment, you need to tap gas manually, right?

[00:19:58] Bentzi: In order to be able to move the funds from there to your main treasury. It's a big issue. Think about how operationally it's becoming complicated for you, if you're getting payments, even from 20 people, right. Now you need tap gas to any address that you created for any of these payees in order to move the funds from this wallet to the main treasury.

[00:20:18] Bentzi: So in Utila, we just set it like gas stations. Imagine there is like an automatic wallet that pays the gas for multiple wallets. So you don't need to tap them with gas and then you can move seamlessly the funds into your main treasury. So that's just regarding this use case.

[00:20:34] Umar: Next, I want to speak about your treasury management solution. We can touch on the different features you offer there, but could you provide us an overview because I've I understand you also provide Fiat on and off ramps.

[00:20:48] Umar: We spoke about batch payment, but there's also cross chain transfers and different automations available. Could you guide us through those? 

[00:20:55] Bentzi: Yeah, sure! I would say that the main features today will be besides the ability to create wallets easily, manage users roles, transaction policy, etc. It's connectivity to DeFi which is a big thing. The ability to interact with smart contracts that can get you, tokenized bills staking, yield farming, et cetera.

[00:21:17] Bentzi: The ability to connect exchange accounts. Some of our customers, they also manage, an account in a Binance, in Kraken, in OKX, right? And all the time they need to track how much they have there. They need to move funds from the wallet to the exchange. They need to do withdrawals from the exchange.

[00:21:33] Bentzi: They need to move funds between exchanges. Actually in Utila, we have a very cool feature where you can import your API keys from the exchange. You can view the assets, but you can also withdraw funds from the exchange directly from the Utila platform. So you don't need to log into the exchange. You can view all your funds in the exchange and soon you will also be able to move funds between different exchanges.

[00:21:53] Bentzi: This is not necessarily relevant only to treasuries, but mostly for trading, which are also some of our customers. 

[00:21:59] Bentzi: Regarding on and off ramps, so we have a cool feature where you can onboard any bank account in the US and Europe and more geographies to come. And then you can easily off ramp any stable coin from your Utila wallet into your bank account.

[00:22:16] Bentzi: So imagine that you have 200 USDC. You want to move them to your bank account. You got them as a payment for someone, but in the end of the day, you need to pay your bills in Fiat. So by click, you can actually move your funds to your bank account and see them as US dollars there. Okay. You can also on ramp to Utila easily.

[00:22:33] Bentzi: So via the platform, you can decide that you want to on ramp 10k dollars and then you are getting the banking details of our partner where you move your funds to and then you will see them as a, stable coin set to pick on which blockchain on the Utila wallet.

[00:22:49] Bentzi: So we provide a seamless on and off ramp and we remove the need from you to now work with an OTC or like an exchange, move the funds there and then move it like to your bank or to your wallet. So we are removing all of that. Of course, we do it like big customers and they already have a Circle mint account and they get one to one on that on something.

[00:23:10] Bentzi: So for them they might, just use that. But for many customers, especially treasuries, this on and off ramp directly from the wallet is a big feature. 

[00:23:19] Umar: Yeah, I'm really impressed by actually all the features that you have. I think the one you mentioned by having a gas wallet and you wouldn't have to fund gas to every wallet.

[00:23:28] Umar: It's a very attractive UX and it is a pain point that I know because I have a lot of wallets to manage and I know it's a pain point for a lot of Web3 teams. Now, you mentioned some of the integrations, but I want to speak more about other integrations that you have.

[00:23:42] Umar: I remember you had an integration and you also currently have one with Request Finance. I believe it would work when someone perhaps would make a payment on Utila and they would be able to attach the invoice from Request Finance to that payment. What are some of the other integrations that you have?

[00:23:59] Bentzi: 

[00:24:00] Bentzi: In the end of the day, our ability is to create an ecosystem around Utila, where you can easily plug in your favorite web3 finance tools. Request is one of our early integrations and , we just published a few weeks ago, customer story of Prospera. It's an amazing project by by Balaji, by some other folks in Honduras, actually in an island next to Utila, that there is an island called Utila in Honduras.

[00:24:23] Bentzi: And they are using like request.finance next to Utila, right? So yeah, as you say, the use case there is usually CFOs who are generating invoices or need to pay invoices or Request will help in this side. And seamlessly you can connect it to your Utila wallet and pay bills, pay invoices from Utila Wallet or initiate new invoices that are connected to your Utila wallet addresses.

[00:24:48] Bentzi: And other things that we are integrating too, so it's like web3 accounting solutions almost every web3 company, they have accounting challenges. There is a growing ecosystem of solutions there. We work with Integral, TRES Finance we have close relationships with Cryptoworth, Cryptio. We are trying to be Switzerland in a way and to be able to support everyone there and so if you have a solution you can just plug it in. The same we do for AML and KYT we do have integration to chain analysis credit cards from the crypto they have in Utila.

[00:25:20] Bentzi: So imagine you will be able to issue a credit card, which is backed by some of the USDC that you hold in Utila. And then you will be able to buy a ticket for Paris Blockchain Week with this credit card or buy a printer or a computer, right? We are also looking at this kind of solutions. Yeah, I would say that's a good summary, but all the time we are looking for what's the next thing that let's say a CFO or a finance person is looking in terms of like their stack, right?

[00:25:45] Bentzi: So they have the wallet, they have the accounting, they have the invoicing. Some of them they need like the KYT AML, some of them they need a travel rule. So we're all the time looking to expand our integrations. 

[00:25:55] Umar: Wow, beautiful. I also want to touch on your positioning against other MPC providers. It is quite a competitive market.

[00:26:03] Umar: The leader, today is Fireblocks, they process more than $4 trillion in transactions. They've been around for a very long time, of course, but often times the recurring complaint from Fireblocks is that it's very expensive to use a Fireblocks wallet. So Utila is an emerging player, you've been quite impressive with your growth.

[00:26:22] Umar: There's a lot of features that makes Web3 accounting and operations less painful. How would you say today the product differentiates with its competitors and how much is pricing and affordability a key factor? 

[00:26:37] Bentzi: Yeah. So first of all, I think that Fireblocks did an amazing job. As an Israeli living in a very small country going to crypto events and everyone is you know, Fireblocks is already like a standard, like an IBM for me in a way it's exciting to see that an Israeli company managed to do so big impact in the crypto world, right?

[00:26:56] Bentzi: Yeah. But I think that besides that there are still some challenges and there is need for new solutions, especially I would say around user experience. I think that Fireblocks builds something very good. Fireblocks, Copper maybe should also put on the same area that is very good for maybe large trading firms.

[00:27:12] Bentzi: But when it comes to builders that needs a wallet behind, when it comes to smaller organizations, who just want to start. And start scaling after that. So I think that for them, there is nothing good in the market. And this is what we are trying to do, to build things in a more seamless way to put a lot of effort on fast onboarding, intuitive user experience.

[00:27:32] Bentzi: Actually also the ability to move assets to add the asset support first, crypto world is very dynamic. All the time, there are new ecosystems. I think that Fireblocks operate in a way. They are big, they have a lot of customers. And it's the nature of the market that when you are big, it's difficult for you to be able to support new needs.

[00:27:50] Bentzi: When it comes to gas optimizations, when it comes to add new asset support, et cetera. So this is like another place where we are trying to win. Taking everything that I said to the side, I do think that Fireblocks, Copper, other MPC providers, they were built mostly on the trading world.

[00:28:10] Bentzi: I do think there are like a lot of things that are common in trading and payments, but there are also many things that are uncommon in trading and payments, right? Like in trading, it's a lot of fund, to which exchanges you integrate, off exchange trading, these kind of things, building the network, ability to settle, etc.

[00:28:28] Bentzi: Actually, things that we already build as we go, we already have like our own like network in Utila. But I think when it comes to payments you need like much more focus on really good API, the ability to create multiple wallets easily, the ability to manage gas easily on multiple blockchains, the ability to sweep easily from multiple wallets as I saw for payments like my main treasury and think about gas, think about energy in Tron.

[00:28:56] Bentzi: Tron is a big ecosystem in the payments world. We see a lot of volumes coming there and still it's not solved. Privacy is a big issue in payments. There is no good solution there. We are looking to be maybe the first mover and to add like privacy features into Utila. But I would say that again, like putting more focus on the user experience, ability to add the asset support fast.

[00:29:19] Bentzi: And more focused on payments and tokenization. That's the way for us to win. Besides that, we do see some organizations that, usually big ones that due to risk management redundancy, they will prefer to have a few solutions, right? So we do have customers where we are living next to even more than one, solution, even two or three.

[00:29:40] Bentzi: And I think that's another way for us to play in the market I would say it's all of that in a way. 

[00:29:46] Umar: So to summarize Utila is making MPC wallets more accessible. I don't want to generalize, but traditionally multisig wallets would be used by a lot of startups, DAOs, while MPC wallets would be used by banks, hedge funds, traders, exchanges. If you had to position yourself in the market, what kind of users would you be going after? 

[00:30:13] Bentzi: So I would say first of all, everything around payments.

[00:30:16] Bentzi: Everyone doing payments in crypto need a wallet solution that is secure and scalable with gas optimizations. That's the first use case. So treasuries, payment companies, everyone building like and cross border payments, dollar access, et cetera, utilizing stable coins or some other crypto assets.

[00:30:34] Bentzi: I would say also funds and OTC desks, like very transactional use cases. Okay. So the common theme for payments and also for trading, because we do also serve multiple like OTC desks, for example, or market makers is transactional use cases. So every organization, every builder that is building something or managing crypto in a way that the assets are moving all the time, and it's mostly in trading and payments, they will need something like Utila.

[00:31:01] Bentzi: Now, they can also use other like providers like Copper, Fireblocks, but I think that Utila is putting a lot of focus specifically on its features around payments. User experience, like there is no solution in the market besides Utila where you can onboard super fast and you can start, running operations like right away.

[00:31:21] Bentzi: We already had stories that we talk to a customer, they ask, okay, I like it. When can I onboard? And we said, okay, now the time is 10:05, 10:10 and you already have the solution, right? And it happened. And I would say besides that, if you are looking to create like an edge, even as a custodian on an exchange, in many cases, your edge will be like being able to support some new ecosystem that is now exciting. 

[00:31:43] Bentzi: So actually Utila can also be relevant for you there because we can add for you fast and institutional grade wallet support for that.

[00:31:51] Bentzi: And you will be able to offer it to your customers today. The same if you are like a market maker. So we also do serve them. The main positioning is still around a use cases of payments, tokenization, but we also serve a lot of trading firms. And I think there the selling point is also very appealing.

[00:32:09] Bentzi: They get all the benefits of security, of robust policy engine, of multi chain support. And this is like something that 90 percent of them, that's what they need. So yeah, and we also reduce costs of course compared to other providers. 

[00:32:23] Umar: Because we are at the conference at Paris Blockchain Week today, this episode will be a shorter episode.

[00:32:29] Umar: I want to end on a more general question Bentzi, which is in terms of challenges for crypto adoption, we spoke a lot about custody. If you had to think of anything else apart from custody like improving the UX around custody, what would be some of the other challenges for mainstream adoption of crypto be?

[00:32:47] Bentzi: Yeah, I would say that there's still many things about user experience, it's still broken, like I still see like, how difficult is it to move between different blockchains, right? Or even to buy crypto in some places, it's still not very intuitive to many people. I do think that in the end of the day, crypto will be in a way what the cloud is for the internet, okay?

[00:33:09] Bentzi: You do have something, you do have a computer, you can interact with someone who is sitting in the end of the world. You know that there is something behind called the cloud. And I think in crypto it will be the same in that I don't think that many people will all necessarily like crypto assets.

[00:33:24] Bentzi: I do think that crypto will become like more a railway that is sitting behind and people will actually still operate with Fiat for example, but crypto will be the main drive behind. This will replace, today you have like amazing fintechs, you have amazing user experience around corporate spend management, your bank, but in the end of the day, everything is still relying on banking rails that were built like many years ago.

[00:33:47] Bentzi: And I think that's the place where crypto needs to be, it needs to be there. It doesn't need necessarily being in, in my wallet, in my phone, it can be relevant maybe for some people, but I don't think that, my parents are the people who will now do it. So I do think that crypto in a way will become more like an infrastructure layer, not only for, money movements, for any movement of value, like real estate options, everything. 

[00:34:15] Bentzi: And I think that for that, we need a better infrastructure, better security and better regulatory clarity. I would say in Europe, it's going on the right direction. In APAC it's going on the right direction. In the UAE it's going on the right direction.

[00:34:30] Bentzi: We still wait for the US also to go on the right direction.

[00:34:33] Umar: Bentzi, there's a last question that I like to ask my guests before they leave is, do you have a favorite quote or a maxim that you live by? 

[00:34:42] Bentzi: So I don't have a ready answer for that, but I would say that usually try to be visionary in a way, but also try to live with your legs in the ground.

[00:34:52] Bentzi: Think that it's very relevant for crypto. It's very important to be visionary and think about how we can improve the world. What's the benefits on crypto, but I think on the other end, we also need to be connected to regulatory, connected to security and thinking about this kind of things all the time.

[00:35:09] Bentzi: So I would say that's the real way you can create innovation in this world to be able to play between these two sides that, for them to live together. It's a big challenge, but if you manage to solve it, then you manage to bring innovation. If you manage to solve vision with like regulation, with security, with compliance, then you are winning.

[00:35:33] Umar: Perfect. If people listening want to get started with Utila and reach out to you, what's the best way?

[00:35:40] Bentzi: I would say the website is a good starting point. We also have if you're interested to try the product. We usually give free trials to try it out.

[00:35:49] Bentzi: We are building our help center as we speak. There are some videos online. So I would say, of course, customer stories on our website. I think they tell the best the way you can utilize Utila. 

[00:36:00] Umar: Perfect. Thanks a lot for the conversation today. 

[00:36:02] Bentzi: Thank you, Umar. Thanks for the opportunity.

[00:36:04] Umar: I would like to thank everyone for listening to this episode. You will find all the links of the episode, show notes, and transcript on the website of The Accountant Quits at theaccountantquits.com. Please note that this content is for general information purposes only and is not a substitute for consultation with professional advisors.

[00:36:25] Umar: If you do know anyone who could benefit from the episode and you care about them, please do share the episode with them. All the episodes are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. And by leaving us a review and rating, you will support the channel and all your fellow accountants. In order to be notified each time we release a new episode, do follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn.

[00:36:48] Umar: We hope to have you with us next time. Bye for now.