Wes Cecil / Structure Fi
Wes Cecil on global investing at Structure Fi
In this episode
Ashton Addison speaks with Wes Cecil, Chief Strategy Officer at Structure Fi, on their platform for global investing, how they differ from Centralized Exchanges, the global finance movement, onboarding the unbanked easily into the future of finance, and more
- Structure Fi aims to provide global access to any asset at any time by eliminating barriers like cost, complexity, and requiring mobile-first design for markets without widespread computer access.
- High-inflation countries like Nigeria, Venezuela, and Argentina show strong demand for reliable asset access to preserve savings rather than hold deteriorating local currency.
- Structure Fi operates in over 80 countries and strategically targets markets based on regulatory alignment and local fit rather than expanding uniformly across all regions.
- KYC and AML compliance are non-negotiable requirements that Structure Fi implements to protect users, despite these processes creating barriers for unbanked populations in some regions.
- Geographic proximity does not determine regulatory environment or cryptocurrency adoption attitudes, as demonstrated by Philippines and Indonesia having nearly opposite approaches to crypto despite similar locations.
Transcript
Read the full transcript
I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have Wes Cecil the chief strategy officer of structure Phi Wes welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time thank you Ashton glad to be here you're very welcome excited to dive into everything structure is working on but I would love to start our conversation
with just a little bit on your background in Academia finance and how that led to you working with structurify well I was in a college professor for over 20 years and then when I decided to leave the academic world I met Brian and the other Founder The Two Brians who are the founders of structure and because I have a lot of knowledge about global
issues and finance and the world in general they thought that might be helpful to have me come on board and reach out to different geolocations and understand the different kinds of societies that we'll be interacting with it and this sort of issue and boy what a change it's a different from Academia out here but it's exciting to be able to take a lot
of what generally people think of as abstract knowledge and apply it in a very concrete way in the real world so it's been a fascinating adventure for me there's so much to learn and I think one of the promises of crypto that has been and is fulfilling is it's a global world and for too long all of our financial and economic lives have been in silos
that just creates barriers between people and activities and businesses and so I just think it's been a great and interesting opportunity to be able to work with structure and pursue these kinds of Greater goals of bringing people you know other essentially that's great and I agree it is much more exciting you know even people from web 2 you know Google and these top
companies in the world are jumping into the world of web3 and crypto because there's just so much more to learn and all these different opportunities especially with the global Finance increasing and speaking of that let's just dive into structure you know for the viewers that didn't see our last interview with the co-founders of structure maybe you can start with what
a structure you're working on and then we'll dive into that yeah so the goal of structure is any asset anywhere at any time there's a simple difficult to execute put simple in concept and if you're in the developed World United States Europe you have fairly decent access to markets like although Robin Hood demonstrated that even in the United States a few
years ago all kinds of issues kept people out of the markets who wanted to trade and then when they made it simple when they fractionalized ownership pay all of a sudden millions of more people that have this is for me I've been participate in this activity and I would love to do that in all kinds of fun things happen we're trying to do that on a global scale and if you think the
restricted Market access here in much of the world there are no reliable markets Investments assets for the average person to access no way for them to do that and so the kinds of investment opportunities and earning opportunities that exist you know in the first world being able to extend that globally and there is a real hunger out there for them so
we're working on eliminating all the barriers cost the Simplicity making it mobile first and much of the world you know people don't have computers if you don't think something you might take for a granted like everybody has a laptop no in a lot of the world everybody has a smartphone and so making an app that is specific to that so that and simple for people to
use you know this is this is what we're really about is allowing access and eliminating all those points of friction that keep people from having the opportunity participate in the markets that you know you know a lot of the people in the wealthier parts of the world take for granted you're right there even with the growth of Robin Hood it still seems like
there's a lot of barriers to entry to get into the world of Finance especially outside of the United States you know when you say Global Finance there's so many countries that want to get access to you know the U.S stock market and there's also cryptocurrencies as well when structure puts out a product like this and just says all right World invest in you know stocks or crypto is
there a place that you see as some of the first movers that are eager to get into this or you just sort of let it open to all countries well it's a mix it's a mix there's the hunger is there and particularly so this is an example one of the things that we do a lot of research on and are looking into is if you're in a high inflation country you want to transfer some of your
savings for instance because your tables are just deteriorating over time into a reliable asset and so it might be a stable coin could be Bitcoin could be you know Tesla something like this that even if your interest at first may not be that hey I want to make money I want to just not lose money on my savings I don't want to have a secure location to be
able to save money and maybe earn a slight return but their first staff is just not to lose money by holding it in cash whatever your cash equivalent is in your Locale and so regions like you know Nigeria Venezuela Argentina and Latin America and Africa so one is Market fit and finding out you know where people have this hunger which is a lot by the way the other side is
regulatory compliance we're very you know we're strong regulatory compliant company we believe in this and so when you have several hundred countries you've built several hundred regulatory environments in which you need to operate and so part of it is also finding those countries where the regulations and our approach fits well and we can work with the local
environment so that we make sure that we're doing everything legally and that our clients are protected and so you know that every step in the chain we're very compliant and our users are protected because you know it's it's one thing for a company with lawyers to do things that maybe are a little sketchy and you know I don't want to name any names out there but recent
history shows that a lot of you know there's been some sketchy activity in the in the crypto world and our approach is to say we want to protect both ourselves of course but more importantly we want to protect our users and make sure that there's not going to be some blowback for them because you know some companies has done something that gives them risk exposure of legally or
financially and so yeah matching those country bits and by the way as Chief strategy officer is one of my big challenges is to say you know we're a growing company we're available in over 80 countries right now and it's like okay what markets do we want to Target that we think best fit a model given our limited resources and then we grow we go okay that country looked good
and it worked well and now we'll go to similar countries and then you know see if we can replicate this success so we're right in that process right now of talking to lots of local people in different countries and setting up relationships and getting to know the learning about you know what's out on the ground and just as an example that your listeners may be interested or not
I don't know but like in Philippines and Indonesia which you know you work on a map you think geographically they're you know in similar places industrial completely different approaches to how they think about crypto how they think about money how they how they deploy money I mean they're just almost 180 degrees opposite and so really getting
that local knowledge and working with people on the ground is what we're focused on right now that's great to hear that you're you know staying in the lay of the law but also trying to make it easy for people that you know that they haven't even had a bank account or their their unbanked or underbanked you know not going through some tedious process that's even
more scrutinous than the banks in their in their local area and that's part of the reason why they haven't been a part of the financial system is because they don't have those credentials how do you balance that and like trying to onboard people easy with the user experience and not require too much information but ensure that you have the proper information for people that want
to put their funds in yeah well we don't actually we don't balance that because it's kyca now right like the as you everybody probably knows know your customer anti-money laundering is a real thing and so it's a huge barrier that in some places not so much in other places in fact we've been surprised I think that really good clearance in some geolocations in Africa where you
think oh this is going to be a problem turns out they're very good at it and part of it is how motivated are the people that you contact and it turns out when you get a motivated user base they tend to be clear at a pretty good rate and part of it is like some countries don't actually have like Photo IDs it's not a standard issue element and so
you know this may this makes it difficult but there's no hedging on kyc again some companies have done this we're not one of them you know we're koac compliant and AML compliant and we think that is important I think for the long-term growth of international finance and bringing on people on board that is one of the biggest areas is to say hey this is good
this is not just criminal activity this is there's all all kinds of real world use cases that people are desperate for and I think when companies try to cut Corners it damages everybody it gives the user the bad taste in their mouths that you know again expedited the investors get exposed to this they don't want to take the users get exposed to
risk and it looks bad in the Press so we're you know let's not do that let's be good players around the world definitely and once that procedure is passed and they want to start investing in the assets of their choice how much choice is there currently on structure in terms of just the top cryptos or all of the stocks or you know small cap coins and where do you limit that
yeah right now we are focused on some of the biggest blue chip stocks and crypto you recognize all the names you know Tesla but clone ethereum that right all the big names we are in the mode now it could be a part of it was just to test our system again globally right like we can't test them one time and go oh it works we have to test it many
times and so you know now we've got good good confirmation on that signal we're getting ready to add and by the end of probably fourth quarter this year we'll have a several hundred more assets from around the world and part of it we've been focused originally on you know noted us dots Google and apple things that people could recognize and go oh yes I know what that is I know
that's valuable stock I know it's safe and as we add many hundreds of more assets which we're just in the process of doing we also need to help educate our clients right so we don't want people coming on and randomly investing in things they've never heard of because they're there and so part of it is building out a responsible system of education and
Outreach and being able to say Hey you know we've added this class of stocks maybe from the Frankfurt exchange the decks in Germany and so you know here's some of the big ones here's their background here's why they may or may not be good Investments here's the market return over time so it's both a hey you know we could just throw up a thousand assets to go knock yourselves
out here but I think it's you know that may not be the most responsible approach a system where we're letting people bringing them on making sure we've got the top the Blue Chip stocks and helping people understand what it means to invest and participate in these markets okay that's crazy here and nice to see that you're continuing to add more
assets and you know sort of be a little choosy about you know what's there especially when people are just just getting in for their first time to make sure you know I've met numerous people that they just get into cryptocurrency and they have a portfolio of dog coins because they were going up and all of a sudden their portfolios were zero and usually that's a top signal for me but
You know good to stay Diversified it's nice that you also should be able to diversify outside of cryptocurrency within structure as well so that's great to hear now what would you say sort of the main difference if somebody was like oh well you know I use FTX as a cryptocurrency exchange and like I bought Bitcoin on there and I bought I also was able to buy a stock on there is
it similar or would you call it a cryptocurrency exchange or what would be that Main differentiator a couple a couple of differentiators one with free free trade so there's no fees coming or going so two the two we're gonna have vastly more stopped assets than they will and over time we want to build out other assets as well by bonds and
commodities for us it's just a bandwidth issue and also again education issue for our users right we don't want to just add you know foreign exchange trading with nothing I mean if they're famous people don't think you know trading Forex and then all of a sudden bad things happen to them you know so it is both a responsible way of adding them education
and educating our clients as we go along and so it would be a vastly greater array besides crypto we'll have all the crypto in that for instance fgx will have and but we'll have a lot more the other side is tokenization opens up I mean a whole range of possibilities the example that I like is let's say I'm going to find some nephews that just
graduated from college with tokenization I could send them some say hey I could send you some money here's some Apple stock here's some Google stuff put it in your wallet and you can hold that and then you know over time get you started on this journey of investing and earning returns and they and they're gonna it's their wallet it's held by them you know they have it and
just you can actually shift it this way it's like gifts you could use it as payments you can in the future be able to put it in the D5 protocols that maybe you don't want to earn interest on or do other sorts of investment opportunities so it's both A diversity of assets on platform will be much greater and then what you can do with those assets you
know off platform hold them in your wallet like I said giving these gifts reading their payment that's the real Vision that we have yeah wow and again more is coming that's really cool and speaking of sort of the defy and decentralized exchange movement which continues to grow is that a part of it now or planning to be a part of it where say
you can do a single-sided or earn on bitcoin or ethereum is if you bought some ethereum you're looking to hold it long term to get interest on that or sort of access liquidity pools or D5 protocols what structures stance on that so that's again we're not going to be right now we don't have that integrated on the platform but what when you tokenize a stock
what you do is you make it so the user can take it anywhere right it becomes available to interface with any D5 protocol that they want to interact with we're going to be partnering with some in the future as we integrate this more closely and as the protocol themselves develops because this is all new tokenization aspect of stocks and other assets but yeah this will open up
a whole world of possibilities for the users and part of it is to say you know you can buy a stock and hold it this is the traditional method if you're a wealthy investor today this is not what the their money managers do right like if you've got a hundred million dollars in BlackRock they don't put it in a shoe box labeled Apple stock right they are loaning against that
borrowing against that leveraging it against them they're doing a lot of sophisticated earning opportunities for their clients that the you know small investors should even a relatively large investor does not have access to with tokenization and then integrating with the D5 protocols this whole world of possibilities opens up there's a little more sophisticated
for people you know I think it will be a subset of our users that say Hey I want to go explore that world but that opportunity will be there and I think it's it's huge if you think about the U.S pension crime system against trillions and trillions mostly it just sits there as far as the user is can't see like if you have a pension fund or a 401k
but the big firm stated that you know again they're always using that money for something loaning and leveraging it liquidity using liquidity to gain interest and it's like why can't the little person do that we think they should be able to DPI makes that possible incredible and I'm looking forward to that it's almost like the next evolution of Robin Hood where not only getting
access to stocks you're getting access to the best financial products that the top firms in the world are using so I'm looking forward to that on structure Wes and for people that want to start trading whether they're in a developed country or anywhere in the world do they download the app and register through there or what's the best way to get
started yeah just go to structure.fi you can download the app Google Play Apple Store and yeah just follow the follow the simple steps and kyc will be there because of course we're kyc compliant so probably your listeners are familiar with this process and it's pretty pretty painless we've I think we've done a great job we've done a lot of work rather than smoothing
that process we're pretty you know a half tip to our engineers and our ux designers who've done a great job of making that a pretty pretty painless process yeah and then you're just you're ready to go and you can see the Assets in fact if you just download the app you can look at it before doing the kyc you can go through and see the assets that are on there see what you can do
Get a sense of what's coming you know get Market updates all this is built right in there right now you don't have to deposit money to see what you can do you can download the app and start scrolling around and messing around with it right now great and I will leave that link in the description box below as well thank you so much for the insights on structure
Phi and the global markets Wes appreciate you taking the time and let's follow up in the future oh great thanks Ashton appreciate it
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