Understanding the power of crypto cash-back rewards with Moso co-founder Blake Capozza

[00:00:03] Blake Capozza: A lot of people wanted to find more ways to earn crypto. Cashback was a very simple option to do that. We already have over 2,000 partners. That’s globally, too. Something like Walmart, who traditionally is around 3% back, and turn that into 50% back.

[00:00:20] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Hashing It Out. It’s getting to that time of the year where you are going to be shopping a lot. You would be listening to this podcast episode same week as Thanksgiving and also same week as Black Friday. But even if you haven’t started shopping for the holidays yet, Christmas is coming. New Year’s is also around the corner. So you’re probably going to shop someway, somehow, especially now that it’s a bull run. People made gains. Who knows what we are going to be buying? Maybe we are going to be buying those Lambos.

But that’s not what we are going to be talking about, like what you are buying specifically, but we are going to be talking about how you are buying it and how you can earn crypto when you purchase things at various shops across the world. This was a narrative that was pretty huge at a point of the last bull run, towards the end of the last bull run, and then at the start of the bear run. But that narrative has died down a little bit, perhaps because there are flashy things that have come up, like airdrops, like memes and whatnot. But it’s a very interesting aspect of the crypto space, crypto cashback rewards, especially because just as you could get cashback rewards when you spend your traditional currencies wherever you are in the world, getting features like these that make crypto look and function like fiat is something that is very important. And joining me to talk about this today is Blake. Hello, Blake, and welcome.

[00:01:45] Blake Capozza: Hey, how’s it going? Yeah, thanks for having me.

[00:01:47] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: Amazing. Blake Capozza is CEO of Moso, and we’re going to be talking about how people can earn crypto while they shop. The subsector, or should I say the sector of crypto, that has to do with crypto cashbacks and crypto rewards when people shop, and how that’s expanding the cryptocurrency ecosystem in terms of adoption and usage. Before we get into anything else, how did you end up in Web3, and what has the journey been from the start to more so?

[00:02:16] Blake Capozza: Yeah, so I worked a traditional job. Up until 2021 of last year had just been like a casual investor since then, but wanted to find my way into actually building in the space. And so, I actually just left without having any sort of plan, but just with the goal of finding a job in Web3. And so I ended up actually starting and working at Galxe, or what used to be Project Galxe, late 2021, early 2022. And that was, I would say, super beneficial just to get to learn all the different projects in the space, what everyone’s building, what everyone’s doing, and learn from the best of the best. From very early on, always wanted to start my own company and set out on that path on that journey towards the end of 2022, and that’s kind of where Moso was created.

[00:03:00] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: Sounds interesting. Before we jump more into Moso, let’s talk about some of the things I said at the start of the podcast. Cashback. Crypto cashback rewards were huge in terms of the narrative and popularity, and then it died down. What happened?

[00:03:14] Blake Capozza: I think a lot of people wanted to find more ways to earn crypto. Cashback was a very simple option to do that. At the same time, the rates are kind of small, so most people are earning between 2% to 6% on their purchases. And there’s, I think, a lot more earning power in some of these other ways, too, whether you’re participating in airdrops or different DeFi protocols. There’s just more ways to spend your time earning that have come up. And so, I think that narrative has just died down a little bit. But with what we’re doing, we’re starting to revive it a little bit within this past year.

[00:03:46] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: Okay. So, let’s get into Moso. What is Moso? What are you building? What have you built so far?

[00:03:51] Blake Capozza: Yeah. So, Moso is a platform where any user can shop online and earn crypto. Shop at any one of their favorite stores, and after they complete a purchase, whether they check out with crypto or debit card or credit card or however the merchant accepts payment, the user will earn a percentage of the crypto of their choice into their wallet. So, if you go and you shop at Walmart, you know, you spend $100, you’ll get, let’s just say, $5 in Ethereum deposited into your wallet.

[00:04:18] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: The interesting thing about cashback rewards is it’s at the intersection of crypto adoption in two different ways. So, there’s enterprise, and then there’s the average consumer. How is this sector of the Web3 industry bringing in more people into the Web3 space in terms of adoption? And I’d appreciate it if we separated the answer from two perspectives: the enterprise perspective for the companies, are they excited to participate in this, and then also for the consumers.

[00:04:52] Blake Capozza: Yeah, I’ll start with the enterprise side. So, for them and a lot of the conversations we had with some of the larger retail partners, you know, are very uncertain with the regulatory environment around crypto and all of this. And so, we gave them a path forward to kind of dip their toes in where they’re still transacting mostly all in fiat, but they still get some access to the crypto user, where this person who’s interested in earning more can shop there and have the rewards retooled from traditional cashback that others do, like Honey or Rakuten, into crypto. And so, that was a very strong selling point for them.

For the end-user, you know, what we found is there’s kind of like two different users. There’s the one that’s a little more educated in the space and just wants to find more ways to earn. And then there’s the people that just in general shop online all the time and want to find more ways to earn higher rates back. So, one thing that we’ve done to satisfy both pools, because the crypto-native people, they also want something that’s higher than just 3% back at shopping at a store. So, we’ve started to partner with different token projects where they put up some allocation out of their token, maybe their marketing portion, to multiply and boost these reward rates. And so we’ve actually been able to take something like Walmart, who traditionally is around 3% back, and turn that into 50% back for shopping online.

What this does is it introduces new fiat into that token, creates different flywheel loops for their product and more utility for that token. And so, we’ve been able to start pulling in people who have just traditionally always used Honey or Rakuten just for the sense of you can either earn 5% there or you can earn 50% with us. So, yeah, that’s one of the biggest things we’ve done, where we’ve been able to attract a lot more people from both sides of the aisle into what we’re building.

[00:06:43] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: I want to focus a bit more on crypto natives and people who are in the crypto space. Because for them, it’s a no-brainer, to a large extent. But there’s also the idea that lots of people do not identify that this is a use case that exists, and so they’re probably just shopping regularly with their crypto cards or just in physical cash or traditional currencies after they’ve sold their crypto coins without knowing that they could get cashback rewards. What has the reception been from crypto natives when they figure out that this is an option that they can use, and what has the reception been like?

[00:07:23] Blake Capozza: You know, when it clicks for the person, for the crypto-native person, it just becomes a no-brainer. And at that point, it becomes for them, more of them requesting access to different assets on different networks, where primarily, we only supported mainnet and some assets on Base, but more, we’re getting requests for a lot of different networks, a lot of different tokens on those networks, some memecoins. Those are becoming more and more popular. And so, it’s now trying to cater to allow access to that, but to also not remove the easiness of decision for non-native users who are coming in and just looking to earn an extra boost back on their cash.

[00:08:03] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: So, then that takes us back to new users, because the other thing about building in the crypto space recently is just the fragmentation that exists across multiple chains and multiple user interfaces.

[00:08:15] Blake Capozza: Yes.

[00:08:16] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: So, for a project that is looking to expand and allow people who are crypto natives to have the options that they want while attempting to balance the scale in terms of new users coming in, what are some of the things you consider in terms of user experience, and are you looking to obstruct like create an interface that abstracts the experience in a way that does not require new users to deal with the technicalities of multiple layer 1s or layer 2s? And are you also looking to come out of the Ethereum ecosystem?

[00:08:49] Blake Capozza: Yeah, I think there’s two big things. One is account abstraction, where any person currently can go and sign up their email with their Gmail, X, along with any wallet that they might want to connect. So, it fits both sides, right? The second big thing is chain abstraction. So, we’re working with D’CENT right now actually to create a claimable model where any person that, let’s just say, earns ETH as a reward, that person will be able to claim that over Base, over Arbitrum, over whatever network supports it. Or G, that user will be able to claim it on their native network, Gravity, on mainnet, Base or BNB. And so, whatever the token, or wherever the token is supported on, on whatever network, as long as it’s EVM, for the start, that person will be able to claim it there.

For most non-native people, we’ll deliver an option where maybe there’s, we’re working with some chain to abstract the fee away. So, it’s just a free claim for that person. You know, that’s down the line. But we’re introducing right now chain abstraction where, you know, it fits everybody again.

[00:09:56] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: I know we already spoke about enterprise players, companies that have these shops, and the fact that it’s great for them to have an option for people to earn crypto when they shop. But is it easy onboarding them? What are the challenges bridging the traditional shopping world with the Web3 shopping world? And also, is there a lot of pressure like on you to onboard as many companies as possible?

[00:10:23] Blake Capozza: Yeah, to answer the last part first, we already have over 2,000 partners. That’s globally, too. Not every merchant supports every country. Like Walmart, I believe, only supports the US. NordVPN supports every country. And so, each merchant is a little different. But for us, it’s mostly what’s the top three e-commerce partners in each country, and that’s where we focus. So, like Amazon is huge in most countries. They don’t actually have an active program with anybody. Not Honey, not Rakuten, not us. And those are the types of stores that are most requested because they’re the most frequently shopped at. So, we tend to try to focus first on where is the most frequently shopped at, and then we move on, if we’re talking about that single country, to the middle tier stores where they’re kind of shopped at sometimes maybe once a month, maybe once every few months, and that’s kind of like the direction that we’ve taken.

[00:11:15] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: That’s interesting. Are we also seeing crypto-native shops? I know you were working on some partnerships with crypto-native shops that are just Web3 shops, or shops that only accept crypto, or shops that were built by crypto companies. What does that relationship also look like? And I’m assuming that’s relatively easier to onboard.

[00:11:35] Blake Capozza: So, most non-crypto shops are accessible through what are called affiliate networks where there’s like a marketplace that you can get in touch about these types of partnerships, and you can get in touch with people really quickly. For Web3 side, some of them are on those, like Travala is a great travel partner of ours. We help drive a lot of purchases for people booking hotels or flights to them. Space ID is a domain name service. They do all the .bnb and .arb domains. We’ve driven a lot of transactions to them.

And so, to onboard more of those types, it’s much easier, probably, if they have an active referral or affiliate program, much faster to integrate. But second to that, we also built out our native affiliate network. So, any Web3 potential merchant that wants access to the users that we’ve brought, and also to like exterior marketers that are driving transactions on their behalf, we make that a very simple and fluid integration. Previously, it was like a month, probably, a couple weeks to a month, if you’re working really fast, to get those integrated. Now, we’ve gotten that down to a couple days. But on that side, it used to be very grueling and difficult. You need both dev teams to work very closely with each other. Now it’s become much more simple as we’ve started to onboard more and more of these Web3-style partners.

[00:12:50] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: I think one thing that has been a big problem for various sectors in the crypto space when it comes to expansion, has been the issue of regulations. Does the crypto cashback sector exist outside of the regulatory framework in the sense that are you least affected by it, or are you? And if you are, what is your impressions on the current regulatory structures, and what do you think would happen to the crypto space moving forward? Especially considering the fact that the US elections just happened, and everybody seems to believe that we are heading towards more positive regulations, in the US at least.

[00:13:26] Blake Capozza: I think the uncertainty hasn’t been around, I can do this or I can’t do this, but it’s been around like if a major retailer wants to do something with a consumer in crypto, whether that be an NFT or points or token or just like putting data onchain, let’s just say, it’s been more about that we just haven’t had those answers. And that’s been one of the biggest reasons why most retailers haven’t jumped in on a consumer side. With the latest election, I think we’ll start to get a lot of those answers really defined, where it’ll give a lot more confidence that what you build isn’t going to be not allowed, let’s just say. So, I think a lot of people are very excited for that to come.

[00:14:07] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: Sounds good. So, I see on the roadmap for Moso that there are new things coming up, like NFTs. What does the roadmap look like? How are you looking to integrate more Web3 features as you grow?

[00:14:22] Blake Capozza: Yeah, so our core business is we want to drive as much purchases and also drive as much rewards back to the users. And so when we look at how we’ve done that in the past, it’s like two to three things. One is through these partnerships on the token side, where we’ll be rolling out here in the next like two to three weeks our holiday partners, where some of them are putting up different token allocations to boost rewards, taking reward rates from, let’s say, 4% to 25% to 30%, something like this, or 20% to like 80% back. So, we’re very excited about that. Just on the partnership side will help incentivize people to go through Moso to do their holiday shopping, or being able to maybe splurge a little bit more on your friends and family for Christmas shopping or whatnot. So, the partnership side is something we’re very excited about.

On the product side, it’s also building out more of these white-label shops. So, how we built a Galxe Shop or shop.galxe.com, where they put up different token allocation to boost the reward rates. I think our last one we did was 100% back, you know, up to $100 or something like this. Shipping out more and more of those our dev team is very focused on. You know, and thirdly, is onboarding more partnerships in Web3. So, partners like SPACE ID and partners like Travala, and getting more of those integrated into the affiliate network that we’ve built out. Those are kind of like the core three focuses of ours, which has driven a lot of our success and why we’ve went from year one delivering somewhere around like $10,000 in rewards to year two delivering near $300,000 in rewards back to users, and year three already on pace for over a million and a quarter.

[00:16:00] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: That makes sense. That does answer the question for me in terms of the roadmap for Moso specifically. But in terms of the general crypto cashback rewards corner of the Web3 space, are we going to see new trends, and what do you envision happens in the next couple of months? So, let’s say if we came back again next year, November, November 2025, to do a podcast about shopping and earning crypto, what would have been the biggest changes of the landscape in 2025?

[00:16:32] Blake Capozza: I think every goal for every cashback provider, not just us, is how do we get rates, like, how can I give 100% back to someone who just spent money at some merchant? I think over the next year... Like, we’ve already done that a number of times. But how do we keep it consistent? Or even if it’s not 100%, how do we get it to 50%? How do we increase rates from our retail partners? How do we get more token allocation to be delivered back to users to introduce these people to these different ecosystems? And so, I think the game is, like for a user end, loyalty is there, but if they find that they can earn 30% back somewhere or 5% back somewhere, it’s not going to matter. They’re going to go to the highest bidder. And so, I think over the next year, you’ll see more consistency on the rate side, increasing from the standard it’s been for forever at 5% where now we’ve taken over this last year our average is around 30% back. And so, the goal is to get that closer to probably 50% to 60% and continue on that trend.

[00:17:38] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: At the start of the podcast, I promised people that we’re going to break down how they could earn crypto while they shop this holiday. So, before we go, I want you to break down like the steps for a new user. How does Moso work, and how can they take advantage of the platform?

[00:17:53] Blake Capozza: Yeah, there’s two ways. One, you know, if you have access to a computer and have Chrome or, you know, one of the various Chromium browsers, you can download our extension, the Moso extension. Every time you visit a supported store that’s in the country that you live in, the extension will drop down, prompting you to activate it and select the asset you want to earn in. And after you do that, you’ll spend or shop as normal. Spend $100, and you’ll have the rewards deposited into your account once the merchant releases them. Or if you don’t want to install an extension — I know a lot of people don’t like to do this — you can just visit moso.xyz or any one of our various shop partners like Galxe Shop or galxe.com and just click on whatever the merchant is. It’ll prompt you to connect your wallet so that we know where to send and deliver the rewards to. And then, yeah, you’ll visit that store and shop as normal. You can do that on both desktop or mobile.

[00:18:49] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: Sounds great. I’ll be trying that out myself when I pick up some Black Friday deals next weekend. Yeah, but Blake, thank you so much for running us through Moso and taking us into the realm of shopping and in cashback rewards with crypto.

[00:19:06] Blake Capozza: Amazing. Elisha, thank you so much for having me, and I hope we can talk again soon.

[00:19:10] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: Yeah, definitely. I plan on bringing you back next year just to check in. Maybe by then, maybe Amazon. Who knows.

[00:19:18] Blake Capozza: Yes, I hope, I hope, I hope. We’re doing our very best.

[00:19:21] Elisha Owusu Akyaw: Sounds great.