TLDR

In this episode of BidCast, Jason Kam interviews Xin Yan, CEO of Sign Protocol, discussing the company's revenue model, growth strategies, and the importance of community building. Xin shares insights into TokenTable's business, which generates significant revenue through claiming fees and OTC transactions. The conversation also explores Sign Protocol's attestation platform for government services and the potential of tokenized stocks. Xin emphasizes the emotional value of community and the company's vision for the future, aiming to create a strong brand and foster crypto adoption globally.

Chapters / Timeline

• 00:00 Opening

• 01:06 Introduction to Sign Protocol and Revenue Overview

• 04:11 TokenTable's Business Model and Market Positioning

• 07:05 Growth Strategies and Future Projections

• 10:10 Sign Protocol's Attestation Platform and Government Partnerships

• 12:55 Revenue Models and Profit Allocation

• 15:52 Community Building and Long-term Vision

• 28:40 Building Community and Emotional Value

• 34:43 Strategies for Community Engagement

• 39:25 Government Partnerships and Revenue Potential

• 45:06 Future Growth and Opportunities

• 52:59 Summary of Key Insights and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

<<Jason Kam (01:06)>>:

Ok, we are live. Welcome to another episode of BidCast. I'm your host, Jason Kam, AKA @MapleLeafCap Today is May 15, 2025, 5.15 PM Hong Kong time. BidCast is being live streamed to BidClub members. Questions are from the members and my own. Today I'm speaking with Xin, the co-founder of Sign Protocol. Xin, welcome.

<<Xin Yan (01:31)>>:

Hey, thanks Jason.

<<Jason Kam (01:33)>>:

Yeah, well, congrats on the TGE. I'm sure it's a long time in the making. We're going to dive right into it. I want to talk about the business that you run currently. ⁓ Remind us and the listeners again, what's the revenue that you're run rating exiting 2024 and what is it running today?

<<Xin Yan (01:51)>>:

Yeah, we have like two business, TokenTable and Sign, which we're building like digital infrastructure for nations and companies. But last year, most of our revenue come from TokenTable, which is a token distribution platform. And our business model is pretty simple. Like say, every time when you claim AirDrop, the most likely you're claiming from TokenTable and you pay us like a point five dollar or something. And so last year we make $15 million and this year I think we're going to definitely make more.

<<Jason Kam (02:21)>>:

Got it. Sorry, and that's $15 million on maybe 50 cents on an airdrop, I guess, across 30 million wallets. That's kind of how you calculate it.

<<Xin Yan (02:32)>>:

Yeah, yeah. just, most of the revenue come from like, claiming fee, AirDrop claiming fee, but we also do some OTC because we also handle the unlocking part, right? So for the unlocking part, it's ⁓ natural if we we broke, do the brokerage and make a OTC transaction fee from both sides. And combined makes 15 million.

<<Jason Kam (02:58)>>:

Got it. What's the split between the fees you charge for OTC versus the actual kind of claiming fee?

<<Xin Yan (03:05)>>:

60 % of claiming fee.

<<Jason Kam (03:08)>>:

Oh wow, So OTC, you charge 2.5%, 5%, something like that?

<<Xin Yan (03:14)>>:

Yeah, 2.5 % from each side and ⁓ without spread.

<<Jason Kam (03:20)>>:

Wow.

Wow. OK. I mean, that's real revenue. That's how much is that? That's like a couple million dollars of OTC. And how much notional was that? I guess if you just run the math, that's like 100 million plus of notional that exchange hands through you. OK. And that business is zero in 2023?

<<Xin Yan (03:40)>>:

Yeah,

Yeah, in 2023 we haven't started and last year I think the demand is actually growing a lot because we have been seeing all the VC tokens are Launch was very high valuation. So VC actually think about oh, why not? just I'm just selling all the locked token. Also like all the other deal size is pretty big. So it's easier for us to doing this  sure

<<Jason Kam (03:58)>>:

Hmm.

Got it. And

then on the 10 million, that's TokenTable fee claims. That's $0.50 on, I guess, $20 million. OK.

<<Xin Yan (04:19)>>:

Yeah, it's more than that because for some

of important partners, we have revenue share. So last year we distributed a token to 14 million addresses and the number largely come from TON ecosystem because TON ecosystem usually the project have super large airdrop like addresses. So like last year, I think we cover about 90, 80 % of TON ecosystem projects. Every one of them like, Notcoin docs

<<Jason Kam (04:49)>>:

Catizen What else? There are four of them.

<<Xin Yan (04:52)>>:

yeah, but many of them. we distribute a lot of them. it can contribute a lot of revenue.

<<Jason Kam (04:59)>>:

⁓ Well, we invested in Catizen, but that ecosystem is kind of fucked. I'm looking at your business, that's $15 million. Let's put that OTC aside. Of the $10 million, do you expect a pretty tough comp this year? There won't be another TON summer, or hopefully there will be, but are you going to grow that business this year?

<<Xin Yan (05:19)>>:

Yeah.

⁓ yeah, I think so. think, ⁓ so...

You know, Token Table is definitely for us as a bear market strategy. So we just like stop dreaming about all the fancy applications. think about also what's the core of like, I think I remember like in bear market, we have one chat, it told me like, have to find something like high frequency, but also like ⁓ related to transactions, money, and Token Table actually fit that perfectly. So like, whenever, whether of the market, like people launching, keep launching

tokens. Last year was TON, this year we have new partner KAITO. Kaito's airdrop through us. All projects on Kaito Leaderboard will distribute token through us, and also virtuals also launch Genesis, basically a platform for more private to raise money. All these projects tokens are locked on TokenTable smart contracts. There will be more to announce

here there will be in this and basically a nice generation of launch pads and it's combining is not just like pumpdotfun it's more like ⁓ more transparent on their using smart contract to control their distribution and stuff. Actually I think we're eating a lot of the market share on this.

<<Jason Kam (06:39)>>:

Hmm.

Got it. ⁓

<<Xin Yan (06:47)>>:

By the way, there's also some of the centralized changes learning from  Alpha. And for regulatory reasons, they can't build a platform to distribute tokens to their users. So they need a third party, like a technical partner. So we're providing our product to them as well.

<<Jason Kam (07:06)>>:

very cool. So if you can break it down for me, like last year, how much of that 10 million is ton related and how much was not?

<<Xin Yan (07:12)>>:

I would say half up, yes. Half is from TON. So TON, have large airdrop addresses, but we have important partners. We have to share our revenue. But the other partners come from like StarkNet, ZetaChain, which is a bad example, and also the other players. So there's also lot of Layer 1 launch their tokens to us and all their ecosystem projects naturally using TokenTable.

<<Jason Kam (07:29)>>:

Hmm.

So looking at this year and maybe going to next year, the ton numbers just goes down, I'm guessing. And then how do you think about the TokenTable ARR this year, next year with the remaining 5 million?

<<Xin Yan (07:56)>>:

Yeah, so this year...

We see different opportunities. Firstly, like I said, the next generation of launch pads. So there will be more assets created. ⁓ It was a much more serious tokenomics than PumpDotFun Basically, that's one observation. So last year, people think about, we're going to do fair launch, everything on PumpDotFun It's so fun. But gradually, people realize, OK, it's actually darker than VC coin, because they have infinite snappers. They basically already control 99%.

and dumping on whoever come later. So ⁓ I think that's why this year there's so many new launch pads and have a better, more transparent tokenomics. It's fair to give Dev some token, right? And it's fair to make a whole Dev token, a lot to their team, very transparent. So we're contributing to this and I've seen good trends. And a set of this, I think ⁓ more, ⁓

also

trying to partner with different centralized exchanges think...

They're also trying to make the VC coin markets more regulated in a sense. We are inventing our own ⁓ regulatory framework. I gradually realized, right now, the standard for VC coin, usually less than 20 % for team, 20 % for foundation or something, it's actually more more standardized. So we will become part of the framework as well. ⁓

I think that's also an opportunity. in the future, when people ask your tokenomics, they don't just ask for a pay chart, they're asked for your TokenTable, which is backed by smart contract. And the third part is actually more aggressive. I think it will take some time, but I realize they say...

<<Jason Kam (09:45)>>:

⁓ that's very good.

<<Xin Yan (09:54)>>:

If we ever want to get token to the US market, we wrap it into a stock. Because in US, the infrastructure for trading stock is much more mature. But reverse thinking, if we want to get stock into global market.

we'll wrap it into a token, right? Because the token trading infrastructure in ⁓ different countries, like ⁓ say Vietnam, Turkey, and all the other countries is much more secure, like matured. So we are also working with some partners on that, like Direction as well. And I think it will be huge because ⁓ say for our community, we're gonna build an app for our own community. And if we see the app as a distribution platform for good assets and community.

⁓ and services, we don't want to distribute meme coins. We only distribute the best assets, which is US ⁓ stock wrapped token. that, think, still, like blockchain offers the best ledger technology and token can help distributing US stock wider, ⁓ lot wider.

<<Jason Kam (10:42)>>:

Hmm.

So there are couple of things we touched on and let's put the sort of tokenized stock aside. It seems like the cleanest way for Token Table to grow, aside from these like non crypto native efforts, would be centralized exchanges forcing projects to kind of use to use, they themselves distributing tokens, more launch pads and like Kaito and everybody else and then new projects that pop up. All of that kind of hopefully replacing the sort of ⁓ tough comp from TON.

Is there a number like a revenue number that will make you happy this year on TokenTable versus $10 million last year? Is it like 15, 20? Like what's in your mind? It's like a good number.

<<Xin Yan (11:35)>>:

I think so based on the first half, we would expect like 20 minutes. But if we expect like the second half will be much better, it will be 30 millions Yeah.

<<Jason Kam (11:48)>>:

wow. OK, ⁓

And then ⁓ before we get to OTC and the growth efforts, there are a couple more questions. ⁓ The DocuSign equivalent for Sign that doesn't do any revenue currently.

<<Xin Yan (12:00)>>:

Yes.

<<Jason Kam (12:02)>>:

⁓ Are you going to still focus on it going forward or is that kind of the emphasis effort?

<<Xin Yan (12:07)>>:

Yeah, it's come from a long way. say, in the very beginning, have our application called EthSign as a contract signing application, decentralized. And later we abstracted into a attestation platform where you can Sign and Sign everything on chain. So, and this year we find a perfect opportunity. So, I should start from last year and basically we realized, okay, so I want to explain this a little bit more because I think when I do the startup,

see the potential in this is ⁓ think about the blockchain offer the best verifiability. you can make additional information verifiable at a global level. And if you think about it, there's very few stuff have this feature.

passport, like say your ID card doesn't have this level of verifiability. That's why when you go to KYC as a centralized exchange you need to hold your passport and take a picture and that verifies nothing. It just verifies, okay this looks authentic, but there's no way we can mathematically verify if your passport is real or not. But if we make using blockchain using the cryptography framework, like the rebuild verification for services for different stuff.

That will be a different world. Like say, you're...

your graduation certificates, ⁓ proof of funds from a bank can be verified. when I say I'm Chinese, when I apply for a US visa, I don't really need to fill all the form and prepare all the docs. It usually takes weeks and stuff. That's the reason behind why we're extending a contract signing application into a attestation platform. Then we realized there's a lot of ⁓ ways, there's a lot of opportunities we can

build like public services for governments. So last year we start to tap into this area because there's also like some of the some some some thinking from bear market. I realize that

Crypto itself is like a locked box. There's a limited amount of people and limited amount of liquidity with infinite incoming assets. So that's why all the prices are going down. ⁓

We need to think about like, can people from outside world actually benefit from crypto? Right? Say if they're not interested in Degen aping or something, can they actually benefit from this? And we, our team always ⁓ have, we want to do try more pilot projects or something to showcase how, what blockchain technology can do. So last year we worked with two countries, one is Sierra Leone.

The second one is Ras Al Khaimah which is one of the seven Emirates in UAE. So we built an ID system for the country. And this year, think ⁓ there's some more players interested in pushing crypto adoption at a global level, at a country level.

And we are a strong construction company. In a sense, we're building digital infrastructure based on we provide a chain, provide verification services. And based on verification services, we build ID system. We work with the other. ⁓

⁓ stable coin providers and custodian providers and based on ID and stable coin we built welfare distribution system. Soon we're to see an island as distributing their base income to all the citizens.

through actually TokenTable, but we call it national asset distribution system. It just verify who you are and claim your stable coin. And also for pension, we can do it as easily. like a certificate verification and proof of fund and voting is all just, you actually, every time you vote, you actually Sign your intention on chain. So it's all like auditable, transparent, or fair, as much more fair and simple. So basically right now we're, this year,

I think for Sign, on Sign side, it's not just TokenTable Mostly we're gonna push this to nations and big companies. We also have a few pilot projects with Citibank and airlines. They also think about ⁓ some interesting ideas. ⁓

<<Jason Kam (16:45)>>:

Yeah. I want to touch on that in just a second, because it seems like this is a zero revenue, but decent optionality type of project. You kind of.

<<Xin Yan (16:55)>>:

No, EthSign is a revenue project because it's basically we're offering free services hosted on blockchain.

All the other stuff what I'm talking about, it's real service and we're providing at a national level. ⁓ So definitely charge money. The business model is actually very traditional. First you have a contract, like say two year, like development, three year maintenance. And then we charge like say every time when you apply visa, you pay a visa fee and we will take a cut from the visa fee. So also charged from day to day like usage.

<<Jason Kam (17:34)>>:

So how much are you getting from those two countries per disk onto? Those are pilots.

<<Xin Yan (17:37)>>:

No, no, this is a, so

yeah, this is only pilot products, but this year on the contract we're signing is real. And I think by the end of this year, we're able to really like have a report and talking about all the details about the contract deals. Yeah.

<<Jason Kam (17:55)>>:

We'll talk about

it a second, because this is actually quite exciting. ⁓ I mean, 2G and 2 Big B efforts are, like, tough, but once you Sign them, I don't think they can rip you out that easily. ⁓ Before we get there, so, I mean, if you made... ⁓ The $15 million are pure margins. I mean, you're giving some away to TON because of the revenue split. ⁓

<<Xin Yan (18:18)>>:

after giving after revenue share.

<<Jason Kam (18:20)>>:

⁓ it's net. Okay, great. So 15 million, that's gross profit. What's the cost structure for you like and then what does the profit go to?

<<Xin Yan (18:31)>>:

So profit like mostly like So our cost is very simple because we're all like we're just building softwares and we don't really have a lot of sales so it just like people salary and So the revenue mostly go to on the just purely go to foundation and we use a large portion of the revenue to buy back investor tokens

<<Jason Kam (18:55)>>:

Got it. So ⁓ buy back the seed investors tokens.

<<Xin Yan (18:58)>>:

Appreciate it. appreciate it. We're buying back to C-Round.

<<Jason Kam (19:00)>>:

Precise investors.

Got it. And what's your cost basis currently with your FTE?

<<Xin Yan (19:07)>>:

What was?

<<Jason Kam (19:08)>>:

What's

your run rate cost for your amp? Are you breakeven already? Are you making a lot of money based on this ARR run rate? Can you disclose that?

<<Xin Yan (19:14)>>:

I really

expect you ask so many like numbers bro. It's like two delusions bro.

<<Jason Kam (19:21)>>:

I mean,

look, you're a listed company now. think your token holders might want to know. If you can't say, that's fine too. Yeah.

<<Xin Yan (19:26)>>:

Yeah, Again, it's, so on

salary is mostly like 250k around, like every month. And, but we also have some other like a marketing operation budgets. And so every, every month they buy us 350k. Like, but it's, it doesn't count, like say if we host a big event or something.

<<Jason Kam (19:49)>>:

So you're solidly profitable with like 10 million of profit every year and then that profit historically has gone to buying back pre-seed private investor stakes. Now that you're listed you can kind of still do that but now it kind of accrues to Treasury and just sits there. So there's no buyback of a token yet at the moment.

<<Xin Yan (19:59)>>:

Yes.

Yes, yes, so right now we're, so firstly we're trying to make more money and secondly we're also like raising, like looking for new investors to buy the previous investors out. think a lot of investors they raised from, they raised their fund in 2021 and right now they're entering the exit period. So like I think they want, they might want to exit. So we're helping, we're trying to actively looking for new investors.

<<Jason Kam (20:20)>>:

Hmm.

⁓ And then when you think about the cash that come in, do you think of it occurring to equity holders, if there's any, or do you think of it occurring to token holders in the future?

<<Xin Yan (20:43)>>:

I'm just token holders and we were trying to convert everything into token holders and we don't want to complicate the structure and stuff.

<<Jason Kam (20:45)>>:

Mm.

Got it. ⁓ So I mean, by the end of this year, then, without even the new efforts that you're building, which are exciting, we'll get into in a second, you should be making like 20 million bucks of profit just about maybe even higher. ⁓ How do you think about the allocation of those profits going forward? it be redeploying the growth efforts? Do you feel like it would be sort of accruing value to the token? How do you think about the capital allocation for this cash flow coming in?

<<Xin Yan (21:17)>>:

you

Honestly, I didn't spend too much time thinking about this because we ⁓ haven't get there yet. ⁓ I think about two things. ⁓ before everything, think ⁓ the team size is very healthy around 20. So we're not going to build a hundred people team. ⁓ two things, one is we're going to use money to buy back investors because I realize that.

⁓ As the token price going up, the selling pressure is very high. So right now we're making like a 20x for pre-seed investors, like 30x for pre-seed investors. If our token price getting higher, honestly, I'm worried about the secondary market. So if we're making money, we can easily get them by the mail like earlier. They also feel happier because they don't want to lock with us for three more years.

So that's something I want to do. Secondly is ⁓

We want to find more partners at a global level. So right now, say for all the 2G deals, usually we work with local partners and we build a GV in every country. besides that, we also build in a very vivid community. And for the community side, it's not just looking for a mod in every country. I think we need a strong partner in every country. So for that, we need to think about the operation strategy in different countries.

and also having more local partners, I assume that will cost us some money if we are doing serious global expansion.

<<Jason Kam (23:00)>>:

Got it. And the rest of the cash, I guess, just kind of sits there, earns a yield for now, if it's not being deployed.

<<Xin Yan (23:07)>>:

Yes, yes, I think if we'll start to like have a full disclosure of like the foundation treasury and if people in bear market, even the worst market, if people see you have a hundred million euro foundation treasury, people will feel a lot safer. I think that's very important. We will have more cash.

<<Jason Kam (23:29)>>:

Got it. ⁓ Shifting to growth for a second, ⁓ I'm looking at your 20 million revenue base maybe this year or next year. And then as far as I can gather from public resources, there are four ways of growth that you kind of telegraphed. The first thing is your 2C app called ETHSignPass. ⁓ There is your 2G effort that you talked about and maybe two large B efforts that could translate to something. ⁓ There's a TokenTable slash tokenized stock route.

And then lastly, there is this potentially significant growth that could come from OTC venues. ⁓ Those are the four things that I kind of observe. First of all, did I miss anything? And then secondly, I guess, can you just go through each of them and kind of rank by what most excites you first? ⁓

<<Xin Yan (24:15)>>:

It's

actually last year's plan. I think this year we'll make it much more clear. So this year we're having three things we're working on. One is TokenTable, which is still like claiming fee and ⁓ OTC transaction fee. So that's one side. And secondly is Sign We're going to talk about Sign and stand for sovereign infrastructure for global nations later. But like Sign, mostly we have 2G efforts. We're building digital infrastructure for nations.

have a revenue, we'll have a contract from like a ⁓ nation's treasury or something. So we'll have a very stable like revenue source or something. ⁓ the third part is we have our own community and we're launching an app for our own community. And we say when we're distributing, ⁓ we choose good assets, good services here. So I think we might have some sort of income like revenue from like ⁓

bringing as long as good service we're able to charge a fee. And also same as assets, right? We are making assets more accessible. And so it will be fair if we charge like 5 % or something. So I think ⁓ that's also another revenue source for this year.

<<Jason Kam (25:32)>>:

Hmm.

Which of those do you feel like gets you the most excited, I guess, the next couple years?

<<Xin Yan (25:41)>>:

I think ⁓ one by one. So firstly, TokenTable has ⁓ been verified as solid, as the most mature revenue source. But the second one, I think the best time window is this year because this is something literally doable after Trump launched the coin.

So basically it's a green light for every nation. The government says it's okay to do it. So we're also pushing it very hard. I think we'll see some future in this and we want to be the best company in this. And the third part, it actually...

the long-term plan, I sometimes I think about how great community a project can build. There's no limit. The sky is no limit, right? Say, basically it just said, in our community, we have our own currency. We have our own reputation system. We have our own badge of honor, right? Say, and... ⁓

We're building a global community from different country where people have same culture, same vision. And we're also actively providing more services and assets into this community. So I think the third one is actually, from long-term speaking, is the most ⁓ exciting one. But...

<<Jason Kam (27:01)>>:

Mm-mm.

<<Xin Yan (27:02)>>:

I don't think people see the power yet because the way I understand the value of token is at least two parts. Say a token is not a pure cryptocurrency, it's also not a pure stock. So pure stock is the value come from like say you have a good services business and revenue and that reflects to your economic value in your token. The second part is ⁓

The crypto ⁓ currency value, like how strong your community are, right? Say like Bitcoin only have a pure strong community and some meme coin have pure strong community and that supports the tokens value. And we are trying to have it both. So we have a strong business so people know, okay, this guy gonna be here for a while. I don't worry if I hold. And secondly, I want to use the.

our product, our service to let people see our vision. We want to make our community aligned by our vision, just like SpaceX. Your product doesn't necessarily need to be used by your community. But as long as you are carrying everybody's vision, you can easily build a community.

So now we have our ⁓ product, I think, is called everything under signed up global is our website. We're talking about globalization. We're talking about like the super sovereign infrastructure we're building. So that's the vision. And whoever aligns or admires our vision and joins our community. And that's somewhere we're going to really spend.

time and the efforts to build. So we're going to gradually see the power of our community. That's what saying.

<<Jason Kam (28:45)>>:

It's

a little vague to me. guess the first piece that comes into play is the SignPass app that you're going to launch.

<<Xin Yan (28:53)>>:

So, SignPass is also one of the experiment projects we built last year. So basically, we're thinking about we want to work with a country and so whoever has SignPass can enter that country and we actually made it. So ⁓ that's from last year. But this year, when we're working with more countries, ⁓ I don't think they're going to call our product SignPass. They want us to become part of their services.

services providing to all their like citizens and visitors they'll say powered by Sign that's the best thing we can get because we will not call it a Sign pass anymore.

<<Jason Kam (29:33)>>:

Got it. So when you say the community as your third pillar of growth, it's a little vague to me. What is it exactly? I think vibing on Telegram or Twitter and Discord does not constitute how to tangibly create value for Sign, aside from people spending more cash dollars on Sign. What is the vehicle that gathers people's wallet share and have them spend dollars on the Sign token itself?

<<Xin Yan (30:01)>>:

you

<<Jason Kam (30:01)>>:

Is it like

a religion? What is it exactly? Okay.

<<Xin Yan (30:03)>>:

I think so. think it's

you can think of it as a mini religion because ⁓ if you, because like sometimes like with like, like you think about like the revenue or something, but see the most revenue generating company in this world right now as a company, whoever can systematically providing emotional values, right? Say Louis Vuitton.

That company didn't make money from making bags. It's making from selling bags, selling the brand, selling the emotional value. People feel good when they have Louis Vuitton bags. that's what I'm saying. I think right now, like where we're at the world, where like tech is not just providing like ⁓ enough food or like ⁓ quality of life. ⁓ I think we have enough in a sense, right? So we have even have more. That's why we're overweight or something.

The problem with us right now is we don't have emotional value, right? Say, if you are a nine to five person, what are you going to do after back home? You want to have more friends. You want to have more people talk not about work. so I think our community is somewhere.

Like we're basically systematically people creating, providing emotional value to each other. People have a very interesting vibe. have a, so the most shocking part, ⁓ but by the way, also I think this is good example. Basically, think about Haidilao right? It's a hot pot restaurant. But what's the hot pot restaurant famous for? Because people are dancing there. People are celebrating birthday ⁓ party there. So they have a very strong culture and stuff.

based on the culture, based on the songs, based on their services, they build a community around, based on the hotpot businesses. And I think that community actually bringing this hotpot business a lot of revenue. So you basically...

<<Jason Kam (32:07)>>:

I get what you're trying to get to, but let's break it down one by one, which is the Louis Vuitton bag, people buy it because it makes them feel a certain way and it shows status. And that status, you know, Louis Vuitton, the company charges premium to, which accrues meaningfully to the stock. That's why it pumps. ⁓ With Haidilao, people are not used to in China good services. By offering a good service and quality ingredients and, you know, kind of a great franchise, they can charge a premium on the food they offer.

which accrues to the stock of Haidilao. In your case, you're talking about people vibing in your Sign community. They may not be buying Sign tokens. I mean, maybe they are. Like, is that what the translation to the Sign? OK.

<<Xin Yan (32:44)>>:

Maybe they are. Most important

thing is more people know Sign So more people know Sign and the Sign distributed wider. So with a token distributing wider and more people knowing it and people generally not intend to holding it. So why not say like in crypto community there's a different community. So firstly there's a farmer community where they just engage in project.

before TGE and go to next one after TGE. So that's the seller community. like say Bitcoin, so most of people are of say holder community, Say like we, like we, that's why I emphasize that the value of token as one side is a business value, the other side is a community value, as the consensus value or something. As long as you build a large and strong enough community and people will tend to buy, hold, at the same token.

And the value of a currency depends on how large scale people accept this idea and this currency.

<<Jason Kam (33:47)>>:

I see. I think I roughly get it. But it's effectively increasing mindshare. then because of the belief he installs, increased volume share of that mindshare.

<<Xin Yan (33:56)>>:

I want to emphasize increasing mindshare in the real world, not in crypto. Because I think right now people have fierce competition in getting stronger mindshare within crypto. But like I said, crypto is a place that was limited like a liquidity and limited amount of people and too many competitors in this. It's the right ocean. outside of crypto, like say,

Which like you go to a street as a random person like what like which cryptocurrency, you know, they don't say like Bitcoin Dogecoin Yeah. Yeah. Yes. We want to become the next one after these names

<<Jason Kam (34:28)>>:

XRP dude, yeah.

Okay, so what are the top one or two things you're doing to like... This is probably money well spent on the treasury that you build. But what are the one or two things you're planning to do?

<<Xin Yan (34:43)>>:

So you're building community.

<<Jason Kam (34:46)>>:

Yeah, or just increasing mindshare, ex-wallisher. Like building a religion.

<<Xin Yan (34:49)>>:

⁓

So it's a systematic work. firstly, I think we need to make sure people understand who we are.

And so internally we need to have a very clear consensus on what the fuck is Sign and where are we want to go and so what do we like and what do we don't like. So we make it very clear before TGE we don't want farmers, we want builders. We don't want you to do ABC for us to boost our numbers. We want you to be the best version yourself contributing whatever you like to do. If you like create content, create content. We help you boost your

like followers, if you like building websites and building meme makers, we help you, we appreciate, as long as for good face and good intention within the community, is welcoming. So we make these stuff very clear. We even write an orange print, so from blueprint, so it's orange print. So this is one thing, and secondly,

We built a system. The system is, you think about the community as a virtual nation. There's ⁓ different from a nation. just says it's not a, it don't have a physical territory. But we have currency. We have a credit score. So credit score is reputation, something not tradable.

Also, if you invite a person, that person's reputation score based on your reputation score. And that person make any malicious stuff, harmful stuff, and your reputation score got harmed, cut or something. So we have algorithm behind the scene. But we give people a badge of honor. So it's SBT. One second, I'll take a phone call. Sorry.

<<Jason Kam (36:48)>>:

Of

Yeah, got it.

<<Xin Yan (36:55)>>:

Okay,

so and we're having different roles in this. So basically it's like building framework, like allow people to contribute into this framework. So they can get ⁓ exchange for rewards. Like we have four roles in the community right now. We have support warrior, which is reply guy, which is like you just like reply, retweet other people's content or something.

And content creator, series builder, whoever building different games, people building games, people building websites, people building ⁓ like... I don't know how to say in English, but there's a lot of funny stuff in the community. ⁓

<<Jason Kam (37:38)>>:

Mm.

<<Xin Yan (37:41)>>:

also serious products. the first one is Orange in My Vein, so people who invite the other people joining the community. So we encourage, we allocate 30 % of our token to reward these different roles we want.

<<Jason Kam (37:58)>>:

How do you measure that these organic, like, I'm thinking this is like organic community effort versus you actually spending dollars and buying TikTok influencers in Web2, for example, that's like a concerted corporate effort. How do you measure these like organic efforts as effective?

<<Xin Yan (38:14)>>:

I think there's two part of two trick. One is that we don't make the criteria very transparent. You don't tell people if you do A, you'll get B. So people, so firstly, those like a serious farmer will not participate in this. And the more people like they willingly betting, they trust you or they love you or something. So they put in their effort first. And secondly, as we build a score. ⁓

system. definitely need to build a quantifiable system behind the scene. But you don't tell people. We don't build a leaderboard or something because it's going to hurt people. We don't want to define people by how much followers they have. We don't want our R drops are mostly getting by KOLs. Because we know the most loyal community come, like 90 % of loyal community, their followers are around 100 followers. stop.

<<Jason Kam (39:12)>>:

Interesting hmm good luck. It's an interesting effort. I think it's probably pound for pound that book the biggest It will deliver the biggest impact to your token ⁓ versus the business. This is cool Yes Shifting gears a little bit ⁓ on the 2G effort, which you experimented with two governments last year You talked about it bearing fruit after Trump now blessing the industry

<<Xin Yan (39:25)>>:

It's a pure cryptocurrency part, yes.

<<Jason Kam (39:41)>>:

as something that would translate into larger scale, sort of multi-year servicing contracts that could deliver meaningful revenue potentially to the business. ⁓ My imagination, the two question is, one is these are ⁓ 2G and 2 Large B are very painful. It takes a long time. They can back off any second. ⁓ How is the progress so far? Like, do you have a lot of deals in the pipeline that are just ready to be signed? And then secondly, you probably can't disclose too much because of NDA, but...

<<Xin Yan (39:50)>>:

Rest.

<<Jason Kam (40:10)>>:

To the extent you can, what is the order of magnitude of these revenue dollars on a per year basis should we be thinking about versus the 20 million you have today per annum?

<<Xin Yan (40:20)>>:

Okay, so I can answer the second one. if like we're taking a, so it depends on the country, how big the country. Say if we're building an ID system for a like 50 million population country, the year revenue, we can think about 50 million US dollar. So, just think about it, right? So $1 per person is easy.

<<Jason Kam (40:42)>>:

Five zero. wow.

<<Xin Yan (40:50)>>:

So it's a phenomenal revenue source, I will say. And traditionally, it's earned by other ⁓ traditional weird companies.

<<Jason Kam (41:02)>>:

IT

service and companies have 10 % net margins. I'm guessing your margins here will be much higher.

<<Xin Yan (41:07)>>:

Yeah, much higher. think it depends on like ⁓ the This blockchain itself is actually just way simpler than traditional like SaaS systems

<<Jason Kam (41:19)>>:

Do you have any competition in this area?

<<Xin Yan (41:23)>>:

That's why we don't, we will quietly talk about this because we don't invite the competitors. But it's okay. I think it's the idea was spreading. And for the first question you were asking as well, it's actually go faster or go like much more faster than we expected. And I would say the most...

<<Jason Kam (41:27)>>:

Okay, I'm sorry.

<<Xin Yan (41:48)>>:

most of the reason we're gonna give credit to President Trump, because he literally do a lot of people, politicians wanted to. And...

And so right now, with the regulatory framework, it basically says, And we're offering very concrete features that benefits people. When we pitch to a country, say, OK, we're going to build you a digital ID system, like no physical card needed. Everybody just download the app. And the ID, the residency, the ID card will

app will become ⁓ your stable coin account. It's actually very simple to crypto guys, right? But when we talk to countries, they well, it's something we haven't seen before. And we also like putting all the pieces together. We're not offering one application. We're offering a stack. So for the stack, we'll tell them why you need a blockchain, because you want to access to the global liquidity, because you want your dollar, your own like fiat currency. ⁓

have a global equity. You want your own business projects being wrapped up to real assets raised from the global market. And also you want your own people getting better services and stuff. And we build you blockchain. And why we're building a blockchain? Because on the top of it, we're building different use cases.

like stablecoins and like the other stuff and on the top of these we also have more like concrete use cases that we can easily help you distributing money to like wherever you want and the cost is super low compared to existing solutions so we'll make it very clear and the third part is we are strategically targeting to those countries who just have a new administration

like say Thailand, they have a new PM, just start from late last year. I say the new PM wanna do a lot of new high-tech stuff. So it's naturally, it's just a lot easier.

<<Jason Kam (43:52)>>:

Hmm, and I know that it's really hard to commit to timelines because these things always change  but to your best guess like ⁓ Here's a better question ⁓ As far as the pilot programs or these beta the beta rollout these things goes ⁓ What when do these things have to happen for you to be happy?

<<Xin Yan (44:16)>>:

So every contract I Sign, I'm very happy. I would say, I think my best case is next month, we're going to see a project announcing they're going to use our projects to distributing their own stablecoin to every citizen. So that will be a huge step. We might also be very happy to distribute our token to every citizen in that country. So that's a better...

<<Jason Kam (44:20)>>:

Okay.

So it's

the next month for some that's signed or that's in the world, okay

<<Xin Yan (44:45)>>:

That's fine. Yes, firstly, they're stable

coin. And secondly, we're also going to pair our own like token to show appreciation to celebrate this. So that's part of reason we minted 10 billion token because there's 8 billion people.

<<Jason Kam (44:55)>>:

Very cool.

Hmm. ⁓

I guess you'll have a lot more clarity after one or two cases being proven out and by this time next year, know, you probably, no need, wow. wow, okay. So we should come on a podcast again maybe by like Thanksgiving or something. You'll have a lot more to update. This is really interesting. ⁓ Okay, ⁓ is there an order of magnitude of this business kind of realizing itself by your two or your three versus TokenTable would make you happy?

<<Xin Yan (45:13)>>:

No need, no need. By the end of it, yeah.

<<Jason Kam (45:36)>>:

Let's push forward two or three years from now. You would say, my god, this 2G business is 5x the size of TokenTable. And that's quite nice. How do you think about the heuristics between two businesses? Because that's how you split your time.

<<Xin Yan (45:49)>>:

I don't think like that. I just try to see what's opportunities and I go 100 % on the new opportunities. I say like on TokenTable in crypto native markets is pretty much we already have the largest market share in this direction. So we're just looking forward to researching and see if there's a way we can turn stock into token and distribute at a global level. And before we actually figure it out, we find the right partner

right distribution channel will just go all in on the like the national ⁓ like digital infrastructure building stuff because on this like I know there's a revenue source but right now we're the the leading ⁓ players on this we talk to the countries we see what they need and we build we have ability to build what they need I think

What we build still have a very strong network effect as long as we chip in, as long as people are using our products, we're making standards. And actually, it's not just we are making standards. We are working with our blockchain partners making standards. Think about this. There will be more ⁓ national fiat being minted at CRC 20 on a certain blockchain. So ⁓ it will bring a lot of revenue or transaction on that blockchain. in the future,

There will be more assets minted under one standard, which is ERC 20 There will be more digital information, like your identity, minted on a certain blockchain with a standard. That's over a sample of cloud test stations. so that's the opportunity we see. And we'll just blindly go all in for it. And I don't know how big it can be, but we'll see by the end of this year.

<<Jason Kam (47:31)>>:

Hmm.

⁓ On the OTC side, ⁓ some other questions that I have ⁓ regarding the OTC actual transactions. My imagination is the more projects you work with and distribute, there's actually a larger stockpile of tokens that you can run OTC on. Is that correct? in your mind, how do you think about that business going from maybe three to five million dollars last year going forward?

<<Xin Yan (48:04)>>:

So firstly, honestly, we realize, especially in bear market, the critical native assets, the trading volume is not that big, honestly. Say, even in Q1, people mostly expecting Bera Chain movement to be super good products, but movement already ⁓ blown up.

and Bera Chain trading volume as ⁓ the private rounds price and right now it's very similar. So there's no very active OTC deals.

It's just not that good. So, right now our strategy is we're targeting to like, so firstly we're targeting to those funds who have a large back and help them sell some of their backs. And secondly, we're targeting to less than five projects that have a billion dollar valuation in period rounds and haven't launched tokens. So, we're also targeting them because usually OTC trading volume

get a lot larger right before and right after TGE. So we're just trying to get these deals.

<<Jason Kam (49:22)>>:

So this will be a pretty volatile, unpredictable business line. The OTC transactional. OK. Got it. ⁓ OK. So it's hard to commit to any sort of numbers. And then on a tokenized stock or any RWA part, that's exciting. I think I've heard about you talking about it in the past. How far along are we, do you think, from that being material to your business?

<<Xin Yan (49:25)>>:

Yeah. Yeah, will say yes.

I think it's just a lack of a distribution channel. Actually, we talked to backed.fi

backed.fi ⁓ think already successfully tokenized Coinbase stock. But the trading volume is very small because they only minted a coin on base. And there's very few people on base want to buy a coin. so the problem is they can't reach the right people with the token they minted. So they need distribution channel. And we build our community. ⁓

community and we see the global community in the future will become a distribution channel of these good assets. And so that's why we spend so much time and stuff on different areas and looking for local partners.

<<Jason Kam (50:34)>>:

Hmm.

Are you selling ⁓ actual listed companies or are you selling custodians or the middleware stack that allows for stocks to be traded for tokenizing the stocks on chain?

<<Xin Yan (50:51)>>:

I think right now our best guess is we work with a company like backed.fi They already figured out how to wrap a stock into a token and we just sell the token.

<<Jason Kam (51:04)>>:

interesting. And that's leveraging, I guess, your TokenTable connections in the past. You know where the institutional buyers are. have the OTC desk. that? No.

<<Xin Yan (51:13)>>:

I think it purely depends on how big community you have or how best distribution channel you have. Because the buyers are not institutions. Institutions have a lot of ways to buy US stock. It's the real retails who cannot buy US stock.

<<Jason Kam (51:36)>>:

I see, because of the community you built and you have direct access to them, you're now like, oh, here's Tesla stock. Do you want to buy it through their app or something? And they just, okay, interesting.

<<Xin Yan (51:43)>>:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're

going to build an app. So within the app, like say if we put in 10 assets, one of them will be signed and the other nine, I will say we'll put US stock instead of all the other meme coins, which are going to drain our revenues back.

<<Jason Kam (52:03)>>:

I see. then in these kind of business deals, when you work with a partner, you make the transactional fee, I guess. that's kind of it. Okay. Understood. ⁓

<<Xin Yan (52:13)>>:

So

if we are being like, look at it, we can charge a lot because people from, like say, people from Vietnam, if they want to get access to US stock, they're willing to pay 25 % more.

<<Jason Kam (52:30)>>:

Yeah, got it. I think I covered a lot. Let me just summarize what I've learned. So off the 15 million revenue last year, the OTC portion of it is unpredictable. So we'll see how that goes. But of the 10 million, aside from all the optionality that you get from 2G businesses, you want to grow it to 20, 30 million by the end of this year or next year. It seems quite visible because of the standard that you're setting with central exchanges and new projects.

Tokenized stock is a nice option, but we'll see how it goes. And I think the big option here is, ⁓ because of thanks to Trump and thanks to your hard work, you're on a path to potentially kind of catapult all your figures, both on adoption as well as 2G relationships, that some of these 2G contracts could mean hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, if you deliver to the right party over the next couple of years. ⁓ Did I miss anything?

<<Xin Yan (53:23)>>:

Yeah.

No, it's just, so know, so sometimes I just don't worry about it's grow too fast. I worry about if we can't deliver because say if we're working, we get contract from governments, some of the quality of these engineering, these products is way more complicated. So we have to build the best products.

But you know, interestingly, their expectations are also pretty low because a lot of time when you're when we're like government's software, it's usually super bad. It's all crap, right? So like, we want to the best like stuff to them and we want the government talk to each other. So, oh, I heard about Sign, they build a very good product. So something, it will be very interesting.

<<Jason Kam (54:02)>>:

It's all crap.

Yeah, I

think all you need is like one or two use cases and have like this very public president like Trump talking about you. like, I love these guys. And then and then it's going to just take off for you. ⁓ Well, it might be worth my worth spending the money. and the last thing I missed is ⁓ the upside on devaluation of your token would come from your concerted marketing effort organically for now. So if you do that well as well, the multiple like it should just expand. ⁓

<<Xin Yan (54:23)>>:

Yeah, it will cause...

You

<<Jason Kam (54:42)>>:

Okay, I don't have any other questions. Let's see if the group has any I'll give you three seconds. ⁓

Okay, I don't have anything else. there anything else we haven't covered that you want to talk about?

<<Xin Yan (55:00)>>:

It's just the Orange Dynasty. So our community is actually called Orange Dynasty and the whole brand color is just orange. And I sincerely inviting you all like spend less time on numbers, but spend some time on like say joining some community to see like how people actually like talk to each other because that's the biggest lesson I learned this year. I realized that in the next area, in the next 10 years or 20 years, the most important stuff we can sell is not

It's not something that materialized, it's emotional stuff. I talked to lot of AI founders and the most touching one, I really want to invest, is one guy told me he want to build an app that can bring ⁓ my grandfather ⁓ back to talk to me.

<<Jason Kam (55:56)>>:

Mm-hmm.

<<Xin Yan (55:56)>>:

that's really ⁓ made me very emotional. And I think about this a lot. So I think in the next decade, we have AI, have robotics, ⁓ people will be different, right? So we're never competing. We're not gonna see ourself as a...

machines right now like say how we value each other is like we're valuing like machines like how many hours you work, how much money you make in the future will be different and the same as we think about company, same as we think about currency.

<<Jason Kam (56:32)>>:

That's a touching note to end on. ⁓ Xin, thank you so much for your time.

<<Xin Yan (56:36)>>:

Thanks Jason.