With the swift pace of changes happening in the crypto sphere, it is vital to stay up to date. And what is a better way to do it than visiting an event where experts and entrepreneurs meet? That is why on June 9, 2023, SimpleSwap attended the Epic Web3 conference, which was held in Lisbon, Portugal. This event gives participants an opportunity to learn more from industry experts about marketing, AI, and user experience, as well as to share expertise and connect.

At the conference, our YouTube channel’s host talked with many representatives of the Crypto World, including Stefan George, who is the co-founder and CTO of Gnosis.

In this article, we have gathered the main points of this conversation.

Questions and answers

SimpleSwap: Hello Stefan! It's great to see you here.

Stefan George: Thanks for having me.

SimpleSwap: What company do you represent?

Stefan George: I represent Gnosis, we’re one of the first and largest application builders for blockchain. We started in 2015, it was even before Ethereum was live. Now we are building on top of this network. We are very close to the Ethereum community and are building many applications that can be used on it, but also other networks, including Safe, which is the number one multi-signature wallet used by literally every company in the space.

We are going to launch Gnosis Pay very soon, which effectively is a card that is tied to a crypto account. And when you tap and pay, you are actually doing a crypto transaction.

SimpleSwap: So it's a crypto transaction platform.

Stefan George: Exactly. So, as I said, it doesn't change your user behavior, so you can use a Gnosis Pay card like every other card, and become a crypto user.

SimpleSwap: How many active users do you have at the moment?

Stefan George: Well, it depends on what product we are talking about. Gnosis Pay is just going to launch, so it doesn't have any active users yet. Gnosis Chain has about 50,000 to 100,000 users. It has a few million sales deployed. For the crypto sphere, it's a lot.

SimpleSwap: It's a lot indeed. What are your expectations from the Epic Web3 Conference?

Stefan George: I think this is a great event to bring the community in Lisbon together and showcase what is going on in Portugal. I expect to meet a lot of great builders from the crypto community from both Portugal and also other countries. I think, especially now that the pandemic is over, it's really nice to meet again in person.

And I think they really have a really high-profile lineup. There are really interesting experts to talk to.

SimpleSwap: What's your opinion about crypto and blockchain? What do you think about those topics?

Stefan George: Well, I am in this space for a very long time, so I'm very biased. But I think crypto has potential that is still, unfortunately, not really surfaced. I've been very good at building applications for the crypto community, but now it's time to build something that can be more widely applied to everyone.

SimpleSwap: Would you be able to convince me to become a Web3 user?

Stefan George: I think we have to identify use cases that are more applicable on a daily basis. Right now, crypto is mostly used for speculation. So, if you are not a trader, then the 90% use case of crypto is not interesting for you. And most people don't care about speculation and trading.

So, we have to find other use cases and actually, we are looking right now at the use case of payments. Currently, even active crypto users still do a lot more regular credit card payments compared to crypto transactions. That is a use case that has been under-explored.

Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, described it as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that we should be able to use like cash, in his Bitcoin white paper.

But currently, even the biggest Bitcoin maximalists will not claim that it is actually used instead of cash or similarly to cash. We still have to innovate on this in order to actually make crypto more accessible on a daily basis.

SimpleSwap: It's a very good insight. What's your message to the people who have come all the way here to network in this great event?

Stefan George: Get the most out of it and talk to as many people as possible. I think that's the best way how to get validation of ideas and to get new ideas. Ultimately it's very important to meet people in person; that always makes a huge difference unlike communicating on Twitter, for example.

SimpleSwap: Thank you so much for your participation in the interview! We are looking forward to having another conversation in the future.

Stefan George: Thanks for having me.

You can read about Gnosis and its work in this article, and if you would like to see more SimpleSwap interviews, you will find them on our YouTube channel. For example, recently, we talked to the representatives of Coinstats and Metamask. Hurry up and check out the video!

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