Yanni Giannaros: Crypto’s Payment Stack - [Web3 Breakdowns, EP.33]

This is Eric Golden and my guest today is Yanni Giannaros. Yanni is the co-founder and CEO of Wyre, which provides payment infrastructure for Web3 companies. Wyre started off enabling merchants to accept bitcoin in 2013 and eventually pivoted from B2C to B2B to serve developers. We discuss Wyre’s major pivots over the past decade, the inefficiencies of traditional cross-border money transfer, and the decoupling of crypto exchanges as on-ramps. Please enjoy my conversation with Yanni Giannaros.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.

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Show Notes

[00:02:15] - [First question] - How he and his co-founder met

[00:05:38] - Building Snapcard and whether they moved into crypto at that time 

[00:06:49] - The ways they technically achieved receiving funds via Snapcard

[00:08:13] - What led to the second iteration of Snapcard

[00:10:31] - Who their first competitors were when they started accepted Bitcoin and when they moved into cross-border payments 

[00:12:58] - The history of sending money across the border and what their products unlocked for consumers

[00:15:27] - How people would on-ramp into crypto in the first place and the financial and technical risks of early crypto transfers

[00:16:48] - The biggest pain points and what led them away from having so many businesses

[00:18:51] - Whether or not he and his co-founder ever had second thoughts 

[00:19:54] - What he means by “It’s the fast that eat the slow”

[00:21:06] - Interesting views on why major crypto exchanges won’t remain dominant

[00:23:34] - Learning regulatory jurisdiction issues and the landscape today 

[00:25:37] - How someone can use Wyre to set up their Web3 protocol more quickly 

[00:27:31] - Some of the biggest surprise use cases for Wyre from developers 

[00:30:15] - Things he thinks about differently now not being so end-user focused 

[00:31:40] - How much money they raised on Wyre’s processing power

[00:32:49] - Being acquired for over a billion dollars and selling their company 

[00:34:26] - How it feels now to run Wyre compared to their building days

[00:35:21] - What he’s most excited to build over the next six months and six years 

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