the first stable coin super bank um in the world it's been the reason why gold price has been increasing in the last 2 3 months is most likely Tyler yeah there's many countries where people can trust their banks but there's a lot of countries where people can't necessarily trust their banks we know many many people that we've given them their first bank account and card ever that they've ever received this is a full alternative of a bank account this is the only financial app that you you knew we've already seen over half a million people use our product and people love it and we just want to keep you know giving them real value so we got Seth and we got George here from Chem all right guys this podcast is a very different one from the ones that we've done before cuz uh usually there's just one person i'm staring right into their soul the whole time and asking them all the deep and the right questions about their life and their business etc uh but this time we're going to allow you guys to talk a little bit more uh tell us what you do uh what is Chem all about uh how are you guys changing like the cryptocurrency world and um yeah uh so just the mic is yours yeah thank you so much for having us um so George and I are the founders of Chem yeah uh we're the founders of Chem the first stable coin super bank um in the world and uh we're backed by Tether USDT and so essentially what Chem does is we give people access all across Mina and the world um to an array of financial services spending sending purchasing Bitcoin gold even uh and this is all powered by the breakthrough technology that is stable coins uh USDT which essentially is a digital dollar pegged onetoone with the US dollar so we give people access to the dollar worldwide uh a stable currency where in many countries there's hyperinflation and so they aren't able to get the dollar through maybe bank accounts in the US but this dollar digitally lives everywhere in the world.
so you guys are at the forefront of this right embracing stable coins mainly USDT and also tether gold as well right so talk to us about your individual roles as well. sure yeah so I'm the co-founders the city co-founders I'm mostly in charge of the finance side and operations cess is the CEO we wear many hats we kind of do everything we have a very lean team we try to run as lean as possible we have under 10 full-time employees we have already over 500,000 downloads with a very small team and we're super proud of that.
Tether was founded over 10 years ago by these Italian guys. at first there was a difficulty of converting Bitcoin into a stable asset so they created USDT for you to execute quick trades and hold liquidity in crypto. but then especially in 2020 that was the real breakthrough for USDT. there was a lot of demand for the US dollar during covid and people couldn't get access to it in places where there's high inflation like LATAM or the Middle East, a lot of countries like Lebanon. so people started using USDT as a way to hold money without losing everything to inflation. now the main use case for USDT is actually the store of value rather than just pure trading.
we're kind of an extension of Tether for the Middle East because the Middle East has the biggest pain point for access to finances. I've lived in Kuwait on and off for 3 years and I was never able to open a bank account there simply because they do not serve foreigners. those people need access to a bank-like service, and that's what Chem is. there's hundreds of millions of people in the region. there's many countries where people can trust their banks but a lot of countries where people can't. the great thing about stable coins is you can trust it, you can set up a wallet in a second and start receiving USDT for almost no fees. we're seeing stable coins process more volume than Visa and Mastercard combined. more and more people all across the world, in Mina, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Iraq, Jordan, especially Turkey are adopting stable coins.
Tether Gold is one of the largest holders of gold in the world, the largest non-central bank holder of gold. they launched XAUT Tether Gold which allows people to buy sell and trade gold anywhere on the internet, matching the price of gold exactly. they hold over a billion dollars in gold reserves in Swiss vaults, close to 2 billion. it's very popular in this region since gold is a halal asset. in the next 5 to 10 years they see tether gold having a larger market cap than USDT, and USDT has almost a $200 billion market cap.
when it comes to usability, the way we position ourselves is that this is a full alternative of a bank account, this is the only financial app that you need. you can use this to receive your salary, receive it in fiat and it automatically converts into crypto, use it as a store of value for savings, you pay 5.5% yield on USD savings which is much higher than bank accounts, you can send money to anyone in your contact list, and you can spend with our card which basically replaces the whole bank. I've debanked myself. the card pays 3% Bitcoin cash back. we're able to onboard you faster than a bank, onboarding takes around 1 minute with document uploads.
Tether's a company of trust. when you look at the banks' reserve requirements they're lending out almost 90% of your money whereas the reserves that Tether has is much higher, so your money is actually much safer holding USDT versus a bank.
Timothy Lee, our adviser, says it will be the next PayPal. we actually started in traditional finance, Tradfi. we tried to integrate with the banking system. but there were so many blockers and obstacles, networks were very slow, settlements were very slow. we wanted to build this product for Kuwait when we first started. if you build the Tradfi app you can't scale, you can only be in one region, country by country getting multiple licenses. as soon as you switch into crypto all of that's gone, you're borderless on day one. the goal is to scale this thing to 4 billion in transaction volume. we've already seen over half a million people use our product. if you think about it it's over 500 million people living here, 70% of them are either underbanked or unbanked so the opportunity is massive.
every time I come back to Abu Dhabi and Dubai it gets more developed, it almost feels like a 1920s New York. this region, not just the UAE but also Saudi Arabia, is going to continue to grow. when you look at the history of money, the US went through checks then cards, Korea went straight to cards, Africa and the Middle East jumped straight to cards, and now everyone's jumping straight to stable coins and Bitcoin. the government is doing a really good job especially in UAE and Bahrain in terms of stable coin regulation.
chem is actually the word for "how much" in Arabic (kam). it's central to conversations about finance. our logo is almost a calligraphic symbol that represents the kaf in Arabic. we started as a traditional finance application to smoothen the way money moves in Kuwait. George and I reunited after not seeing each other for 5 years since high school, and we realized stable coins is the way, a better form of money. for the Middle East we've given some people their very first card, people from villages in India and Bangladesh who come to this region.
we're very different people and that's a superpower. I'm more of the numbers guy, Seth is out there in terms of marketing and customer acquisition. I previously worked in venture capital, helped Chinese VC funds fundraise, worked in a German fund called Target Global. Seth was at the University of Southern California and worked on startups. we knew each other from high school. I was on a trip to Georgia the country and met up with George. Tether gave us a $3 million round. our work style is you always challenge each other on everything. having three co-founders is the perfect number because you'll always come to a conclusion. as long as you're long-term aligned you'll always be able to figure out the immediate conflicts. we have to make those decisions quick because you just have to continue building.
a lot in store. before the end of the year we're about to launch tokenized stocks and be the first neo bank in the Middle East to launch those, buy any stock on the S&P or NASDAQ starting with $1. peer-to-peer is coming out, top up your balance in crypto from your bank account anywhere in the GCC and withdraw into any bank account in the GCC. in the next few months hopefully we can get to a million users, and eventually 100 million users across Mina.
a general piece of advice to startup founders: if you feel like you don't know what you're doing, just do work. even if that work gets wasted it will reveal what you need to be doing. it's almost like chipping out a big marble block, you just have to chip away at it and eventually you'll see what the sculpture looks like. we've been doing this for over 3 years. for fundraising, the most essential thing at the pre-seed stage is to put yourself out there, marketing and PR is essential, reach out to everyone and tell your story because eventually someone will catch on. the reputation building part is a super important element of fundraising. guys just download Chem on the app store right now.