Ranking Ballpark Bites, Stablecoins on the Rise, and AI’s Growing Role in Treasury

Joseph Drambarean

All right. Welcome to the special edition of the Fintech Corner here at AFP 2025. This is a new gimmick we’re starting to try to do every AFP. So last year we did Hot Ones. That was an interesting experience. We broadcasted that one live to the company. I think that was one of our greatest moments. This year, we’re not going to broadcast it live, but we’re going to do a gimmick again. So…

Joseph Drambarean 

I think I understand it. But here’s what I’ve got. So we’re here in Boston and Boston is famous for the Red Sox among other things. You know, Fenway, you know, the big green wall, the whole thing. And what better way to celebrate that than to rate our favorite ballpark snacks.

Okay. So, I think the way this is going to work is we’re going to try to have a conversation about treasury stuff. Okay. While we taste test and rank these snacks. Okay. So it’s a little bit of a complex task here. I don’t know if we’re up to it. We’re going to, we’re going to give it our best shot.

Brett Turner 

Is there certain order the foods are gonna come in? Are we going like from an appetizer to desserts?

Joseph Drambarean

I think Alexa’s just gonna toss them over, and we’re gonna we’re not even we’re gonna have a chance to react. Bite, quick rank, and talk about treasury stuff

Brett Turner 

So now the ranking, are we doing like zero to 10 or what do we do?

Joseph Drambarean 

So I got a list one through seven because there are seven total snacks. I’m really going to be careful about my number one because

Brett Turner

I see. Okay, we’re gonna bracket him. 

Joseph Drambarean

Yeah, I’m gonna try to, you know, like if there’s something that I hate, it’s just going automatic 7. But number one, I’m gonna try to save. It’s, you know, I’m trying to be careful about this. 

Brett Turner 

It’s not like a three out of ten. It’s actually just no, his is the fifth of the best foods

Joseph Drambarean 

Yeah, so we’re basically ranking our favorites here. All right. 

And the two topics that we have for our conversation are our favorite two topics, stablecoin and AI. And I figured, what if you handle the stable coin stuff. All right. And I handle the AI stuff and we go back and forth and we see how that goes. What do think? So what’s our first snack?

Brett Turner 

That sounds good. Yeah. All right. Let’s do it.

Joseph Drambarean

So what’s our first snack? Alright, what do we got here? We’ve got a ballpark pretzel. This one specifically is Auntie Anne’s. I actually don’t mind a good pretzel, I’ll be honest. So this is gonna be up there.

Brett Turner 

Right.

Joseph Drambarean 

Yep. It’s good. The problem of course is, at the ballpark, it’s warm. So I’m going to have to take off some points for this implementation. But for me, a pretzel, that’s a solid four.

Brett Turner

I’m going to take another bite, you know?

Joseph Drambarean 

Little bite. Everybody knows the rules.

Brett Turner

There’s a little more salt on that piece. I feel like the delivery on the good pretzel, if it comes with salt, oftentimes some of the salt comes off before you get to eat it. Yeah. So that there’s not much salt on one side, a little bit more on this side. So I kind of give a little more love on this side.

Joseph Drambarean 

Speaking of delivery, the delivery of modern payments. Tell me a little bit about why you’re so excited about stablecoin. Yesterday, you were running around talking to different people. You’re getting kind of a vibe here about the stablecoin.

Brett Turner 

Here we are at AFP, the annual treasury show, corporate treasury, a lot of banks. What’s been really interesting, so there’s a big event, we’ll kind of mention that also, but there’s literally nobody on the floor talking about stablecoins. And we’re talking to…

Joseph Drambarean 

This is surprising for you?

Brett Turner 

One of our investors even said they had their investor conference like five, six weeks ago. And he said, and there’s a lot of banks and at their investor conference, a lot of tech companies in their portfolio, stablecoins, stablecoins, stablecoin and stablecoin. And yet there’s nobody mentioning about stablecoin here. Now there’s a lot of banks here. I know the banks are really concerned about their stablecoin strategy. Yeah. I think a lot of legacy solutions. How are they going to incorporate stablecoins?

Joseph Drambarean

Do you think because they’re flat-footed?

Brett Turner

I think there’s flat-footedness. I think there’s denial. I think there’s still a bit of understanding of like does stablecoin mean Bitcoin? Does it mean a cryptocurrency? That seems scary. We had all that. People went to jail for that a few years ago. How can that even happen in corporate? But so much has changed. We have stablecoin now and with the big events happening with Circle’s IPO, USDC had the biggest IPO debut in about 20, 25 years. They went up like eight or nine times their day one of trading. It’s just surprise everybody right and all of the momentum from that has changed massively to where it now which is oddly a crypto company Ripple XRP third largest, I think still, behind Bitcoin in Ethereum, circulated as a crypto company buys a legacy TMS one of the four legacy TMSs out there. 

Joseph Drambarean 

You would have thought that it would be the talk of the showroom floor.

Brett Turner 

I keep looking over at the G-Treasury booth, I’m like, that should be the hottest booth on the floor.

Joseph Drambarean 

It doesn’t even have a mention of it. 

Brett Turner 

It’s crickets. I look over there, and they’re like, it looks like they have a lot less traffic than they ever have. And so, I don’t know, maybe their employees just skipped the event because they’re celebrating because they got acquired. I don’t know. But you would think people would be interested in that. It’s like a, this topic is going to take this entire, you know, conference and this entire industry by storm. Right. And yet it’s nobody’s talking about it. So that’s like the big thing. That’s just really, really crazy to me.

Joseph Drambarean 

Speaking of talking about things, we’ve got our next snack. So this one is not complicated, all right? This is just our classic dry-roasted salted peanuts, okay? I already know I like this. I know where this is going, but I’m gonna give this one a.

Brett Turner (07:00)

I haven’t even. I’m here alright.

You gotta get a little peanut. You gotta give it a chance. That’s good. Is that one peanut or you gotta do at least a… 

Joseph Drambarean 

I got a whole handful.

Brett Turner

Oh you did? Popped the whole handful in the mouth? 

Joseph Drambarean

Yeah. I love roasted peanuts. That’s going to be a number three for me. Especially at the ballpark. For me though, I’d prefer if it were still in shell. Classic, you know, Wrigley Field, bag of peanuts, cracking them open, throwing them on the ground, messy experience. I love it.

Brett Turner

Yeah, when you have them in the shell and you crack them. Yeah, it’s like you’re having a conversation. Yeah part of the food is part of the conversation

Joseph Drambarean 

I will say living in San Diego, going to Petco, it’s a great experience, great ballpark, great venue, great food, great everything. But the difference, and I think this is probably true of Fenway, that old school grungy, I’m going to a ballpark, it’s messy, it’s, there’s history here. I haven’t been to Fenway, but

Brett Turner 

Fenway? I finally went once a year ago and it was pretty cool experience.

Joseph Drambarean 

I imagine it’s like Wrigley though. It’s probably…

Brett Turner 

I haven’t been. I would love to go to Wrigley but yeah same. You got the wall and the vine like that’s like and then you got the green monster I mean there’s yeah. 

Joseph Drambarean 

Because they’re old. They’re old ballpark. You know, been around for like, you know, almost 100 years.

Switching gears to AI.

In addition to stablecoin, AI, I’ve been having interesting conversations with our customers, actually, about AI, just kind of trying to figure out where they stand on the topic.

One of the most interesting things for me is the total acceptance of the inevitability of it. That changed from last year. Last year it was, well, we’re still looking at tools. It’s still early on. This year, I don’t know what changed. It must be that they all started to use it personally, know, ChatGPT.

But there is this total shift in kind of the mindset where I heard even in the previous conversation, a team of agents is something that I’m planning for. What are you talking about? So it’s been interesting to hear the different perspectives. And I’m curious, just kind of walking around…

Brett Turner 

Whoa.

And are you seeing like the, so think of it from an adoption curve, you know when we were the first in Fintech to kind of release the chat assistant, and that was really exciting, but initially it was like maybe a few customers kind of dabbling. It’s the leaning in, so it’s definitely you’ve seen that really but what would you say roughly like

Joseph Drambarean 

You can look at the questions actually, even if you just look at the find a needle in a haystack style questions of search replacement, you know, I’m looking for X. Find it for me. That was where it all started for us. And it kind of stayed like that for a while. The thing that’s changed in the last year is that paragraphs are starting to show up in the query. And I think the only reason for that, in my opinion, is behavior change because of your personal use of ChatGPT. Because that’s normal.

Start to give ChatGPT lengthy instructions because you’re kind of treating it like an agent, especially since it supports agentic tasks. You’re prompting. So that prompt becomes kind of like a job description for what it is exactly that you want the agent to do. So I can see why it’s starting to happen. It’s also interesting to see just the cognitive dissonance has shifted, right? Whereas last year, it was total cognitive dissonance. It was like, we’ll see. You know, like it’s yet another trend.

Brett Turner

So let me I’ll ask you an AI question, but maybe we’ll go to the number three before. 

I loved these as a kid.

Joseph Drambarean 

Okay.

So this, I don’t know what this is. No, this is actually my first time having whatever this is.

Brett Turner 

Classic.

Joseph Drambarean 

I think I was expecting M&M’s.

Brett Turner

You guys do not know what these are? Boston baked beans.

Joseph Drambarean

And I got a mushy taste, which is good. Yeah. And it’s like peanutty. Yeah.

Brett Turner

Like it’s a peanut but it’s coated with this candy which you say well, what is the candy? I don’t even know what it is but it’s I had these as a kid and these are one of my favorites People nostalgia right here. I don’t I don’t know if it’s a typical maybe ballpark kind of food. So

Joseph Drambarean

I’m going in for a second.

Boston Baked Beans

This is a very misleading name. I don’t know where to place this. It’s actually good.

Brett Turner 

It’s really good. I’m gonna, yeah, I’m kinda now following a trend here, moving up the ladder.

Joseph Drambarean 

I might take pretzel and put pretzel to five and put baked beans in instead at four. It’s not better than peanuts for me. Peanuts is at a solid three. I think the line of three is not gonna be passed. But this is actually good. Where do you stay on candy at the ballpark?

Brett Turner 

I know that’s just gonna say typically maybe not at the ballpark, but it’s like, I don’t know, it’s Boston baked beans. A little bit. Yeah, I think it definitely. So if you think of like our AI program, yeah, like what things have accelerated so much. I mean, we talk about like the early days of launching the chat assistant and now.

You know, obviously ,we feel like it’s old news. We’re definitely moving past that. People are now starting to, like you say, of prompt in a way where they’ve kind of grown up and kind of trained a little bit on how to use it a little bit. They want real problems now. They’re kind of asking, I could actually solve some of these tangible kind of things. What do you make most excited about? Like our AI program, it’s developing, and a lot of people are saying like, Trovata, what’s next? What’s coming? Where do you think maybe like a couple of things that are just right around the corner that give it pre view of where you’re at.

Joseph Drambarean

Two actually, this is right off the top of my mind. The first is there are two ends of the spectrum. One end of the spectrum is the dabbler that wants to become more serious needs UX leverage of some kind. Multiple conversations I had today and yesterday where there’s this like almost creative barrier to seeing a chat and trying to figure out what you want to ask. Right? Especially if you’re not coming in with intention. It’s different when you’re coming in with intention. You already know what you’re trying to figure out. You put it in there and you get your answer. You leave. But when you’re just trying to discover, there’s this, this barrier–creatively. So one of the features that we are very excited about, obviously, is AI insights. AI insights is this concept that we’re bringing to life where we’re going to try to suggest topics in areas of key treasury practice and then use them as launch pads to further explore that topic in a total conversational format. 

It really is a UX implementation of what ultimately is just still AI. It’s, we, we still see this as our role at Trovata is that we feel very strongly that we are navigating the treasury space in a unique and new way, bringing attention to, to experience that has never been given before. And this is an area where everyone seems to be throwing AI, in a very conversational format, and just like leaving it there. We want to take it a step further and try to give you valuable conversations by leading you through these various topics. So that’s one side. The other side is totally different. Has nothing to do with that. Nothing to do with experience. It’s actually a platform. Believe it or not, we haven’t even had a chance to talk about this. Multiple people in the podcast interviews have brought up am I able to connect my large language model to Trovata? And I was like, it’s funny you asked that because we’re getting that question quite a bit. And yes.

Brett Turner

Well, in the early going, that was sort of taboo. Like, what is our governance or our security policy? What does it say about these things? And it was like, no, can’t do that. That’s that’s

Joseph Drambarean

We’re going to bring it to life. We’re going to bring, uh, you know, model context, protocol style integrations that your large language model can take advantage of directly on your Trovata data. It’s still your data. It’s still, you know, segmented to be secure in your environment, but we’re going to give you that direct connection. And I’m getting the, infamous another snack. Okay. Crackerjack. This, this is going to be, this is right. This is.

Brett Turner 

Here we go. yeah.

I mean, take me out to the ball game. It’s in a song. And you got the, got the, we got the toy surprise. What do we got? It’s like a, is this like a tattoo?

Joseph Drambarean 

I love Crackerjack.

This might be number two for me. Because just like you with baked beans, this is super nostalgia. This is like, I would look forward to going to Wrigley to get this. Even though you could get it anywhere, it’s just one of those things. It’s like peanuts and this, and a hot dog, and I’m good.

Brett Turner 

I haven’t had this in so long. And it’s so good. And you know what happens, you know, as classic as it’s always like the peanuts kind of fall to the bottom. To the bottom. You got to get extra dose of peanuts. All right.

Joseph Drambarean 

Right, Cracker Jack is number two for me. I know that a lot of people are going to disagree with this ranking. I don’t care. I love Cracker Jack. So, so far, I don’t know if anybody can see it.

Brett Turner

I’m actually I’m with you on the number two. I’ve got

Joseph Drambarean 

I’ve got baked beans at number four. I’ve got pretzel at number five. I’ve got three is my peanuts. Two is crackerjack, leaving one, six and seven as slots. Unless, unless we have a disruptor. 

Speaking of disruptors, how do you think that stablecoins are going to disrupt the banking industry?

Brett Turner

If you think of what, there’s a utility that comes along with stablecoin. There’s a storage of money. There’s a way to, or even though right now there’s been a regulatory framework that’s agreed upon under the Genius Act, where you know, the yield can’t be passed on to the direct end customer. That’s still not allowed. But you can kind of generate what’s more of like rewards or what would be more of an earnings credit model. And that’s similar to what the banks do. That’s not anything new. The banks have always done that. 

Joseph Drambarean 

So many different, the interchange is built on that.

Brett Turner

So, and then you have, what’s huge, what’s gonna be huge use case is inter-company settlement. Because if you look at, it’s more of a need for in-house banking. So being able to kind of manage the ledger yourself and be able to use that, it’s a huge killer app, I think, that’s coming. People see that. You have big companies that have consolidation, massive subsidiaries, domestic and foreign, and it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot that goes into that. have all these entities will have, they have to operate often. Sometimes there’s a collection, maybe for tax purposes, certain tax schemes, or you might have what’s called transfer pricing agreements. You gotta have a cost plus or agreements so that way the entities are operating on a standalone basis, they’re arms length.

Joseph Drambarean 

I mean, you’re giving me so many examples. So this is a major disruptor.

Brett Turner 

It’s a huge risk. Absolutely. And I think this is what even what JP Morgan’s doing with Konexis and JP Morgan coin. The difference is that JP Morgan’s been doing this for years and now they’re kind of starting to pitch the utility side of it for them. But what are other banks going to do? Right. 

Joseph Drambarean 

We’re about to be disrupted again. Okay, so we’ve got popcorn. Alright, so I’m going to assess this not on the popcorn that we’re eating right here. Right. But on the concept of popcorn, okay? 

Brett Turner

This isn’t just popcorn. This is like this is Himalayan Pink Salt. 

Does the salt actually come from the Himalayan mountain tops?

Joseph Drambarean 

You’re not going to see this at the ballpark.

So I have nothing against popcorn whatsoever. It’s just for me, it’s not a ballpark snack. Nothing against it. I go to a movie theater, it’s an automatic. So for me, I’m putting that at a six, because it’s not last. I like popcorn. But on the list of ballpark snacks, it’s a six for me.

Brett Turner

I think I’m gonna go with seven. I need to fill out the bottom. I’m just anticipating. We haven’t had hot dogs yet, so I’m just thinking maybe there’s a… Right now. And you know that can’t be seven, so I’m gonna… Something’s gotta be on the bottom.

Joseph Drambarean

We have a, I see a hot dog coming in.

So we’ve got a hot dog here. I don’t know what kind of hot dog it is. This is another one where, boy, I think I know what kind of hot dog this is.

Brett Turner

yeah.

Joseph Drambarean

Yep, that’s a Vienna beef hot dog.

That’s a overwhelmingly massive number one. I knew where I was going to put this. I cannot go to a ball game without having a hot dog. It’s almost like a, it’s an incomplete experience for me.

Brett Turner 

There’s a ratio of bun to dog. Yup, that’s good.

Joseph Drambarean

What I will say, what I don’t like, is when they overcomplicate the hot dog at a ballpark. I don’t want to see a mound of toppings on it.. I’ve got to be able, it needs to be accessible. 

Brett Turner 

No, no onions, relish…?

Joseph Drambarean

I’ll take all of that. So a Chicago-style ballpark hot dog, which has onion, relish, mustard, a pickle, and sport peppers, but nicely and cleanly assembled. No mound, no froufy stuff.

Brett Turner 

What’s your policy for ketchup on hot dogs?

Joseph Drambarean 

Well, I’m from Chicago, so you know that we have state doctrine on that. There is no ketchup on hot dog. Nice try.

Brett Turner 

No, daughter loves ketchup on hot dogs and every time I see her do that, like, you can’t do that. What are doing? at some point in life, we’re going to have to have a sit down discussion. You cannot put ketchup on a hot dog.

Joseph Drambarean 

You know, I’m gonna let it slide. You know, this is one of those things where I’ll let it slide. 

This leaves my number seven slot, which now I’m worried because what is in front of us, the grand finale is… 

Brett Turner

What’s in that box?

Joseph Drambarean 

So it’s a Boston specialty, Boston cream pie. Thank you. I’m gonna take one bite. I already know this is good. I mean it’s gotta be, just look at it.

You threw this in here. Boston cream pie. This is our crack marketing team assembled this list and these items. And I feel like they did Boston. They did them dirty because this is really good, but I have to put it last on my list. This is definitely last.

Boston Cream, Boston.

Brett Turner 

Yeah, what’s the rationale? That’s a shocker. How are you going seven?

Joseph Drambarean 

It’s a seven because I’m not eating a pastry at the ballpark. That’s why. I got the rationale here is I’ve got my handful. I’ve got my bag of peanuts. I got maybe a drink and that’s it. You can’t be dealing with a tiramisu-style cake at the ballpark.

But I’m happy to have it afterwards for dinner.

I’m sorry, Boston.

Brett Turner 

It really doesn’t belong in the ballpark, you know what I say, who cares? It’s good. It’s delicious. And there should be room in the ballpark for this kind of goodness. I love that I’m bumping down the pretzel. So pretzel was. Yeah.

Joseph Drambarean 

So you got the Boston cream at five, pretzel at six. All right then. Yep. Let’s finalize our list. Let’s share it with our audience. Just in.

Big chew bubblegum, no way. So, is that… Wait a minute, what’s going on here? Wait…

Brett Turner

What do you got over there? No, no, no, no, no,

Joseph Drambarean 

So again, our crack marketing team is just pulling off miracles. 

Brett Turner 

I don’t know if I’m ever gonna live this down. We gotta find every instance your own… Joseph, you… This wasn’t your suggestion, was it?

Joseph Drambarean 

You’ve got your own Big League gum now?

No, their creativity just ceases to amaze me. This is another success. I don’t know how to do this without you.

Brett Turner 

As a kid, big league chew, this was a thing. It’s not the it’s not the true cha.

But you can’t take a…

Joseph Drambarean 

Palate cleanser. I love that. All right. All right. So.

Brett Turner 

I’ve chewed it.

Joseph Drambarean 

I’m putting the Boston.

What was that? was the Boston. Beans.

Brett Turner 

Very funny. 

Joseph Drambarean

That’s my four. And then my five.

Let’s see yours. So you’ve got hot dog, Cracker Jacks, peanuts. My pretzel was at five.We’re close. 

All right, so let’s show our cameras. This is mine. Your camera is there. I got hot dog, Cracker Jack, peanuts, Boston baked beans at four, pretzel at five, popcorn at six, Boston cream, wah-wah at seven.

Brett Turner

All right.

We’re close.

Boston baked beans not the better business bureau. Yeah, just in case anybody needs some translation at home This is good. Thank you guys.

Joseph Drambarean 

Well this was great.

Thank much.

This was an awesome gimmick. Until next year for our next gimmick. Don’t know how you top hot ones and this. 

Brett Turner 

We may have to rank stablecoins.

Joseph Drambarean 

Yeah. Right. All right. Thank you so much. Until next time. This has been Fintech Corner here at AFP 2025.