Hi, I'm Vince Molinari, and welcome to FinTech TV.
We are, of course, broadcasting from the iconic New York Stock Exchange, and I gotta mark this day in my calendar.
What a great piece of history as I'm sitting here with Brian Foot, the founder and CEO of Tap Inc. and a good friend.
We got to break some news here in a second.
So, Cliffhanger, great to see you.
So happy to have you here, my friend.
What an auspicious day.
And for everybody out there, today is the day that we are announcing the strategic acquisition of by FinTech TV of Tap Inc. and so it is truly day one year at FinTech TV.
Happy to break the news.
Brian, congratulations.
So excited about all of this.
We couldn't be more thrilled.
Obviously, we love you.
Um, FinTech TV is Such an incredible organization.
You've done such an amazing job with these studio assets and what you've built here with the team and the content and the top level guests that you have from around the world.
So for us to be able to transpose that into the brokerage layer, the investment, the media terminal, the payment stack.
To move from information to action in one platform is just an incredible marriage, and we couldn't be more thrilled or honored.
Well, thank you, and you know, big shout out to my partner, co-founder Troy McGuire, who is just, you know, traversing the Middle East and setting up our, our studios, and Troy, congratulations.
You know, you, you've made so much of this happen, and thank you for everything that you're doing.
I wish You were here with us here, uh, here, here, here, uh, at the exchange, uh, going through all of this celebratory day with us, but we'll catch up.
So, you know, when we look at all this, Brian, you know, for us, this manifestation of joining forces, uh, with Tap really started with kind of the 24/7 generation of content, these trophy, um, I, I would say.
Destinations, more key production theaters around the world, and really what you all had built for us with the tap terminal and turning that into the intersection of, you know, Tap meets FinTech TV.
So, you know, maybe expand on that a little bit.
Yeah, it just ended up being a perfect marriage.
We had built out the terminal product for global media and investors to move, as I mentioned, from information to action.
And so when we met with you and we started integrating FinTech TV's wonderful content, guests, assets, um, into this terminal that has 70 customizable widgets, um, we've kind of studied Legacy Media, Legacy.com, saw some of the things that they were doing well for customers, and then also, um, some of the gaps that we saw in the market where we could serve, you know, both retail and then kind of pro-trader up into institutional better.
And so as we built out that media terminal.
The pairing and the need was to join hands with a powerful and growing global media company that's producing great content and driving audience and growth, so.
Um, this has been a perfect fit for us.
Well, we, we are honored to be that choice, uh, and, and really this deep alignment.
And, and aside from the top level, it really goes back to kind of the culture, the chemistry of the organizations and how well that common DNA fits.
And, you know, as, as we have called it content consumption exhaust, when we look at These new alternative data sets that come off the signals that we're, you know, receiving.
You have the whole vertical on market intelligence and the way that intersects as well.
And maybe, maybe you can share with the audience a bit about the market intelligence side from tap.
Yeah, so I think what's interesting is we can expect AI agents to outnumber human beings by the end of 27.
And so what we wanted to do was pair up with a media company that was doing dynamic, really intelligent content.
Um, pair that with both the provider of the media and their advertisers, and then think about ways to distill that into what we call market intelligence where we're pulling those signals, breaking news, distilling real-time information, and then making it discoverable for both AI agents but then also human beings.
So, um, that's where we'll lead out as well as the ability for FinTech TV to produce this amazing content, make it discoverable by these AI agents that'll be scrolling the web looking for both information to consume in real time that's generated by the human beings that are here on the desk, um, but then also making it actionable for investing, trading, um.
Strategies that we have at TA where you can invest in one tap from USD directly into multiple asset classes, thematic strategies or target date strategies, which is pretty novel.
Um, so as we tuck that in underneath the umbrella of FTV, you have this wonderful financial media company that then drives down into both the agentic layer, making information discoverable, but then moving it rapidly into action for traders, investors.
Um, and communities, of course, that also help drive these names as they move forward into the IPO markets.
Well, that's one of the things that excited me so much when we think about communities and the value of community.
How do you continue to bring a level of Of benefit to that community and engaging that community so they're not just consumers, they're contributors to the process.
And I think when we have that change in the feedback loop to being contributors from consumers, it really speaks to the true paradigm of web 3.
And not to go on too long about it, but really this almost hybrid ability, right?
Everything that agentic represents, but having this human layer on top of the production studios and and true engagement, human level to intersect with that agentic, then to go all the way down, as you point to to an actionable uh event is really differentiating.
Yeah, it's incredible the amount of features that FinTech and Tap have together now.
So on that FinTech.tv terminal, you have 70 customizable widgets, you have traditional equities, you have mutual funds, you have ETFs, you have digital assets, you have real-world assets, you have chat communities, and then you have consolidated analysis from around the web of different names, um, you know, either traditional equities or others that are coming online through the IPO markets.
You add that to the brokerage layer, the strategies, the advisors, uh, the ability to have encrypted chat, and then also peer to peer payments through verified identity.
The average customer is going to around 5 different websites, uh, to perform the financial services that they require on a day to day basis.
We've distilled that down into a very powerful one platform here at FTV Time Tap.
So for us, it's a dream come true to neighbor with you guys and, uh, put plug a socket on.
You know, creating a terminal that is ready for the 24/7 tokenized markets as we move forward.
Well, we never want you to leave the FinTech TV tap terminal, but on a serious note, you, you, when you point out the efficiencies of someone never having to, to truly leave, but you're eliminating going to 5 sites, 3 sites, and reducing that down.
So great efficiency and the benefit, right?
And again, I think it goes back to that feedback loop.
I want to talk, uh, you, you touched on.
Uh, the little dangling carrot of tokenization, uh, you know, talk to me a bit about what it represents from the tap side.
Some of the things that you're really pioneering on that side are super exciting.
Yeah, and, and we've been talking about this for a long time.
When you go back to, to our mutual patent filings here at FTV Ts tap, um, we've been contemplating this since 2019 where The two most important things that can move on to tokenization are physical money and securities, assets, uh, real-world assets are formally issued stocks, bonds, etc.
And so, um, what we are walking into now as a group here at the NYC and FTV and TP is the ability to take these tokenized markets where I can send you a payment quickly.
Instant settlement, no chargebacks, very clear 1 to 1 send of either my AI agent to yours or my human wallet to yours or my computer system to yours.
And so you take these sort of step function accelerations which, as you've mentioned many times, wisely, Vince, are just.
They're step ups into the legacy tech.
It doesn't, we don't need to, you know, pull up the whole system, right?
It all, it's all the same.
You have a company that's issuing assets or equities to customers that are investing in them, and that's just moving on to a new set of rails.
And so what's critical as you lay down those new sets of rails is you can't move the old train cars from the old rails onto the new ones.
You have to build new ones there, and that's, that's what we've done at TPP is the ability to take either a private company that needs to tokenize its cap table.
Uh, manage investors and migrate from the private to the public markets in much more efficient ways as they become tokenized, uh, and or traditional equities or traditional assets like real estate, the largest asset class in the world, that is still incredibly, um, driven by middlemen, uh, by inefficiencies and by bureaucratic steps that can be eliminated.
Um, by tokenization, so for us it's about moving payments and equities onto tokenized formats and making them addressable immediately from the FTV terminal, which they are.
Well, and I guess as a point of full disclosure, we are not a regulated entity.
Uh, so we're performing a lot of the functions of engagement and the back end piece of the term is being routed to regulated partners that adhere to all the standards that we applaud and really advocate for.
So it's really a wonderful marriage when we come down to that, um.
So I've been blown away personally.
Uh, I, I, I'm not a good poker player, so I've just put it out there and, you know, so excited, but, uh, Tap is doing around the ad studio.
Yes, share with us a bit and, and what that really looks like and what people can, uh, look forward to seeing.
Yeah, so one of our charges here inside the FTV umbrella is not only to bring that advisory, the robo advisory, etc. uh, as a tuck in.
But also to drive down into advertising sales, packaging up these wonderful high level CEO guests that you have here, uh, government officials, regulatory officials, all the folks that make our public markets and private markets go, um.
And, and taking that and putting it into a nice package where advertisers can connect better with audiences or B2B audiences that they're looking to communicate with, uh, with their offerings.
And so a big part of the terminal is not only thinking through that sort of programmatic content that you see on the web now, where it's like buy a hero banner, buy a mid-page unit, and that's OK.
You need to service that business at scale, uh, but what we're going to do better here already at FinTech TV and TP.
Is giving people an ad studio where they could come in, really customize a deep campaign that communicates correctly with their audiences, either B2C or B2B or B2G on the government side, um, and give them a package that they can invest in where they know they're going to communicate, you know, here with the best of the best at the NYC in Abu Dhabi with our Middle Eastern partners, um, and around the world as we expand to other markets, more into LADA, Europe, etc. as we've talked about.
Um, so we'll be putting together, I think, what are best of breed, highly innovative ad studio products that we built out on the back end of FTV and Tap, where you can customize a robust campaign, uh, make it accessible not only into our main distribution channels at FTV but also through our content and syndication partners as well.
Uh, to give powerful reach into the networks that you've built out and that we've built out through syndication on social media and through partners.
You have such an incredible ecosystem that you've built out here at FTV.
And so for us to lay down intelligence on top of that from a technical way that advertisers can use to communicate with the right audiences so that they each drive value for each other on the terminal is a dream come true for us.
Same here, my friend, and you know, congratulations to you and Your partner, co-founder Jeff and, uh, Alfonso Alfonso Senior Junior, Kevin, I mean, I know I can go on and I'm gonna miss people, so I apologize, uh, just giving quick shout outs here as we're running out of time and congratulations to the FinTech TV team because they've, they've worked.
Incredibly hard in this arrival destination as we've been working together as partners now as part of the family.
Welcome to everybody and look forward to, uh, so much more as we get together here regularly.
Congratulations.
Thanks, Vince.
We look forward to it.
Likewise.
Awesome.
Thank you.
