Redefining Mortgage Lending for a Global Audience Through Crypto with Milo’s Josip Rupena

Episode Overview

​Josip Rupena is the founder and CEO of Milo, a financial technology company that is reimagining the way global consumers access mortgage credit and financial solutions in a borderless world.

Before establishing Milo, Josip built a robust career in the financial services industry, holding significant roles at prominent institutions. He served as a Private Wealth Manager at Morgan Stanley, where he specialized in managing assets for high-net-worth individuals. Prior to that, he gained valuable experience at Goldman Sachs, contributing to his deep understanding of investment strategies and client relations

In 2019, leveraging his extensive background in finance, Josip founded Milo with the vision of transforming the mortgage landscape for global and crypto consumers. Recognizing the challenges faced by international clients and cryptocurrency holders in securing traditional home loans, Milo offers innovative solutions that cater to these underserved markets. The company has successfully raised $24 million from leading venture investors, including M13, QED, Metaprop, and 10X Capital, underscoring the confidence in Josip’s vision and Milo’s potential to disrupt the financial services industry.

Under Josip’s leadership, Milo has introduced groundbreaking products such as the crypto mortgage, enabling clients to leverage their digital assets to purchase real estate in the United States. This innovative approach not only provides liquidity options for crypto investors but also bridges the gap between traditional finance and the emerging digital economy. Josip’s forward-thinking strategies and commitment to financial inclusivity have positioned Milo at the forefront of fintech innovation, offering tailored solutions that meet the evolving needs of a global clientele.

Episode Transcript

Josip Rupena: You know, fintech and lending and sort of all these categories. Right. You know, we’re licensed as a lender. We’ve got money transmission licenses. We’ve got FinCEN licenses, right? We’ve got, you know, over a dozen and a half licenses to be able to do what we do.  so that governs a lot of the.

Kevin Rosenquist : You went to the University of Miami if you’re a football fan. Condolences on the loss last weekend. We’re recording this on November 12th. It’ll probably be outdated by the time it goes up, but, Yeah. Condolences.Yeah.

Josip Rupena: Heartfelt. It seems that,  every season for the last 20 years, Georgia Tech’s the one thing that I circle on the calendar, kind of knowing that,  if we get past that one, then, then we’re probably in good shape. And if,  if not, then it’ll be back to rebuilding.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah, they’re kind of rebuilding.  They’re kind of a giant killer. Like, I feel like, you know, they kind of just have that reputation about them. So it’s still. You still got the. You still got a great chance of going to the playoffs. No, no, no issues there for sure. But I did notice also when you were at Miami that you played tennis while you were there, you were on the tennis team. Do you feel like having that kind of level of experience in sports helps you in being a founder and a leader?

Josip Rupena: Absolutely. I mean, I think that, you know, growing up, you know, starting to play tennis when I was nine years old, you know, had the good fortune to be able to travel around the country, around the world. I met lots of people,  and,  you know, as, as Federer recently said in one of his speeches, right, you know, probably lost a lot more matches than I won over that period of time and, you know, lost a lot more points than I won.  but the ones that counted are probably the ones that I won and, you know, had had a good junior career and had the opportunity to play tennis in college. And, you know, that aspect of kind of losing and then having to get back up and then, you know, starting again and then doing it again and doing it again and having a good week. But then, you know, you got to prove yourself every single week, week in and week out.  I think that that’s definitely a big function of it. And it’s never really over until you decide that it’s over, right? You always have a shot. I think that that mindset is really, really powerful.

Kevin Rosenquist : I’ve always been a tennis fan. I’m not very good at it. I try, but I’m not very good at it. And but I, I’m always I always kind of am amazed because other sports, you know, we just talked about football. You can rely on your teammates to pick you up when things go wrong. If you’re having a bad day, you can rely on the running game versus the passing game, whatever sport you want to pick. Tennis is unique, and unless you’re playing doubles, you’re on your own. You’re on an island out there.

Josip Rupena: Yeah, yeah, I think definitely the points in itself when you’re on, when you’re on the court, right, you’re playing, you’re by yourself. But, you know, I think people don’t realize how much of a team sport actually tennis is. And by team, I mean, you know, your physical trainer, your psychologist. Right. Your family, your coach. Right. If you look at the really successful players that have had longevity on the tour. Right. The Rogers, the Rafas. Right. Like all these players, even, you know Novak. Right. Their box. Like there’s not enough seats in that box right.

Kevin Rosenquist : I know yeah they’re packed.

Josip Rupena: Yeah. So a big part of it is like, you know, tennis on the court is very lonely. But the journey through the whole year, right, playing, you know, in 30 different cities,  you know, they can’t really do it without a team, which is why they always say, you know, thank you to my team. And people are like, well, what do you mean, the team? Well, you.

Kevin Rosenquist : Did everything.

Josip Rupena: Right. When you have a bad match, right, they come, they console you, they pick you back up. Right? When you go back home, right, your kids give you a hug and kind of say, hey, like, tennis is tennis, but this is life, right? So those are the things that it is a team sport. Right. And I think that,  the really successful players that can stay around for a long time, I think that that’s the reason why.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. Yeah. Very good point. All right. So let’s talk about Milo. What motivated you to focus on international and crypto native clients in the mortgage space?

Josip Rupena: Yeah. So so I started from from a traditional finance background.  you know, being that I grew up playing tennis, I got to make a lot of friends with lots of people around the world. And,  once I finished school, I had a chance to go work for some some large investment banks and worked with high net worth individuals and individuals and institutions and seeing it from a pretty traditional finance perspective, ten, 12 years into that journey, you know, sort of seeing some efficiencies, inefficiencies and opportunities. And where I really got comfortable was really thinking about mortgages for international clients, seeing some of the challenges that these were wealthy individuals, yet they still couldn’t access financial products like everyone else here in the US, primarily because they didn’t have a Social Security number. They didn’t have tax returns, right? They didn’t have conventional things in the US, but it didn’t mean that they weren’t qualified. It’s just that the system didn’t really know how to qualify them. And through the journey of sort of starting Milo, right, saw similar things in the crypto space with crypto consumers.

Josip Rupena: Now, I had been involved in the crypto ecosystem much earlier. I just didn’t have an opportunity to basically combine it into a company or something that I thought needed to be built. And, you know, we started asking people questions, you know, do you have crypto? And then, you know, we got the silence of, well, why? Right, right. Why are you asking me this? And then ultimately got really comfortable with the idea that, you know, these were individuals that were very qualified, They had a mass bitcoin. It started off being a small portion of their net worth and had become the majority of their net worth. And then now they’re in this next phase of their life trying to buy a home. And they couldn’t. Which again, strangely enough, right. These are very wealthy individuals. They just have a very different kind of wealth and felt that, you know, what the first iteration of our product was, which was for international clients. We could apply some of those lessons and come out with a crypto mortgage, some of the pain points as well.

Kevin Rosenquist : And, you know, you kind of talked about the traditional space that the mortgage industry is. And, you know, we talked a little bit before we hit record about the volatile, volatile nature of people’s opinions on crypto. What were some of the challenges that you faced initially in trying to sort of bridge this gap, if you will? Well, I.

Josip Rupena: Think the biggest one in the beginning was regulatory, right? I had there’s a lot of limitations. You know, I think that mortgage mortgage is very complex because you’ve got, you know, the desires of a customer. You’ve got their ability to qualify, then you’ve got to be able to merge lots and lots of capital, right, to do these transactions. And then you’ve got the regulatory side which overhangs everything where there’s limitations. You want to do right from a product perspective where you say, well, if I’m lending my own capital I should be able to do anything. Well, fortunately the US government and different bodies say, well, you can’t really do that. And I think this is primarily because of some of the sins of the past, right? In 2009, 2010, they didn’t just put a little bit of regulation. I think they went really, really far over and made innovation really, really difficult.

Kevin Rosenquist : Wait, wait, wait, are you saying that the American government overcorrects when something goes wrong? No way, no way. Right.

Josip Rupena: Maybe shocking to people that it also happened in mortgage amongst all the others.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. That’s true. Yeah, yeah. But yeah.

Josip Rupena: No, definitely over-corrected and,  you know, as we were thinking about how do we make this great product, we started off with this incredible version of what we thought this could be. And then,  you know, started to encounter all of these different sort of roadblocks and, and some things were more blockers than others. And then ultimately having to come out with something that we felt could, could really get off the ground. And then we did that.  doesn’t mean we, we don’t continue to try to pursue, you know, kind of what that innovation looks like. And, you know, I think that that’s why we’re a little bit more optimistic right now around space and even what a crypto mortgage 2.0 looks like.  in a world where maybe some of that regulatory, you know, does start to start to shift back to maybe something that’s more balanced. That’s a big, big roadblock.  you know, with I would say, you know, fintech and lending and sort of all these categories, right? You know, we’re licensed as a lender. We’ve got money transmission licenses. We’ve got FinCEN licenses, right. We’ve got, you know, you know, over a dozen and a half licenses,  to be able to do what we do.  So that governs a lot of what’s necessary.

Kevin Rosenquist : You guys kind of like, you know, hit your stride or like, kind of came about as a company kind of right around the same time all the bad stuff happened with, uh.

Josip Rupena: It was great timing.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, like, it’s interesting because the reputation of crypto at the time was, was, was about as low as it’s been in a long time. Was it difficult to get rolling because of that.

Josip Rupena: I mean, we had built, you know, a good business over a couple of years prior to launching the crypto mortgage. And that’s what allowed us to, you know, be able to raise a $7 million seed round and then, you know, $17 million series A,  you know, we announced this product in sort of January of 22 and really took it live in in April and really had a few really good months there of momentum and lots of amazing conversations and speaking to thousands of individuals that had, you know, both Bitcoin and Ethereum and a whole host of other digital assets and really felt that we could do a lot of really good stuff for a lot of people. And then obviously, you know, FTX and BlockFi and all the other unfortunate things that happen in the industry,  alongside interest rates moving, you know, almost, you know, 4 to 500 basis points.

Kevin Rosenquist : That’s a good point. Yeah. At the same time. Yeah. Yeah.

Josip Rupena: When we originally launched this product, you know, we were mapping to be, you know, like 3 to 4% interest rate.  and, you know, our first transactions were really in the fives, right? We were in the fours and fives. And, you know, within a quarter and a half,  that was closer to a seven and an eight. And, you know, today they’re sort of in that eight to 8 to 9 range.  so, so rates really, really pushed back up. And I think that that changed the math for a lot of individuals,  with what they were comfortable paying on a monthly basis. And I think the end result,  for anybody that took out a crypto mortgage with us at that time, has been spectacular.  but it definitely, you know, changed how people thought about the product. And,  during that period of time, I think there was still a lot of consumers recalibrating, you know, on thinking, you know, rates are 3%. Why are you telling me five? That seems high and only for the market to then say, you know, you know, forward to today or and say, I wish I have a five, right?

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, my wife’s a realtor, so I’m a little bit connected to that, to that stuff. So I hear you, are you guys sort of a lone pioneer in this space? Do you see other companies moving in this direction?

Josip Rupena: When we announced it, you know, we definitely saw companies that were starting to look at the space. I think that, you know, kind of the market dynamics changed that.  you know, I would say that we’re probably the company that’s sort of pioneered this space, this category.  I was always hoping that more companies would venture into it, because I think that that’s how you get more creativity and then, you know, you get better ideas. And,  you know, I think in the end, who wins is, is the customer.  but I would say that probably today we’re the ones that have the most amount of bitcoin for clients right into the tens of millions of dollars. Right? Done. Well over $30 million in transactions. And, and really,  you know, collected thousands of payments now from customers and have a lot of insights into, into what we’re doing. So I would say on that basis alone, that would probably make us the leader in space. Um.

Kevin Rosenquist : So, so for customers using crypto as a collateral, how does Milo manage the volatility of those assets? That’s a tricky situation I’m sure.

Josip Rupena: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think for us, the way that we thought about it is, you know, if you take, you know, real estate as a, as a category, right. And as an asset, right. It’s relatively stable, right? Over longer periods of time. I appreciate it. And then on the other side, right. You’ve got Bitcoin which you know is much more volatile however liquid right. So that was one of the things that we really got excited about was being able to combine both right. Something that is uh fairly stable.  and then something that was more was more liquid. And so for us, it was really important for us that customers would be able to continue to basically have the upside of the Bitcoin as well as the real estate. And we wanted to solve it so that people didn’t have to put a down payment. Right. So just to kind of give you a high level of the product that someone wants to buy $1 million home, we can finance the whole transaction, right? 100% of the transaction, which, as you know, in traditional finance doesn’t really exist. It used to exist from 2008 2009. That didn’t end up so well.

Kevin Rosenquist : Right? So good. Yeah.

Josip Rupena: For lenders.  But in our case, you know, we looked at and we said, well, if we’ve got both real estate and Bitcoin, we can get comfortable with,those thresholds. Right. If basically lending a larger amount.  However, you know, we would have some impact of volatility around the Bitcoin prices if they were to basically go down dramatically. And in our case, right with this version of the product, it was, you know, if it would fall down 65%,  then, you know, the individual would have to either bring down the loan balance or they would have to contribute more, more Bitcoin. What that meant in the early days, the first transaction that we had, we had some people that proactively posted more Bitcoin. And then it hasn’t looked back since then. Right. You know Bitcoin prices have been up and to the right. And you know what that has meant for a lot of people is that now they have significant amounts of both collateral. The value of the real estate has gone up. And you know, I think they’ve been very, very happy with that outcome. Because if Milo wouldn’t have existed at that point in time. They probably would have sold the bitcoin, right? They probably could have sold the bitcoin at, you know, somewhere between 15 and 25,000. Now looking at it, you know, significantly higher. On top of that they probably would have realized capital gains taxes on it.  so, you know, the math would have just I think they would be feeling a lot worse than me with Georgia Tech.

Kevin Rosenquist :  blocks.  we call it a callback in the industry.

Josip Rupena:  so. So, yeah. And we’ve seen it, right? I mean, we, you know, recently, you know, we’re always talking to to our clients, right? You know, we’ve had numerous clients that, you know, have now gotten multiple other properties and, you know, continue to work with us. And,  you know, given that this is a unique offering, right? They can’t actually access something like this from, you know, another company out there, right. A rocket or, or any other type of sort of mortgage lender out there.  you know, with someone, you know, buying a $2 million home, US financing 100% of that transaction. You know the Bitcoin where they posted $2 million of bitcoin, which is now closer to $6 million of bitcoin, and the value of the property having gone up 500,000 from from that period of time. You know, when you when you look at the math and you say, well, they didn’t pay 30% capital gains taxes on the 30, right? So they saved $600,000 on the taxes. They appreciated $ 500,000 on the on the property value. They picked up $4 million on the bitcoin.

Josip Rupena: Right. You know, it’s over 5 million plus for them. They’ve gotten to rent out the house. They’ve kept the bitcoin right. It’s really a magical outcome for them. Yeah. Because they would have been in a very very different position. And the incredible part is they always wanted to keep the bitcoin right. That’s how they amassed the majority of their net worth. But not only that but even if they made $500,000 just on the property alone right. Like let’s just discount all that other part. They didn’t put any dollars. Right? If you put 100,000 and you make 500,000, right. That’s a great return. But if you put What’s. What’s your return? Right. It’s so I think that that was the part where,  you know, as we kind of, like, look back on it, right? You know, the performance has been so much better than we could have ever modeled out and imagined for, for so many clients. Right. Which has been, you know, as a founder and starting and building things. Right. You know, an incredible experience for us and our team.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. No doubt. And I mentioned before that we’re recording this on November 12th. So a week ago there was a rather big election that happened. And we don’t talk about politics on this show. But no matter how you feel about that, he Donald Trump has been kind of called like a crypto friendly candidate. And certainly we’ve seen what is it, almost almost 90,000 or something like that. Now I think last I saw,  I have some bitcoin, I wish I had more, I wish I had gotten more before, but  from a broader perspective, what do you see as the future of crypto integration with traditional financial services? Is this a temporary blip, or do you think this is more of a larger trend that we’re going to see.

Josip Rupena: You know Bitcoin’s been around now for 1415 years right. So it’s not a new asset class. Right. I think that that’s what’s pretty remarkable about it is that, you know, people still talk about Bitcoin or, you know, ask me questions about bitcoin as if it was just invented, you know, last week.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. There’s a lot of there’s we’ve talked about on the show before. Heavy lack of education when it comes to cryptocurrency.

Josip Rupena: Yeah yeah. so I think that that’s changing. I remember I was at a conference, you know, incredibly, you know, almost exactly a year ago, it was a Benzinga conference in New York.  and it was just before the ETFs and Bitcoin. And, you know, they had a number of commissioners right on different panels. And, you know, what do you think? Is this going to happen or we don’t know. And you know, and there was still a lot of doubt whether whether, you know, we would actually get,  a regulated sort of Bitcoin ETF. And if you think about everything that’s happened over that period of time,  and the acceleration of it, the adoption of it, right, you know, Blackrock and all these larger institutions and how that’s been that’s positively impacted Coinbase’s business. You’re just starting to get that movement around traditional finance companies, and you’re seeing all these big asset managers that now have trillions of dollars that they need to deploy into different asset classes. And, you know, they can’t write checks of 10 million, right? They can’t write checks of 100 million. They have to write checks of 10 billion. Right? 20 billion, 30 billion. So I think that there’s an outside of, you know, maybe real estate and some other categories. You know, the investable universe needs larger asset classes, right? And I think Bitcoin as it continues to appreciate. Right. And Bitcoin’s market cap is about 1.6 trillion.

Josip Rupena: You know just past silver as a commodity right. As a category the world needs something like this. Right. Where there is a store of value that is maybe held outside of just dollars. So I think that as all of this is happening and you’re starting to hear, you know, we might have a reserve write in bitcoin, right? The US government already owns a lot of bitcoin directly. But you know it looks like even more. You’re starting to see, you know countries around the world and sovereign Nations deciding to both mine and hold Bitcoin. I think that there’s just going to be significantly more buyers for Bitcoin. And we know Bitcoin will only have 21 million bitcoin right ever right in circulation. Right. So that was a lot of my thesis around starting the crypto mortgage product which was if you have Bitcoin you’re going to want to hold it for as long as possible. If you want to buy a home that might shake you for holding your Bitcoin. But if I can solve for that, you’re probably going to be very happy after five, ten, 20 years of holding both of those asset classes, because I think that there’s just going to be a lot more big buyers that are going to want to get access to it, and there’s just not going to be enough of it. Which supply demand. Right. Should be pretty good for processing.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. I would say so what do you feel? You mentioned Ethereum earlier. There’s some other coins out there. I mean, lots, lots of coins out there. There’s a lot of different things going on. Do you, do you see this trend kind of going with, you know, with other forms of crypto as well. Or do you kind of see like it as, as Bitcoin and then everybody else?

Josip Rupena: I think it depends. Right. I mean, I think that crypto is crypto is an amazing ecosystem, right? There’s all of this innovation and ideation and you know, some of it right. That has been done outside of sort of the regulatory framework, which, you know, is always a very difficult challenge for anybody that’s in fintech, right. Saying like, do you spend all the capital you have on legal only to end up in a place where they tell you? Well, I think maybe I guess,  with no one really ever being able to give you a definitive answer. Right? You know, you know, where are me? Is is it good or not good, right? Like, you know, you always get to this place where you kind of have to figure it out. And, you know, a lot of things that have happened in the crypto ecosystem, they bypass all that and they go straight into building and seeing if the world actually actually wants the product. And,  you know, I think that that, that consideration around how people build and, you know how they get projects off the ground. I think in the crypto ecosystem, I think it’s just different than anything else out there.

Kevin Rosenquist : Do you see other mainstream banks following suit and adopting similar models?

Josip Rupena: I think there’s a lot of debate around that. You know, I think there’s a lot of debate whether, you know, the world needs other stablecoins or different stablecoins,  and Bitcoin and, you know, kind of to, to answer your kind of maybe the point earlier right around the sort of other other digital assets, right, in Ethereum and, and others.  I think there’s going to be a lot of experimentation. Right. And how people get objects off the ground. Right? It might mean through a token offering, right? It might be through something where it’s not just there right. That’s why every one of these tokens, you know, ends up creating its own ecosystem, maybe for its own use case.  and, and it’s early right, to see how that’s turned out. Right. You’ve seen, you know, Bitcoin first, right, then Ethereum and then Solana and now many others that are, that are, that are behind it, right, that are building great ecosystems for their own use cases.  you know, I think the think the banks have been looking at it.  the reality is that in the US, money works pretty well.  you know, maybe not as optimally as people would expect, but, you know, if you want to basically go and buy something, right, you’re going to be able to swipe your card and it’ll magically it it works.  there may be fees associated with it, which again, you know, that goes to efficiency and revenue. Right? And all these magical fun, you know, finance words.  But, you know, it’s it generally, I think there will continue to be issues of tokens for different use cases to try to get, you know, flywheels going.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good point. Good point. It is Ethereum. Is it a legitimate number two to bitcoin?

Josip Rupena: I think so. It’s been the rails for so many other people to be able to build on. Right. So so it created that right. The evolution of smart contracts and people basically building l2’s. You know some to maybe the maybe not as positively impacting, you know, Ethereum You know, L1. However, I think it’s been necessary, and I think that you know what they did right in 2014. Right. Basically launching that, I think it fundamentally changed everything. And it gave people a new tool of how you think you build. And I think that that’s the other thing that’s really incredible about the crypto ecosystem, is that there’s so many things that you could possibly do today that maybe you could have done a year ago, right, or five years ago. Right. Or six years. Right. With, with this ecosystem. So I’m very optimistic around, you know, what are the things that are going to be built that change experiences for both consumers. Right. A year from now, five years from now, ten years from now. And,  you know, I think banks are looking at it. I think they’re more, I want to say, scared, but I think that that aspect of being very cautious and needing to have all the answers because they have a legacy business is what basically puts them at a very distinct disadvantage. Right? To to new builders.

Kevin Rosenquist : For fintech companies exploring asset backed lending or crypto native products. What lessons can you share from your experience about understanding and serving a niche market like this?

Josip Rupena: That’s a great question. I definitely understanding the regulatory landscape and framework and how these things. Right. I mean, I think that when you talk about lending as a category, right, and anywhere else, right, you tell someone $1 million, it’s a big number, right? You tell someone, I know it’s a big number. But when you talk about that in the context of lending, right. And even in our specific category, you talk about mortgages, right? You know, Milos originated, you know, a few hundred million dollars of mortgages, right? That’s a lot and a lot of millions. And I think we’re just starting. Right. And if you think about like, the asset class. Right. And anybody that’s in lending, right, you say, hey, you know we did a billion. So that’s a ginormous number.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah.

Josip Rupena: So then how do you think about, you know, keeping collateral safe. How do you think about obviously keeping the client’s best interest at heart as you’re building these products and making sure that everything is compliant and, and that the company itself is going to be around right when the customer comes back to back to you, right? A couple years from now. Five years from now. That’s really, really, really important. So we’ve always basically optimized around being incredibly conservative with all the things that we do, because we know we need to be around for our clients. And I think that in other areas outside of lending and outside of regulation, where you do, you don’t need licenses and things, you can definitely move a lot faster and it’s okay to break things. I think in this case, you know, you can’t really break things because there are people that are counting on you. So you just have to have to be mindful.

Kevin Rosenquist : All right. It’s time to put on your Nostradamus cap. Fintech. Finance, technology. The world as a whole is changing at a rapid rate. We all know that. What does your gut say about where we’re heading? What’s the next big domino to fall as AI and crypto continue to evolve?

Josip Rupena: Yeah. I mean, I think that this convergence between AI and crypto, I think it’s I think it’s incredible. I mean, I think a lot of the stuff that we’re working here at Milo and, you know, some of the experiences for our consumers, I think they’re just going to be significantly different than what we could have imagined, you know, 18 months ago. Yeah.  so I think that that’s still sort of flushing itself how that’s going to be,  or how it’s going to play out. But if you think about what crypto does, it creates this transparency on blockchains and creates a lot of smart contracts and ability that you could do. And then when you incorporate AI into that, you now start to change how the experiences are, because now you don’t necessarily need to rely on some human capital right, to do certain functions that in the past you would say you need to have a massive operations team to be able to do one, two and three. Well, now you can actually do that. You can validate that it’s actually been done. It’s transparent and it’s infinitely scalable. And now it can move across borders. So I think the world becomes a lot flatter.

Kevin Rosenquist : Oh no don’t worry. We’re not a flat earth theory show but uh exactly.

Josip Rupena: But stablecoins are proving that point right. That now some of these borders don’t, don’t, don’t really exist as much. Right. With money, which, you know, we saw that from the beginning, where if you say you’re a high net worth individual and you want to invest here, right, you know, capital will go where the opportunities are, right? And the US has always been that great place for opportunities.  and you know, I think with crypto and I think that that’s only going to continue to accelerate. And I hope it creates a lot more transparency because I think from a consumer perspective, there’s been a lot of distrust in some of these institutions. And, you know, we don’t really talk about our banks having issues today, but we know there’s rumblings, right? You know, we saw a couple of things that happened last year with, with, and with some banks. Right. That didn’t really make it. You know, I think there would have been more transparency. I think that that would have strengthened consumer trust. And so I think this is where that convergence of, you know, what is possible with both crypto and blockchains and some of this technology that’s out there,  that I think will get people comfortable and maybe, maybe invest and take risk in different ways.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. You’re not wrong. I mean, everybody’s definitely there’s just a vibe in the world right now of the status quo not being what we want necessarily anymore. We’re not satisfied with traditional lending, with traditional, you know, ways of educating. I mean, you can go down the rabbit hole with all that, all that stuff. And certainly crypto offers up an alternative to what we all see as traditional finance. It also a lot about financial inclusion, which you could do which obviously you’re giving opportunities to, you know, international people who want to invest in American mortgages and real estate. Do you see crypto continuing to help with financial inclusion and making it, you know, better across the globe?

Josip Rupena: Absolutely. I mean, I think that, you know, as you have more data, as that data is easily accessible, right? You can offer different, different product experiences. You can qualify a different set of individuals that maybe through a traditional landscape, you know, saying here you’ve got a Social Security number, you’ve got, you know, a certain credit score, right? You can qualify. Well, there’s a lot of other data points, and there’s been a number of really fantastic fintechs that have been able to take advantage of that and utilize that to, to be able to offer credit  to, to a lot of individuals that maybe, maybe couldn’t. And I think that’s, that’s what I hope that as this future and sort of this in the world. Right. Money can move seamlessly to where the opportunities are and where you can then quantify, you know, things from a risk adjusted basis, have a fair return and but ultimately have fair trades. Right. You know, capital. And when you lend capital to someone, they want to achieve something. And then you want to minimize your risk around it. How do we assess what is fair. Right. Like, you know, why is the rate 3% and why not 10% or 15%? Well, I think that generally that’s just because inefficiencies exist with capital, right? You know, an example of that is, you know, why are mortgage rates different in the US than they are in Canada, or they are in Europe or in South America, right. If capital flows freely, then obviously you’re just thinking about, you know, risk adjusted returns and currency risk and other things like that. But, you know, capital should want to be deployed in some of those markets because you might be able to get a return. That’s fair. And, you know, I think that that starts to change a lot of things and not just here, here in the US. Right. So I think crypto has a real opportunity and start to go into space and start to create new ideas that didn’t exist. And that makes a big difference.

Kevin Rosenquist : Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. So if someone listening wants to be curious about what you do over at Milo, what’s the best way to get started?

Josip Rupena: So I think the best thing is probably going to our website at Milo io. I’m also on Twitter. On LinkedIn, my DMs are always open. So happy to talk to anybody if they’ve got great ideas. And how do we make this better for hopefully lots and lots and lots of people around the world.

Kevin Rosenquist : Well, the company is Milo. Joseph, thanks so much for joining me. Really really interesting stuff. Can’t wait to see where it goes.

Josip Rupena: Wonderful. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.