Ripple

Stefan Thomas got into crypto seven years before this interview through StumbleUpon, the serendipitous web discovery platform. He created "What Is Bitcoin?"—a viral educational video that garnered 10 million total views across two versions. The video's success led him to found WeUseCoins.com, the largest website for Bitcoin novices at the time. He also created BitcoinJS, an open-source library maintained and used by major Bitcoin businesses like BitPay and Blockchain.info.

Thomas eventually joined Ripple as CTO before the company was even incorporated—his first paychecks came from founder Chris's previous company PayPal account. He became part of the founding team, earning equity in the process. When his role at Ripple created a conflict of interest with running WeUseCoins, Thomas made the principled decision to sell the website to someone more committed to Bitcoin's vision. The sale didn't make him significant money by crypto standards—less than his annual Ripple salary.

Thomas witnessed Bitcoin's limitations firsthand. Transaction fees that once justified the "really low transaction fees" message in his famous video climbed to several dollars. Rather than push pure blockchain ideology, he and Ripple pivoted to solving real financial problems: interoperability between fragmented payment systems.

Ripple licenses software to banks—from small regional institutions to Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (the fourth largest bank in the world). Their first major public use case: a partnership between Thai commercial bank ACM and Japan's SBI Remit, allowing 45,000 Thai expats in Japan to send money home at one-tenth the previous cost. The model works because it doesn't ask banks to abandon their existing infrastructure; instead, Ripple becomes the connective tissue between incompatible systems—"like Zapier for global payments."

With $94 million in funding and a team exceeding 170 people, Ripple charges licensing fees based on transaction volume through their system, with flat-fee and percentage components adjusted for strategic bank partners. Thomas credits their narrow focus—payments, not 144 possible use cases—for achieving real traction and network effects. The company positions itself as solving endemic problems in cross-border payments: 6-10% failure rates from incorrect recipient details, zero visibility into payment status, unpredictable fees, and settlement times measured in days rather than hours.