The Pomp Podcast
#504: Michael Shaulov on Crypto Infrastructure
- Fireblocks provides secure institutional-grade infrastructure for digital asset custody, settlement, and DeFi access, processing ~$80 billion in on-chain settlements monthly (3–5% of all on-chain transactions).
- The company uses multi-party computation (MPC) to eliminate single points of failure and counterparty risk, allowing customers to recover funds even if Fireblocks disappeared.
- Stablecoins (USDC, PAX) are increasingly central to Fireblocks' operations; 40–50% of customer payments are now made in stablecoins, reducing settlement friction and enabling automation.
- DeFi integration has accelerated dramatically; after initial skepticism, ~90% of customers now want access to protocols like Uniswap, Curve, and Compound through Fireblocks' institutional browser APIs.
- Legacy financial institutions (banks, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard) are rapidly moving from innovation labs to mainstream adoption, driven by inflation concerns and regulatory clarity from the SEC and FinCEN.
- The largest strategic challenges are timing which market niches to address (trading, payments, lending, treasury management, remittances) and scaling talent acquisition to maintain quality during threefold headcount growth in 12 months.