One Rejection Built a $5 Billion Crypto Empire | MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright & Ivan Patriki

Buying Bitcoin with a card used to cost 17% in fees. This is the founder who thought that was insane, bootstrapped a fix on 365% annual loans, and built it into a $5B company.Ivan Soto-Wright is the co-founder and CEO of MoonPay, the on-ramp plugged into MetaMask, Phantom, and just about every major crypto wallet you have used. Over 35 million people have run crypto through it. He started with zero payments background, got kicked off Stripe for touching crypto, and turned the lights on with a single acquirer that said yes.In this one, Ivan and Ivan Patriki get into how MoonPay went from a card-to-crypto ramp to an "operating system for global value movement," and the wild new frontier: letting an AI agent hold a wallet and spend your money for you.We cover:Why buying Bitcoin with a card cost 17% (and why "your margin is my opportunity")The Stripe ban that almost killed MoonPay before it startedBootstrapping on loans at 1% a day (that is 365% a year, and yes it was legal enough)Vitamin businesses vs painkiller businesses (and why his first startup failed)$27 trillion moved over stablecoin rails last yearWhy USDC is banned in CanadaPay Box: giving Claude or ChatGPT a non-custodial wallet without handing over your private keyBooking an EasyJet flight inside Claude by sending USDC to an X402 endpoint"Can I tell Claude to find me a girlfriend?"Why an AI agent may manage your yield better than you doGetting "interesting letters from three-letter agencies" under the last administrationWhy banks like Chase still reject crypto card transactions (and why that is changing)16 acquisitions in two and a half years, mostly aqua-hires for entrepreneurial DNAInnovate or die: how MoonPay avoids becoming a stagnant PayPalGrit, poker, and eating glass: the founder mindsetTaking over the X Games to make crypto part of cultureRESOURCES & LINKS:Check out MoonPay: https://www.moonpay.comMORE OF IVAN SOTO-WRIGHT:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isotowright/MORE OF ON THE MARGIN:Website: https://www.themargin.tv

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Main Site: https://www.on-the-margin.comMORE OF BOAZ SOBRADO: Twitter: https://x.com/sobradobInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sobradobWebsite: https://themargin.tv/boaz-sobradoMORE OF IVAN PATRIKI: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/artiztSubstack: https://substack.com/@artiztTwitter: https://x.com/Ivan_patrikiInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/artizt/?hl=enTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ascendedTelegram: https://t.me/ivanpatrikiTimestamps:00:00 - Tw