Peter Smith, CEO & Founder, Blockchain.com

Episode 5 of Season 2 of The Scoop was recorded at Blockchain.com's New York office with Frank Chaparro and Peter Smith, Founder and CEO at Blockchain.com. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to [email protected]

Blockchain.com is one of the oldest companies in the crypto world. Best known for its consumer wallet business, the firm has expanded into new verticals over the past year, launching an exchange, institutional lending, and over-the-counter trading businesses.

On this episode of The Scoop, Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith joined The Block's Frank Chaparro to discuss:

• How the firm has leveraged its 40 million wallet accounts to break into new segments
• The size of the non-custodial market versus the custodial market
• The crowded crypto exchange space 
• Facebook Libra

Blockchain.com built its name as a consumer wallet provider, amassing tens of millions of registered wallets since launching in 2011, and by early 2020 Smith had been steering the company through a deliberate expansion beyond that core product.

The conversation traces how Blockchain.com leveraged its enormous existing user base to push into new business lines, including a cryptocurrency exchange, an institutional lending desk, and an over-the-counter trading operation aimed at professional and corporate clients. Smith walks through the strategic logic of that diversification, arguing that a wallet business alone was not enough to sustain the company through the industry's boom-and-bust cycles, and he offers his read on where Blockchain.com sits relative to custodial exchanges like Coinbase and Binance versus the non-custodial wallet market it pioneered. Much of the discussion centers on the size and shape of those two markets, with Smith comparing the relative scale of self-custody versus exchange-held assets and explaining how that split informs Blockchain.com's product roadmap.

The episode also touches on the broader hype cycle that has defined bitcoin and crypto more generally, with Smith reflecting on lessons learned from the 2017 boom and the following bear market, and how those lessons shaped a more measured approach to growth. Facebook's then-recent Libra announcement also comes up, with Smith weighing in on what a tech giant's entry into digital currency could mean for incumbents like Blockchain.com and for the regulatory environment surrounding crypto more broadly.

Recorded at Blockchain.com's New York office, the episode offers a candid look at how one of crypto's longest-running companies was positioning itself heading into a new decade, balancing its wallet heritage with ambitions to become a full-service financial platform for both retail and institutional users. Smith also discusses the competitive pressure coming from newer, well-funded entrants, and why he believed scale and trust built up over nearly a decade would prove decisive as the market matured.