On stage, founder and CEO JP Richardson opened by talking about the company’s debacle on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2024, when Exodus flew 130 employees, friends and family to Manhattan for a lecture the night before regulators delisted it.
He described the change as an “11th hour” rule change that left the fan base stunned and forced the company to return to private status despite, he said, following the playbook.
That episode ended months later after the US election, when Exodus was finally listed on the NYSE American in January with the same group, ticker, and business, but under new management open to digital asset companies.
Richardson cited that adage as proof that Exodus can absorb political and regulatory shocks while sticking to one principle: money is under user control.
Exodus, founded in 2015 in Omaha, creates a self-sustaining wallet that stores keys on user devices and routes exchanges to multiple currency providers, providing access to Bitcoin and other assets without holding customer funds in company accounts.
Fixing “pub testing” and app distribution
The CEO argued that crypto still fails ordinary users in basic usage. He recounted an early experience helping a friend pull out four different bags and write a 12-word seed phrase on a cocktail napkin, a practice he said still defines many products a decade later. Richardson called this the “pub test”: if a friend in a pub can safely set up a wallet without using napkins, the industry has missed the mark.
He extended that criticism to chain tribalism, insisting that consumers don’t care if payments reside in Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum, or Base as long as the information is valid.
To drive home the point, he asked the audience to pull out their phones and count how many apps they use to make money. A typical screen, he said, shows a bank app, person-to-person payment apps, a brokerage account, and often a different crypto wallet.
He described this fragmentation as a structural problem that leaves consumers negotiating with suppliers that do not suit their interests.
Exodus wants to replace that cluster with a “single application” that manages digital assets, connects to card networks, and routes payments while keeping users private.
Identity of the channel: Monavate, Baanx and Exodus Pay
A highlight of the conference was the closing of the acquisition of Monavate and Baanx UK, a move that transforms Exodus from being “rented to rail to owned,” in Richardson’s phrase.
Monavate and Baanx provide regulated card issuing, acquiring, and processing infrastructure in the UK and EU, including BIN support, Visa and MasterCard memberships, and fraud systems that already support cryptocurrencies such as Ledger and MetaMask.
Exodus previously agreed to acquire their parent, W3C Corp, in an estimated $175 million deal aimed at building an on-chain payment stack; the company later forced a $70 million loan from that group into UK receivership to protect its position.
With those assets, Exodus gains the ability to issue and process cards directly rather than operating as a third-party onboarding system.
CFO James Gernetzke said the integrated platform now supports six layers of operations, from the main wallet and exchange engine to stablecoin issuance, card systems, and banking rails, giving Exodus an “economy of ownership” at each step of the transaction.
On stage, he went through an example of a purchase of £ 100, explaining that where Exodus once kept part of the economy as a client of Monavate and Baanx, now it takes a large share in exchange, processing fees, and interest in the float.
Richardson and Gernetzke both made it clear that Exodus is trying to surpass the commercial model after the peak year in 2025, when it generates $121.6 million in revenue and $11 million in adjusted EBITDA on the basis of 1.5 to 1.6 million active users.
At the beginning of 2026, the limits of that dependence on crypto cycles came into focus: the preliminary results of the first quarter show a decrease in revenue to $ 22.7 million from $ 36.0 million last year, a total loss of $ 36.4 million in digital assets, and a 22% quarter ‑over quarter in the number of active users decreased by a volume of 1.18 billion, an exchange volume of millions which are 1.18. and funded users dropped to 1.4 million.
Gernetzke described the strong correlation between trading revenue and the price of Bitcoin as a ceiling the company needs to break.
Exodus Pay, now in all 50 states, is a clear manifestation of that strategy. Embedded in the main wallet, it allows users to use USD-backed stablecoins, Bitcoin, and other assets wherever Visa or Apple Pay works, while keeping the keys to their own security and turning all output into exchange, processing, and floating income.
Later at the Summit in a fireside discussion, Richardson pitched that stack as an infrastructure not only for today’s users but also for AI agents that will make independent payments across the same rails.
