Key takeaways
Brent Traidman, who co-founded BRD and sold it to Coinbase in 2021, is now taking Hopnow public after about ten months in stealth.
Hopnow combines FX, stablecoin liquidity, virtual accounts and compliance in one platform, and Traidman says it can onboard clients within a day or two.
Traidman says the company is limiting itself to LatAm, Africa and Southeast Asia, pointing to Coinbase's retreat from geographies it entered too quickly.
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Summary
After about ten months of quiet building, Brent Traidman explains HopNow's single cross-border money platform and why it is starting with three regions instead of going everywhere at once.
Brent Traidman, co-founder of BRD, the bitcoin wallet Coinbase acquired in 2021, is making one of the first public appearances for his new company, Hopnow. He says the team spent about ten months building in stealth and is now going to be "a little more out there."
From wallet to infrastructure
Brent Traidman says he and his brother started BRD as the first Bitcoin wallet in 2014 and 2015, then sold it to Coinbase in 2021. About ten years ago he worked as a head of sales and VP of sales at Vista Equity Partners portfolio companies. He says the team's background was his main reason for joining Hopnow: its members have worked at Coinbase, Anchorage Digital, Stripe, Uber and Goldman Sachs.
“It's like three things are the most important, the team, the team, and the team, and that's it.”
Brent TraidmanOne platform, fast onboarding
Hopnow set out to build one platform covering FX, liquidity, bank or virtual accounts, compliance and connectivity. Brent Traidman says "nothing existed" that did all of that. Clients can get fiat access in USD, euro, pounds and Singapore Dollars and convert to or from stablecoins. Traidman says onboarding takes a day or two and that delivering value within 24-48 hours is "huge."
He calls stablecoins "table stakes" internal tooling. Fortune 100 companies once told him that moving money across borders took thirty days and cost them 5%, he says, and five years later they are finally acting.
Discipline over reach
Brent Traidman says Coinbase entered too many geographies at once, failed in some of them and had to pull back, wasting time and money. Hopnow is focusing on three regions, LatAm, Africa and Southeast Asia. Its target customers are fintechs, PSPs, remittance companies, neobanks, payroll and employer-of-record firms, and import-export freight companies.
Next stop, Mexico City
The founders, who are based in New York and San Francisco, plan to meet in Mexico City for a stablecoin event on Monday with some of their partners, Brent Traidman says.
Brent Traidman presents Hopnow as a company built on lessons from Coinbase: launch in a small set of corridors, get them right, and only then expand. In his words, nailing those corridors and verticals "gives us the right to move on to another one."
Hopnow, Coinbase, Stripe, and Uber come up most.
- People
- Brent Traidman
- Zach Fowler
- Alexi Gao
- Drew Rogers
- Jaun Lam
- Lei Yan
- Companies
- Hopnow
- Coinbase
- Stripe
- Uber
- Y Combinator
- Anchorage Digital
- Goldman Sachs
- Vista Equity Partners
- Airbnb
- BRD
- Afterpay
- Block.one
- Dfns
- FalconX
