About this episode:

On this milestone episode, our host Manseeb Khan sits down with Mark Binns CEO of BIGG Digital Assets. They cover the rally behind bitcoin, big tech investing in crypto, and giving your kids crypto instead of fiat for allowance money.  Enjoy! 

Subscribe and tune in each Friday to check out the latest movers and shakers in fintech. Listen to more podcasts here:

Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3

Fintech Friday Transcript of Episode 50:  Mark Binns of BIGG Digital Assets Inc.

Intro: Welcome to fintech Friday's a weekly podcast brought to you by the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada and partners. Covering all things fintech, blockchain, AI and alternative finance.

Manseeb Khan : [00:00:00] For Episode 50, I got Mark Binns. Mark, thank you so much for sitting down with me today.

Mark Binns: [00:00:34] Yeah, great to be here. I'm excited to talk with you today.

Manseeb Khan : [00:00:37] Awesome. So, Mark, could you just for, I guess, the five or six people that may not know who you are and what BIGG Digital Assets is could just give us a rundown of what big is and a little bit of background of who you are.

Mark Binns: [00:00:52] Yeah, absolutely. So BIGG Digital Assets, publicly-traded company on the CSC in Canada under the ticker BIGG. We're a compliance first crypto company. And what that means is BIGG is a company that has found a way to make money in the compliance and regulatory space around cryptocurrency. We own two operating businesses. One is called Blockchain Intelligence Group, and it's a crypto forensics software company. We make products that help track crypto through the blockchain and the other companies called Netcoins. And that coins is a crypto exchange in Canada, mainly focused in the Canadian market. And both of those companies together make up BIGG Digital Assets. My background and how I got involved is I actually did an undergrad in computer science. I'm a tech guy first and foremost. I used to write code for a living and then I got interested in the business side of technology. So I got my MBA from Western and started a consulting company and built and grew a couple of different consulting companies doing marketing and growth advisory to tech companies. And around twenty thirteen, the world's first Bitcoin ATM was launched in Vancouver, where I'm where I live. And it was a big, exciting event in the tech scene. And everybody was going to see this first-ever Bitcoin ATM. And I went down, had a look and said, wow, that's pretty cool technology. And there was a guy there named Mitch Demeter who was actually launching that machine. And funny enough, it got me interested in crypto started paying attention. I got into the space in about twenty seventeen with Netcoins and one of the very first hires I made was Mitche Demeter, the guy who opened that Bitcoin A.T.M, and he's now the president of the Netcoins division of big digital assets. So, you know, it's it's an exciting place to be. And I couldn't be happier that I ended up here in the crypto world.

Manseeb Khan : [00:02:48] Yeah, it's it's kind of crazy how things worked out in that unheard of. Like, who would have thought that you'd meet the guy that first launched Bitcoin ATMs and then later down the line you're like, hey, you know what? Let's make something. Let's make something together.

Mark Binns: [00:03:02] I think he was so successful. He put those ATMs all over the world and he started an early crypto exchange called Bitcoiniacs and sold those and retired. And I had to convince him in twenty seventeen. I said, come on, give out a retirement, get back in the game. Crypto is getting exciting again. Like you're right. Let's do it.

Manseeb Khan : [00:03:20] No, it's honestly it's a very it's an amazing move on your end.  So when you talk about compliance first crypto. Right. Why is compliance so important in crypto now that now that crypto is getting more attention, as it seems like by hour?

Mark Binns: [00:03:37] Yeah, absolutely. Compliance is important to protect the retail investor, the institutional investor. But the little guy, that's sort of why there is rules in financial services all over the world and it's for protection. So if you're buying Bitcoin on an exchange, you're spending two hundred dollars as an individual, that might be a really important two hundred dollars to you. You don't want to find out that that exchange was actually a pyramid scheme or something and fraudulent in your your two hundred dollars of the bitcoin disappears. So compliance isn't there to try to de-anonymize the blockchain or anything of the sort. It's there to protect the endpoints, which are usually the exchanges and the investors in the ecosystem, and make sure that the companies that are taking their money are are legit. And it also helps law enforcement. So we make products at Blockchain Intelligence Group that help law enforcement investigate crypto crime. And if you have these tools that will reduce the likelihood people will commit crimes and they know there is law enforcement, there's rule of law. So all of it really ties together for protection of people in the ecosystem. And, you know, there's a great market opportunity for us in that space by being leaders in the regulated and the compliance side of crypto.

Manseeb Khan : [00:05:01]  Yeah, it's actually very amazing to see we're going on three years of having Fintech Fridays, and like if honestly, if I had you on two years ago and we talk about regulation and like all government getting involved, like honestly, like it was really a joke because like it was these are conversations just now starting to happen. But really there was no headway. There was no direction. But now, you know, with Blockchain intelligence, what you guys are doing with law enforcement, even with Secret Service in and of itself, we've come so far and it's only the beginning. And that that to me is just incredible and also wild at the same time.

Mark Binns: [00:05:37] Yeah, absolutely.

Manseeb Khan : [00:05:38]  So Bitcoin is back in the news. I mean, people people thought I was going to crash, you know, people I've had my group chats have been blowing up my friends are like what's going on, like what are we doing? you told us to put money in this? So can you just walk us through what's going on with Bitcoin right now and like, what's your take on it?

Mark Binns: [00:06:01] The big thing happening in Bitcoin and crypto overall overall right now is institutional buy in. This is what's changing the fall of twenty seventeen crypto on its last run before the current one, when Bitcoin went up to nineteen thousand USD, and then it turned around and went all the way back down to something like thirty five hundred. That was a total retail rally. So that was small investors buying small amounts of bitcoin. The rally that happens is happening now since about mid last year and particularly the early stages of twenty twenty one is because of institutional involvement. It started with PayPal saying that they were going to get involved in crypto and let the individual person spend crypto on purchases day to day and then big buy-in on Treasury. That's the other big one. So company called MicroStrategy Nasdaq listed company said we're going to buy four to five hundred million dollars with a Bitcoin and keep our reserve cash in Bitcoin instead of US dollars. And part of that is because of the money printing going on in the US dollar, the Canadian dollar, the pound tied to the pandemic and covid. There's a huge lack of store of value in fiat currency right now. So they said we can do better, we're going to put this money into Bitcoin and we believe that will give us better returns. And then people started wake it up because it was half a billion dollars in a Nasdaq listed public company. And then Square went out and bought fifty million dollars. And That's Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, a lot of attention on it. And then it started a bit of an institutional rally where companies realized, oh, yeah, that might be a good store value. And just last week, Tesla bought one point five billion dollars worth of crypto to just a store on their balance sheet instead of holding it in US dollars. The current rumor is that Apple might actually step in and start buying Bitcoin on its balance sheet. And this is the difference is now an institutional investment rally, institutional involvement on spending, institutional involvement on saving. And it's bringing real credibility to Bitcoin in particular. But crypto overall as a store of value.

Manseeb Khan : [00:08:12] Mm hmm. So, yeah, no, this is this is actually incredible, right. Because, you know, majority of cryptocurrency is the people that have been kind of rallying behind it, like you said, were many retail investors. Right. People just, you know, seeing what's going on with fiat currency, if you will be able to understand the market a little bit and seeing that, hey, you know, having money in just traditional assets like cash, it doesn't make any sense. Right. Especially now with the pandemic, everything is kind of a lack of a better word is going to shit. You know, they need to have more control of their money. Right. So cryptocurrency is a great place to do it. So what's BIGG Digital's play in this right now?

Mark Binns: [00:08:52] It's a two-pronged approach. So first of all, yeah, we have Netcoins. Right. Which is our exchange. And people need to get into crypto. You need an onramp. So Netcoins is an on-ramp. You can email money, wire money, bill pay money into the platform, traditional fiat currency. And with that, you can buy crypto, you can buy your bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, whatever you're looking for. So as adoption is rising, values are rising. Investors looking to access the space can use Netcoin's platform to onramp into the space. And with blocks intelligence group, it's the law enforcement side. So the more involvement the everyday consumer has in crypto, the unfortunately, the more crime will tend to rise, the more use of crypto through the ecosystem. There will be just like the crime. There will be crime involving crypto and our tools are extremely valuable. Some of the only tools in the world that you can use to properly track the movement of crypto through the blockchain so you can do law enforcement. So our customers are everyone from the US Secret Service down to Singapore Police Department, Hong Kong police department. Canadian law enforcement and we're helping market participants stay safe.

Manseeb Khan : [00:10:06] Yeah, and that's one of the biggest, I guess, knock on crypto is the fact that, you know, criminals use it, terrorist organizations use it like you can you know, you can put money in today, and then tomorrow it's gone. Right. That's the fact that you guys are spending a lot of time and energy to work with law enforcement of some countries to make sure that's not the case and to make sure that it is accessible for everybody because we're having new investors come in by the hour and to make sure that the money just doesn't disappear. That in and of itself is very incredible.

Mark Binns: [00:10:39] Yeah, thanks. I mean, it's a fast-moving ecosystem, it's growing quickly, it's changing every day. And again, we want to be part of the future and the growth and the prosperity of the industry. So we're doing our part.

Manseeb Khan : [00:10:54] Yeah, that's awesome. So, you know, you mentioned what with one of your pronged approach is you have you know, you're having more and more people invest in crypto. What is your take on these Meme coins, such as dogecoin? Right. You see it, Elon Musk's tweet out the wazoo about, you know, like going to the moon. I'm getting my friends literally just moon emojis and rocketships emojis every morning when I wake up, like, what's your take on that? You see, I guess organizations like yourself later on having like meme coins on your sheets for people to buy?

Mark Binns: [00:11:32] Well, we it's an it's exciting, I guess, is what you would say. I mean, the meme coins bring a little bit of excitement to the industry. They certainly create interest. They get people talking. They get dogs. Images of dogs flying on rockets to the moon sent around. Elon is waking up and I'm tweeting about it. It's creating PR and awareness for space. And that's the part I like about it. It's getting more people going. What is this thing about? Oh, it's crypto or what is crypto. Right. And getting more people involved in the ecosystem and paying attention, whether there's a real future for these coins or not, it's very up to debate. I mean, buying Dogecoin right now is a lot like going to the casino, right? It could triple tomorrow. It could also easily get cut in the third tomorrow. Right. It's based on nothing but speculation. And there isn't a traditional custody for a lot of these meme coins and coins. What I mean by that is a proper institutional grade, cold storage, insurance, etc. So because of that, they won't be adopted the same way as a Bitcoin Litecoin, Ethereum will be most likely. So the jury's out on where they go. I think they're interesting for the excitement of the space, but I certainly do not believe they're a safe bet for a store of value. They're much more like a lottery ticket.

Manseeb Khan : [00:12:57] Yeah, of course. Yeah. I think you got a really good point. They do bring an amazing amount of attention to it. Is it the right kind of attention? I mean, the jury's still out on that, right? Because it's still a very ever-expanding and rapidly growing space. But the fact but like all attention is good attention at this point, especially in a space where the more people, the more eyeballs that we can get on the space, the better, because that we can show. Yeah, you know, like there's dogecoin, there's everything else. But there are so many other amazing, like companies out there that that are just using that using crypto for the greater good. Right. Be it through loans, be it through buying a house, just like the tech aspect of what you can kind of build on top of these cryptocurrencies. That in and of itself is very amazing. So kind of tying back to what I previously I was like. So we have companies like Tesla with Tesla-like you said, square of rumors of Apple, you having all these big names, you know, take some of the cash reserves and put into cryptocurrency. Right? Do you see more big brands doing the same thing and do and I guess and secondarily the fact that they would be doing the same thing? Do you think having these big companies? Own cryptocurrency, you think that's going to push the government or speed up the government regulation when it comes to cryptocurrency?

Mark Binns: [00:14:24] Yeah, absolutely. So first and foremost, I think there's going to be continued adoption of large corporations, public companies, private companies, insurance companies, you name it, buying crypto. I think Tesla's the start. There is the rumor Apple will buy crypto for the balance sheet. If Apple does buy every publicly traded company, the United States will have free reign to do the same, just sort of like no one gets fired for buying. IBM was the same back in the day. Now it's like if you say, Hey, Apple, Apple bought Bitcoin and you're the CFO of a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq, you can do it, too. Now, you can say, look, Apple did it and they're one of the most reputable companies in the world. So it's not a fly by night type of decision. They truly believe in the store value. They wouldn't do it. So I think you will see a continued adoption. You're going to see more and more insurance companies doing it. MassMutual about one hundred million dollars. And someone said, why so much? And the CEO is quoted as saying, well, that's a tiny amount. We manage billions. One hundred million. It's just a test. So you're going to see a lot more adoption of crypto on balance sheets. I truly believe that there's even discussion that the bond market might move towards crypto underlying assets of the trillion-dollar bond market, which is supposed to be sort of the longer-term stable store of value for Fiat, could start taking positions in crypto or crypto, could supplant the bond market or supplement the bond market. So I think that is all coming. I really do believe that. And that's why you're going to see a continued increase in the value of their currencies, namely Bitcoin because when you have that kind of adoption is only ever going to be twenty-one million Bitcoin. So you'll expect to see a continued rise in the valuation as demand goes up. The supply is not changing.

Manseeb Khan : [00:16:19] That's. Yeah, I agree with you. There's always I always forget that the sort of finite amount of bitcoin because the prices have skyrocketed. Oh yeah. There's only so much bitcoin that you can purchase. So why would a company want to put the cash reserves in crypto? I mean, aside from big names buying into it, I guess like from a company perspective, like, you know, you being a CEO of a company, you having balance sheets you have in cash reserves, why why would companies put their money in cryptocurrency then cash?

Mark Binns: [00:16:51] I think there are two reasons. No. One is truly a store of value. It's like putting your money in an interest account except for an interest account might make you a percent or half a percent a year. Whereas you look at Bitcoin, it's been the best performing asset over the past one to five and 10-year time horizons. If you put it in to keep it and feel it. All you're seeing right now is a continued printing of money by world governments, US government, the Canadian government, the Canadian US governments have printed more money this year than they did in the last hundred years combined. And that is going to be incredibly. Bad situation for the value of those dollars, right, long term. So as a corporation, it's just a smart, safe place to keep your financial reserves. So they're buying power, stays where it is or grows as opposed to shrinking. So that's I think that's a big part of the secondary part is there are some companies using it as a way to make their company more valuable in the eyes of investors. So MicroStrategy for sure, but crypto, so people would buy MicroStrategy stock as a proxy for owning crypto or owning a bitcoin and crypto miners valuations, are generally based on how much Bitcoin they're holding on their balance sheet, or hodling, as they say, and other regular companies can do the same thing. You can buy Bitcoin, have it on the balance sheet. And if you're a publicly traded, people will buy into your company because they know it'll be worth more in the future for them today because it has Bitcoin on the balance sheet,

Manseeb Khan : [00:18:28] Of course. Yeah, that makes sense. You know. You know, it reminds me of talking to like we had we've had VCs on the on previous episodes. And of one of the things that they've mentioned was like how you have companies now they'll put like cryptocurrency and like AI got their pitch just to name just to see more value. Like even though the company has nothing to do with AI, there's no AI involvement whatsoever. There's no cryptocurrency involvement. There's no blockchain involvement whatsoever. But the fact that they have these buzzwords in their pitch like it's it just increases their value.

Mark Binns: [00:19:05] You know, there was a big twenty seventeen thing. I remember the juice company Iced Tea Bottling Company of New York, USA became the blockchain ice tea company or something. They literally just put it in their name and they got all this attention to this like value. But yeah, just a PR stunt that one.

Manseeb Khan : [00:19:24] So how do you see I mean, now we have big companies coming into the market? All of us are getting more retail investors day to day. How does this accelerate innovation in the space? And I guess what innovation do you see happening in the space?

Manseeb Khan : [00:19:41] Well, innovation comes from corporate involvement, right? So most innovation has to do with a company that's looking to create a financial opportunity for themselves through some new technology. And then you get more and more corporations involved in whatever way with crypto and aware of it, the more likely they're going to drive forward and create innovations and put investment into the space. You look at companies doing things like helping build the Lightning Network for faster transaction processing and payments on top of Bitcoin. That's coming because more and more corporations are involved. So I really believe that corporate involvement in the institutional involvement we see now will put more money into innovation and searching for more ways to exploit the opportunity around crypto, which will just naturally move the market forward.

Manseeb Khan : [00:20:30] Mm hmm. Yeah, no, I mean, that makes total sense. Or you need these big movers and shakers in the space to move and shake anything at all. Right. Like, you know, the Lightning Network is something I've been hearing about for like two years now, and it's still going. There hasn't been any any any system in place yet. So it definitely makes it makes a lot of sense, I guess. Where do you see just crypto as a general heading in the future? Do you see I mean, Do you see like your kids or any of these Tik Toc kids using cryptocurrency. Like where do you where you see cryptocurrency heading?

Mark Binns: [00:21:11] And I see a general adoption both in payments and also in-store value. So a cross between gold or people own it just to have it as is value that will increase in the future. And Fiat which people are using to buy goods and services. I hear about lots of parents now that pay their kids allowance and crypto because they believe that I mean, you could give them twenty dollars and in three years it'll still be worth twenty dollars, or you can give them twenty dollars worth of Bitcoin that in three years will probably be worth one hundred dollars. That's theory. So you see a movement of all sorts of. Yeah. Investment, payment, daily use. I think it really is going to infiltrate our lives. As you see PayPal making it available to twenty million Americans to buy goods and services. That's pretty exciting. And you see merchant adoption and acceptance. Now there are all sorts of merchants that will accept payment. Tesla just announced as part of their acquisition of Bitcoin, also that accept payment in Bitcoin for cars. Big corporations are starting to do it. I know Dell does it. Overstock.com does it. I believe Microsoft does it. I think Amazon is. Or talking about it, so as soon as people can spend it and in the meantime when they're not spending, I believe they'll get a bigger return on their investment than sitting in a fiat currency. It'll just be a self-perpetuating situation. So I really do see crypto over the coming years becoming part of your daily life financially.

Manseeb Khan : [00:22:51] Yeah, no, I mean, paying me the allowance and crypto, that's a very wild, wild, a very amazing idea. And it makes sense. I like living in like, you know, living in a post covid world. It makes sense that you'd want to invest in something digital. Right. You want to make sure you have at least as many touchpoints as you possibly can. Cash is one of them. Right. Not like the ATM, taking it out, touching. It just so many light touchpoints, like, I don't want it. I don't want my change back.

Mark Binns: [00:23:18] Like, take it. Look, I don't want I have friends who gave their kids crypto as Christmas presents on ledgers. And I have there are all sorts of examples now of the use of crypto in the store, crypto becoming part of everyday lives like two and three-year-olds. I have crypto in my kids. RESP's is now the new financial instruments where you can buy it in RSPs and TFSA and RESPs and yeah, like basically savings accounts that are tied to crypto with underlying derivative assets. It's pretty exciting.

Manseeb Khan : [00:23:53] Yeah. I mean especially like tiebacks where you sort of like if the bond market summerlike has a little bit of crypto into it and oh my goodness, I know my grandmother would be super happy with all the bonds that she was buying me if I could change them over to crypto.

Mark Binns: [00:24:09] There you go. Yeah. Awesome. So, Mark, is there, you know, aside from everything, what else is aside from Bitcoin and what's going on in big tech? what likes what are the things that you find interesting in the market? What what are the things that are like keeping you up at night or things that you're very excited to buy in the next coming years?

Mark Binns: [00:24:35] Yeah, I think it's an I'm excited about the things we don't know anything. Right. So we know what we know. But there's the old saying. You don't know what you don't know. There's there are innovations happening in every corner of blockchain. And I haven't, of course, seen them all. But every day I wake up and see some new novel way to use crypto or new novel technology to crypto. And I don't know where it's going to go. And that's sort of what's exciting. Nothing's changing, really, in the fiat world. Crypto, you're getting things like exchange-traded funds starting in futures trading. And like I talk about people giving it to their kids with allowance, but the technology around payments and processing transactions like the Lightning Network on top of Bitcoin, it's all just moving so quickly that it's as I have friends say, it's hard to sleep at night. You want to wake up every day and see what's changed and what's moving in the news tied to crypto. You're going to see governments get involved. I think there's this move towards central bank digital currencies, which is really just the digitization of their existing currencies, not true crypto occurrences that are decentralized. But I do think you will see governments start to get involved in true crypto decentralized currencies. There's an example of a small town in Ontario that you can now pay your property tax and get to it. Yeah, Innisville, all they do is take the crypto and sell it immediately and put the cash in the bank. But it does open up more cool uses for the technology. And you're going to see more and more governments getting involved one way or another. And that's just going to help accelerate the adoption.

Manseeb Khan : [00:26:16] Yeah, no, I mean, I'm excited to have more. Yeah, I'm excited to. You know, when we open back up and so I can travel around Canada, I got to just pull up in like a small town in Alberta and just pay for my Tim Hortons coffee in the of Bitcoin that I think that they'll be amazing.

Mark Binns: [00:26:33] You're going to tap your Visa card and it's going to withdraw instead of fiat it from an account. It's going to basically convert some crypto into payment instantly and give it to the guy at Tim Hortons.

Manseeb Khan : [00:26:45] Yeah, so that'll be amazing. Mark, thank you so much for sitting down today. What would be the best way to either get in touch with you or even get in touch with BIGG?

Mark Binns: [00:26:57] Yeah, you can check out our website, Bigg Digital Assets dot com, and be more than happy to hear from anyone mark@biggdigitalassets.com is my email address. Happy to talk about crypto. Happy to talk about BIGG and reach out any time.

Manseeb Khan : [00:27:11] Awesome. Thanks so much, Mark.

Mark Binns: [00:27:12] My pleasure.

Outro : you've been listening to Fintech Fridays brought to you by NCFA and partners. Tune in weekly for the latest fintech Friday podcast by subscribing to this channel. The National crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada is a non-profit actively engaged with social and investment fintech sectors around the globe and provide education research industry stewardship services and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers. For more information please visit ncfacanada.org. Oh yeah.

End of Podcast

Subscribe and Listen to more Fintech Fridays podcasts here

Join NCFA's weekly Podcast series 'FINTECH FRIDAYS' where we sit down with the incredible people in the Fintech community and talk about leading fintech products innovations developments and challenges!

Interested in getting involved as a partner or participant? info@ncfacanada.org

The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org

Support NCFA by Following us on Twitter! Follow @NCFACanada

April 15, 2025

IRS Crypto Rollback Raises Questions for Canada

April 15, 2025

Insights from Jamie Dimon’s 2024 Letter to Shareholders

April 14, 2025

Plaid Raises $575M to Scale Fintech Infrastructure

April 14, 2025

Strengthening Resilience and Leading Through Uncertainty

April 14, 2025

Navigating SEO for Effective Crowdfunding

April 11, 2025

OneVest Closes $20M Series B to Lead Wealthtech

April 10, 2025

SEC Issues Covered Stablecoin Statement, Risks Remain

April 10, 2025

Data Shows Tariffs Are Threatening Early Stage Innovation

April 10, 2025

Trump’s Tariff Pause Leaves Canada in the Cold

April 9, 2025

Tailscale Raises $230M to Power Identity-First Networking

April 9, 2025

Waymo Plans to Train AI Using In-Car Camera Footage

April 9, 2025

The Intersection of Fintech and Real Estate: How Innovation is Rebuilding the Foundation of Property Transactions

April 8, 2025

Win Free Tickets to Consensus 2025! NCFA Pitch the Future Contest

April 7, 2025

OSFI Approves Santander for Canadian Banking License

April 7, 2025

Zelle App Shuts Down, Shift to Bank Integrations