Genzio Podcast | Vault12 Crypto Inheritance and Wealth Management | Toronto

View Genzio Podcast | Canada Crypto Week: Vault12 Crypto Inheritance and Wealth management

1:44 – The Story Behind the Name 

2:05 – What Types of Crypto Are Being Passed Down? 

3:50 – What Adoption Really Looks Like 

5:48 – Wild Inheritance Stories (Yes, a dog ate the seed phrase) 

6:39 – Will Crypto Language Ever Simplify? 

7:39 – Thoughts on Stablecoin Wealth Storage 

9:17 – What Brought Vault12 to @Futurist_conf

Transcript

Zack:

Hey, what's up? Zack here with Genzio. Excited speaking with Wassim from Vault12 co-founder. For our audience who doesn't know, tell us about Vault12.

Wasim:

Thanks for having me, Zach. Vault12, we do crypto inheritance. It's one of those things that everyone needs to think about, but they don't.

Zack:

I agree completely. Actually, I got my mom to buy crypto when Bitcoin is like 7,000 bucks. She has quite a bit of crypto. She's very young, I think she'll live a long time. But I can imagine a scenario where if you didn't have the right thing set up, it could get problematic.

Wasim:

There's lots of cases of people doing all kinds of very, very secure things like putting their seat phrases inside mountains and different places. The Winklevoss' split up their private keys and put them in safety deposit boxes, 30 minutes from a set of six regional airports around the country. They flew off and did that. You can't find safety deposit boxes anymore. They're going out of business. If you don't have a way for your family or your heirs to access that, if you're incapacitated or you passed away, then it's gone.

Zack:

I completely agree, and I think it's really important to be thinking about these things proactively because we're Genzio, there's a lot of young people in crypto, but they're going to grow up. We all get older. It's part of life. And having plans like that in place I think are incredibly important. Where does the name come from?

Wasim:

Vault12?

Zack:

Yeah.

Wasim:

It's from a video game called Fallout.

Zack:

Of course, a great game.

Wasim:

Absolutely.

Zack:

Very cool. And what would you say is the biggest crypto that people are passing down? Is it Bitcoin, mostly ETH? And do you guys support all different crypto or how does that work?

Wasim:

We're completely independent of any blockchain. I can't tell you the answer to that because we don't know what assets are getting saved or stored. You can store a seed phrase, you can store a private key, but you can also make a video of a riddle of the 12 words that go into your wallet. We don't know. And I'm sure it's Bitcoin, but I don't actually know.

Zack:

That's a great answer.

Wasim:

I don't know who the owners are and I don't know what assets are going in.

Zack:

Privacy is important.

Wasim:

It's a completely decentralized, distributed, peer-to-peer solution.

Zack:

Why do you think that now is the time that this is getting adoption?

Wasim:

I think the risks around cryptocurrency are being lowered slowly but surely with all the lawsuits going away, the banks can now do custody. There's stuff going through Congress and the Senate hasn't quite passed yet, but it's going to happen. Once that market structure bill is in place in August, a lot of the risks will go away. It'll be very clear what happens in the US and then the rest of the world is going to follow that model. And for banks, for retail institutions, because we're a retail company, they will start exposing their customers to crypto. And then after a while, they're going to want to talk about insurance and inheritance and life insurance and all these other things that go hand in hand when you're trying to sort out and manage your finances because your finances will include digital assets.

Zack:

I think this is really interesting too because globally different countries do inheritance differently. I know you said I understand privacy is a huge part of this. Where would you see from what you can observe in the world this is getting the most adoption?

Wasim:

Definitely in the US. We're independent of whatever legal vehicles you use to state your wishes. You should go talk to a lawyer, talk to a trusted state attorney, figure out what the right type of legal agreement is. This is the transportation mechanism to transfer in a private and secure way the details that will allow your heirs to access the assets. It can be different to the executor. It's probably going to be someone technical. It doesn't have to be, the solution was designed for non-technical people. We're independent. Even the states in the US have different laws about inheritance. It doesn't impact what they do with Vault12 or how they use it and abroad, it's the same.

Zack:

Why use Vault12 versus maybe another competitor or you a first mover in this space?

Wasim:

We are the pioneers. We've doing this since 2015.

Zack:

Wow.

Wasim:

10 years.

Zack:

Congratulations.

Wasim:

Thank you. Probably a little early to doing it, but it was obvious back even back in 2013, 2014, when my CEO was thinking about starting this company.

Zack:

When you look at the adoption now, I don't know if you can tell me how many users do you guys have? Have you seen a spike recently? What's that growth been like over the past 10 years?

Wasim:

We've had like 400,000 downloads. The bulk of them have happened in the last two years. We went live in the app store in 2019, sitting four years.

Zack:

Wow. You're really going.

Wasim:

And I think this next wave of, with the regulation, retail institutions coming into it will make that more ubiquitous, which is what should happen.

Zack:

Have you seen some crazy stories over people who have not set up their inheritance mail?

Wasim:

Oh yeah.

Zack:

Tell me something crazy you've seen.

Wasim:

The craziest one was the Galaxy Digital Trader who set up a new wallet and then wrote the seed phrase on a post-it note, went home, or maybe he was working from home, had it on the dining room table, eating some food, something drops on the post-it note and the dog jumps up and eats the post-it note.

Zack:

Literally, dog ate your homework.

Wasim:

The dog ate his seed phrase.

Zack:

Crazy.

Wasim:

I don't think there was a lot of stuff in that wallet, but it just goes to show, that was unnecessary.

Zack:

Do you think there will be a world in the future where we're getting away from terms seed phrase or these more crypto terms or do you think that they're going to stick around like seed phrases?

Wasim:

I think the more technical terms are going to start to subside because consumers, they're not going to deal with the, what's the difference between a private key and a seed phrase. I think the term crypto keys will stay. I think that's the right level of term. There's a lot of wallets out there that are not what you and I would call a crypto wallet, and they're starting to be everywhere. We all have wallets on our phone. It might be the Apple Wallet or I think Google has one too. And I think these wallets will also start to adopt the ability to record assets. But they will, for those digital assets, have to have some way of exporting that key. They're going to have to give it a name. We're going to see, I think wallets are going to be everywhere. It's just not necessarily going to be the crypto wallets that we have today. They're very difficult to use. They're very complicated. They're way too many options. There's going to be some changes there for sure.

Zack:

It's very interesting. And I know right now we just came from a big stablecoin conference in San Francisco. Pantera Capital is there, a16z crypto, biggest names. And we're just really excited about the idea of holding people's wealth in stablecoins. And I can imagine you said Bitcoin now, but I'm sure people are also storing a lot of stablecoins of cash.

Wasim:

I think stablecoins is going to be the wave that pulls in because that's something that consumers, I think can relate to because it is that bridge, it's that transition from the old world to this new world. Absolutely. I think it's going to happen from this moment on last year in stablecoins.

Zack:

Will you guys allow yield, like yield in your vaults?

Wasim:

The definition of a vault is that you're storing something and there's no transactions going on. A wallet is something where you store something and there's transactions. We've tried to be very strict about that difference. We're not competing with the wallets, we're integrating them. But in a new world with crypto regulations that allow free and easy use of crypto, sure, maybe there'll be trading, maybe there'll be other things. But right now, we're a vault. There's no transactions going. It's how you're storing your assets for the future.

Zack:

You can literally imagine a big bank vault, goes and locks the door.

Wasim:

And then, except it's on your phone, it's protected using distributed cryptography so that if you lose your phone, you can recreate the vault on a new phone.

Zack:

Very cool. And why did you guys decide to come to Futurist?

Wasim:

We heard that it was like the kickoff for Canada Crypto Week. And look at it, it's so lively and so fun. I think we did the right thing.

Zack:

Awesome. Thank you so much for the fantastic interview. I encourage everyone watching this to give Vault12 a follow, really interesting stuff. And if you need a place to store your assets securely, make sure that they're transferable to your future generations, you know exactly where to look.

Wasim:

And we have a code for your viewers.

Zack:

What's the code?

Wasim:

The code is GENZIO25.

Zack:

Very cool.

Wasim:

It's good for iOS and it's good for Android. And you can go to our website to find all the instruction. Thank you so much. Fantastic. Great interview.

Zack:

Cheers.