MatterFi founder Michael “Mehow” Pospieszalski believes he has created the infrastructure cryptocurrency needs to go mainstream. When the time is right, MatterFi’s technology could simplify crypto usage for billions of people.
The company develops new security infrastructure for software wallets, hardware wallets and custody systems, providing safe, accessible, and trustworthy financial rails with convenience inspired by legacy finance apps. Users don’t need to understand crypto addresses; they simply “send to a name.” Via their wallets, users directly control assets both on-chain and in custody systems.
Users can swap assets with other users worldwide with the assurance of cryptographically proven KYC/AML. Identities and funds are easily proven to institutional counterparties.
How Pospieszalski is improving inadequate security
Pospieszalski said it took close to six years for MatterFi to develop this technology. It’s an improvement in many ways, beginning with eliminating the need for wallets to talk with each other. The problem with such traditional formats is that addresses must be stored so they can be handed out to counterparties. That means a centralized authority and a failure point.
Static addresses allow others to see a user’s transaction history.
“It’s a huge privacy problem,” Pospieszalski said. “Why have those systems not gone into mainstream use? It’s because if they use a (method) other than our send-to-name system, they’re automatically leaking the balance of their wallet.”
MatterFi’s system generates a large amount of keys. Thanks to a non-interactive crypto proof, if a wallet knows a user name, it can compute a receive address somewhere in that pool that is unique to the two parties. Those user names are KYC-proofed.
“What you have is cryptographic proof between the addresses and the people,” Pospieszalski explained. “It’s like PayPal for crypto, except it’s decentralized and private. It works across all chains. We’re an easy-to-use fintech that’s making finance more secure for humans.”
There are other reasons why crypto hasn’t gone mainstream, beginning with a casual approach to theft. Pospieszalski said large frauds and thefts, more common than most realize, are considered part of the cost of doing business in a sector where many are still getting rich.
“The perps are generally not caught, and it’s just part of the ecosystem, right?” He asked. “It’s like, we’ve normalized theft. This is the only space in the world where stealing is okay. If you go to a bank and try to hold it up, you’re definitely going to jail, probably getting shot. You steal somebody’s crypto, and you’re probably going to be fine.”
AI’s role in improving trust
MatterFi’s increased simplicity and functionality are driven in part by AI agents running inside the user’s machine.
Pospieszalski said that centralized exchanges must also work harder to foster user trust. KYC systems are inadequate and don’t do enough to ensure addresses are legitimate. Custody creates the same problem in reverse, forcing users to endure multiple security steps. Eliminate the need for these middle steps entirely.
There are no usernames or passwords to reset. The wallet flags untrustworthy KYC credentials.
“Notice that none of these steps have any people involved on the custody side because of that, end to end, crypto proof, you don’t need people to be sitting there with keys,” Pospieszalski said. “The reason that’s important is that’s the other half of the theft, right? You got admins with keys controlling a multi-party computation that’s also controlled by a policy engine, which is ultimately sharding a single HSM with a single key. So when you compromise any of these three things, you’ve stolen the money.”
Pospieszalski believes that private send-to-name is crucial if crypto is to realize mass adoption. It must be decentralized, have strong KYC and have autonomous robots running on top of it.
We’re Goin’ Mobile
And wait until all of this works on mobile devices. Pospieszalski said the most secure wallet possible is a software wallet on the phone with a hardware backup.
“Today, there’s no such thing as a Trezor for a phone,” he noted. “That would be the most secure crypto wallet on Planet Earth because computers get compromised all the time, and even people with treasures get tricked into signing things that they shouldn’t sign. So Trezor fishing is not that difficult.”
“We’re ultimately building a mobile AI with a hardware wallet with a screen that you tap to your phone. It talks directly to custody, and it does DeFi and regular on-chain transactions.”
What’s coming in 2025
Pospieszalski sees a post-inauguration crypto Trump bump where everything goes up in a deregulatory environment. The next six to eight months should be heady times.
“I think everything’s going to go up, and it’s going to be driven by deregulation,” he predicted. “And I’m 99.999% sure of that.”
However, it comes with some downsides.
“I think there’s going to be a massive amount of deregulation where your token project is going to be run out of America with far less regulatory scrutiny than did before, which means that the theft and the fraud are going to go through the roof,” Pospieszalski said. “The amount of stealing we’re going to see is going to be just phenomenal because now they’re going to be like, ‘it’s safe in America to buy a token.’”
The inevitable slowdown’s timing depends on how well Trump handles the economy. Eventually, poorly run projects will be sifted out, leaving winners and losers.
Pospieszalski concluded with a reminder of how new crypto is as an industry. Plenty of issues must be sorted out. Users are very passionate but low in number compared to the potential base.
He believes MatterFi will be a key player in that mainstream transition. It’s partnering with more companies, and when a large digital player signs on, that could be the moment historians cite as the key element that made a financial ecosystem possible.
“Now everybody’s using this, period, full stop,” Pospieszalski said. “There will be a Trump bump, AI and better security. I just need to provide two out of three.”