Host: For decades, the media industry has operated on delayed payment cycles, leaving publishers and journalists waiting 90 days or more to receive ad revenue. Now today, Coinbase and Roundtable looking to transform those economics with a new real-time payment platform that settles a transactions instantly in US DC stablecoins. Now the initiative migrates. A $100 million ad ecosystem onto the rails. It also comes as Roundtable shares begin trading on Coinbase today and former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss joins Roundtable's board to drive European expansion while joining us live today to break this down are John Dagostino, head of strategy for Coinbase institutional and James Heckman, founder. of Roundtable gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us on the heels of today's exciting announcement. So James, let's start out with the traditional media monetization tends to leave publishers waiting for ad revenue. So how does your platform cut that settlement time to instant USDC payouts and what does this mean for publisher cash flow?
James Heckman: Yeah, I mean, we're very excited to be partnered, you know, with Coinbase. This is a project John and I have been working on for, I don't know, 8 or 9 months, you know, with our engineering teams together. Um, you know, we have a, uh, a DeFi reporting system on chain with a comprehensive, uh, infrastructure for, for major media, newspapers, magazines, uh, top publications. And as big as maybe the ESPNs and The New York Times are, they're very small compared to Silicon Valley's, you know, $1 trillion businesses. And so to be efficient with advertisers, consolidating it all onto a single database, um, benefits this $200 billion ecosystem. But the hard part is that these media companies that are spending money on high quality content and paying the salaries and buying the licenses and, and, uh, paying for sports coverage, um, they have this huge delay. And so with our AIDI system, we know exactly how much money that each publisher is making in real time. And then because of that, it's a collateralized asset. And so we got together with Coinbase and, and, and the idea is, we've got collateralized assets, we know we're gonna have a 100% uh recovery on those assets. And so extending cash to them. Uh, uh, in real-time. It's a great idea, but without Coinbase, without a liquidity pool on Coinbase with USDC, it's impossible to be paying people dynamically in real-time without humans. And so, Coinbase really came to the rescue with USDC and their engineering team. We took our AI and our DF platform, and, you know, we got married. And I think last week, we went live and it's uh very exciting. So, John, uh, You know, what's your point of view?
Host: Yeah, John, I do want to bring you into this conversation. Yeah, thank you so much for joining me. So of course, Coinbase providing the back end through Coinbase Prime as well as a dedicated media liquidity pool. So tell us the why as well as the how here.
John Dagostino: Sure. Um, first of all, thanks for having me. It's been, uh, fun working with James, learning about the ad industry, uh, but What I understood almost immediately upon meeting James and the Roundtable team was there it's, it's, it's hard to imagine a more on point use case for blockchain and digital assets than what he's trying to accomplish here. So if you think about kind of the premise of blockchain, kind of how it all started with this Toshi White Paper, it's to create a mechanism to transfer value and information that is non-dependent on centralized institutions, whether that's governments or private industry, it's irrelevant. And so fast forward to now where we are with, where we are with James and Roundtable is if we have the ability to further um to, to increase the amount of independent journalism that exists in the world by allowing for independent journalists who want to build these businesses to support themselves, to finance themselves through ad sales. Uh, what a wonderful and marvelous use case for blockchain technology. So we have the ability with USDC to create instantaneous, secure, stable payments backed ultimately by US Treasury, so non-variable, non-volatile payments which people need to support themselves. And if we can apply that towards the, the goal of creating more independent journalists in a world where the average person now less than 1/3, according to Gallup, less than 1/3 of Americans trust mass media, uh, that's a wonderful use case for us and a wonderful use case for blockchain.
Host: Yes, and John, indeed, as you mentioned, journalism is so important, especially in this day and age of social media. So I think you hit on a key point there, and I do want to bring James back into this conversation and you earlier mentioned artificial intelligence. That is something that all of us are paying attention to. So when it comes to your platform, how does AI track IP usage and also ensure individual journalists are actually rewarded in real time for their work?
James Heckman: Uh, you know, I think I'm one of the few, uh, tech CEOs out there, um, You know, really skeptical about AI especially when it comes to, uh, history, journalism, you know, telling stories. And, and I, I really believe that it's not gonna be good for humanity for a handful of people to be able to direct how people think. And so, uh, my CTO who invented DeFi, he holds the patents and wrote the white paper, um, and helped set up the system with his team in Tel Aviv with the Coinbase engineers, often says, we use AI to defend humanity from AI. Right? And so, think about this, you know, you've got 10,000 publications, newspapers, and quality journalism around the world, but they're, they're journalists, they're media companies, they don't have great technology, right? And so, what's ending up happening is these behemoths in social media, where, you know, 99% of it's not real professional journalism, um, they're overwhelming the system. Now, there's a $200 billion ecosystem. That's premium media. That's called, you know, branded advertising, which is different than ROI-based advertising. The social media networks have about 550 billion. But premium media online is actually growing because brands wanna sell, you know, Fidelity wants to open accounts, Chevrolet wants to sell cars, fashion brands, you don't wanna bring fashion. They don't wanna do it in Branding, you know, in the kind of chaos of social media. The problem is, is that each individual television station or magazine, or even sports site is so small that the revenues below what their operating expenses are. And so, what we're bringing to the market with AI is not what you think. We're not helping them write the stories. We actually don't believe in that. We think human Beings need to talk to human beings. But we're empowering human beings by eliminating all their operating expenses. If the AI is actually running operations today for 200 journalists. We're about to add hundreds of journalists with a transaction we just announced on Friday with about $100 million worth of, of, of ad revenue. That company is gonna save $40 million. Um, in this agreement. So, all of that money and waste of the individual, uh, you know, uh, infrastructures that are duplicative, it all goes away. All, all that overhead goes away. So, I think, number one, we're using AI for management, we're using DeFi with Coinbase for efficient transfer of funds on immutable. Dey smart contracts, we know exactly how much the media companies are making, so we can pay them immediately, you know, cause it's fully collateralized. And the AI brings it all together in the management. What, what ironically that this company is doing is liberating journalism and humanity, so they can earn a living, cash flow is immediate. And I think, you know, John, you always do such an amazing job talking about Um, how important cash flow is for entrepreneurism and how Coinbase is actually facilitating that.
Host: Yes, so let's bring John back into this conversation. So John, tell us how trading public equities alongside stablecoins actually advances Coinbase's push to build an everything exchange, especially as we're talking about Roundtable shares begin trading on Coinbase.
John Dagostino: Sure, yes, we're happy to list Roundtable stock trading on trading on NASDAQ. You know, we think eventually everything will be on chain. Um, until that happens, uh, we want to be the one home for people who want to experiment with using on chain finance but also still engage in traditional financial rails whether it be futures, perpetual futures, derivatives, on chain derivatives, traditional derivatives, or buying and selling spot crypto using fiat or USDC. Um, we think of these rails all. Converge. There will be tremendous advantages for individuals, decreased transaction costs, better margin lending when all of the collateral is on the same rail, it becomes a lot easier for lenders to be comfortable loaning against it. And so if you think about going back to Roundtable, why this is a huge advantage is another characteristic of these transactions is are they censorship resistant, particularly. On chain and transactions like USDC journalists are a group of people that especially in certain parts of the world are particularly susceptible to censorship. So when you combine instantaneous and immutable value transfer with censorship resistance as you have in USDC, you get a really, really powerful tool for journalists and we also think that the average person appreciates those characteristics.
Host: Yes, and I think you're highlighting some key points there when it comes to journalism and the intersection of Defi. So very quickly, I do want to bring James back into this conversation, especially as you are unveiling a new member of your board here. So what is the strategy when it comes to bringing media houses on your side of the Atlantic to adopt Defi payment rails?
James Heckman: Um, yeah, we're very excited to, uh, bring, uh, ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss and, uh, Foreign Minister and Interior Minister, Liz Truss onto the board. John and I are actually both in London right now. We've been meeting with major media executives all through, uh, this nation. Each individual newspaper and television station and brand I would say is suffering operationally because there hasn't been a major advancement in operational software for, for major media brands since I would say, you know, 2002. And the major social networks every day are advancing their code and efficiency, and uh deliverability, and targeting, and scale. And so, what we're offering is to have a single database and a single platform all on chain. It means their IP is protected. Um, we have AI agents to make sure that their content isn't stolen by AR AI. And that their AI is forever valuable uh for use within their media company. And then finally, in our partnership, one of the amazing things is journalists are all over the world, right? They're covering wars, they're in Africa, they're in places where there aren't banks, um, and they need to be able to pay their families. And, and not everybody's working in New York and getting paid by a large media organization. And so this also liberalizes uh or liberates um journalists all over the world who may not work for a a a a big company, right? They want to be able to pay their children, they could be in a foxhole in Ukraine. And they can literally press a button and get paid instantly. 3 in the morning, banks aren't open, and they're in a war zone. This is really an exciting advancement. And by bringing it together in a grand coalition on a single database, you know, I'm gonna be on the road for the next 2 or 3 years, you know, India, South, you know, Southeast Asia. Europe, uh, you know, just left the United States and brought in 21 brands, UK, Europe, making sure that the incremental cost to bring on a newspaper or a classic, um, uh, media, uh, company doesn't cost them anything, and that they get paid immediately, and they get the highest value for their content, and they know it's true. Um, and, and that is not possible right now without, uh, blockchain and DeFi.
Host: Yes, indeed, James, journalism does not know any borders. So John, James, appreciate your time today. We will have to leave it there, but I look forward to continuing this conversation in the future. Thank you so much for joining us on the heels of today's announcement.
