Kyn Chaturvedi - Yield Gets Real: How Minterest Captures The Highest Returns In DeFi

Full transcript: Kyn Chaturvedi on London Real

3:12 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose, my guest today’s Kin Chaturvedi, the blockchain expert, strategist, and decentralized finance pioneer. You have over two decades of experience working in tech startups, including 15 years working in video game development. You were the Chief Business Development Officer at Tomochain, Southeast Asia’s leading public blockchain platform, and also served as the studio head for India’s largest game developer. Today, you are the CEO of Mintrest, the decentralized lending protocol designed to provide superior yields and sustainable tokenomics. Mintrest uses a unique protocol managed buyback process to automatically distribute the value it captures directly back to users. You believe traditional banking has been responsible for many of the economic issues we faced over the past 20 years, and that DeFi offers a transparent alternative to help people everywhere control their financial future. Kin, welcome to London Real.

4:10 Thank you so much, Brian. How eloquently you speak as well. Look, it’s great to have you here. And look, I just want to start by saying that Mintrest is one of our portfolio companies here at London Real Ventures, the world’s first media-powered investment firm, where our mission is to transform the world by investing in cutting-edge web3 and AI companies, while giving our partners marketing exposure across the London Real Media platforms and academies. We heighten awareness, create customers, and build communities by leveraging our global audience and extensive network. Kin, super excited to be part of this journey with you and Mintrest. It’s really exciting stuff. So let’s jump in. Most people watching us, they have a bank, and they have a relationship with their bank. Probably started when they were a kid, when their parents took them there for their first account, you know, and they probably rinsed and repeated their whole life. And maybe they’ve never zoomed out and said, you know, what’s going on here? Why is this happening? And I think you have this really interesting perspective. You’ve got crazy experience. Also, a lot of background in finance as well, warden business school, etc. When you look at the way the banking world is now and how most people have a relationship and compare it to some of the innovations in web3, what do you think that most people should understand maybe about the banking system and

5:29 Their relationship? Yeah, that’s it. You know, when I look at the last even from the from the 1950s itself, right, I look at the typical household at the time. You could have a family with a single provider, a child, you could buy a house, you could have a car, you can have savings, it didn’t require a university degree at all. You fast forward to today. And I have a number of very close friends who have done the the right thing, the thing that you’re supposed to do, you get highly educated, go to university, get a job, marry a lovely person have children.

6:11 They’re in their mid 40s, high, you know, they’re doing well in their career supposedly. Yet, every single month, they’re struggling to have any form of savings, they’re all in debt. And like, my parents in their 20s, they weren’t rich, they bought a house, they had a car, they had me. What is happening today, right? And this is kind of what I mean, think about the traditional banking system. The thing that I’ve been seeing is that, you know, number one, we have no transparency into the system. You have a savings account. And today, maybe you’re earning under 1% in most places. You look at the compare that to the inflation rate of what’s happening, it’s over 3%. Officially, right? At the very reality, it could be 678%. Exactly correct.

7:05 And so what is a person supposed to do? You decide you’re earning a wage, you know, you’re performing at your at your job, you’re putting your money into a savings account, which is what we’re taught to do, right? Save money. But every year, you’re losing out on inflation, the bank takes your money. And what’s interesting about it is, there’s something called the fractionalized a fractionalized system for the for the banking structure. So you deposit your $100. And all the banks have to do in the United States in particular, is they can take your $100, take $90 of that, and lend it out to somebody else. Now in your account, you have $100. But in reality, your $90 has gone somewhere else to somebody else, who then deposits into their bank account. Oh, and then that bank then takes $80 out of that, lends it up to somebody else, your $100 ends up becoming $1,000 in the system.

8:00 How does it happen? Right? You don’t even know that. We don’t know that. Right? So we’re basically creating money out of nothing to begin with. Secondly, we talked about the fact that you’re losing money every single year to inflation. But if you looked at the last in 2021 to 2023,

8:22 If you looked at real wage increases, compare that to inflation, it was a gap about 50%. So not only are you losing to inflation, the real wage rate was not increasing at the level that it should just even match that of inflation. So your interest rate is lower than it should be. And what you’re making is actually losing out every single year for you and for your family. And the thing is, many people don’t understand that, that that’s taking place under the hood.

8:52 All they know is in the real world, their money is not going very far anymore. Yeah. And we’ve seen that the system, well, the common term, which is actually very true, it is heavily rigged in the sense that your middle class is shrinking. We’ve known that for a long time. And the money is being basically pushed to the more wealthy, who can do more, but the rest, they’re struggling. And even what we used to call the upper middle class, they’re not able to do anything. They’re not able to earn, they’re not able to make ends meet.

9:21 And that has been frustrating. It’s been frustrating for years. And it’s one of the reasons why, initially, when I was exposed to Bitcoin, back in 2009, when it first came out, first, I was like, this is nonsense. How can you just create something out of thin air? Money, so to speak, right? Made no sense. But year after year, it continued to headlines.

9:46 And I didn’t understand why. In 2014, that was kind of my aha moment, because I was seeing that my accounts were not growing. And in fact, the only way to really make your accounts grow, your savings, especially now, what are your options before I get to Bitcoin? You either lose money by putting it in your savings account. If you have the capital saved, you can get a CD and maybe make just above inflation, but you’ll lock your money away for over a year. The only other alternative really for most people is to play their hand at the stock market to earn hopefully something more. That is a very risky endeavor.

10:27 Right? If those are your options. So I discovered Bitcoin in 2014. I really discovered it, I should say, because the other problem with traditional banking is not only does it harm your chances at making an earning or making earnings or savings over time. It also locks you out from many other countries and other people. It dictates who you can do work with. And that means that you have real borders. You have true borders where you cannot operate with other people. I was in a situation where I had to pay a developer in a different country, which had been sanctioned not long before that. I used to pay them through Skrill, which was like a PayPal equivalent, basically. And that was shut down. Couldn’t pay through bank transfer, couldn’t pay through PayPal, couldn’t pay through Skrill. And I was like, how am I going? I really genuinely love working with that person. But simply because they were living in a country with a nationality that was not accepted. I was being told I couldn’t work with them. That wasn’t right. So we discussed options. And that’s where Bitcoin came up.

11:41 And I was like, aha, I got it. No borders. That was a big part of it, right? And that also continued to educate. I started to continue to educate myself about the banking system because that immediately told me there’s something wrong. There is something wrong here when I’m limited with who I can work with. So that’s, there’s more to share on that front. But that’s kind of the starting point. It’s interesting because I just saw an interview with Michael Saylor and he was interviewed by Peter Diamandis, who was on my show as well. And they’re both MIT grads a couple of years before me. And Michael Saylor’s on stage saying, look, he said with fiat currency, you have no options. And he said, if you’re in a corporation, he said the only reason microstrategy put their entire balance sheet into Bitcoin is yet he said, because we couldn’t compete with Microsoft. We were a failing company. And most companies and people are failing because of their fiat currency is failing them. And again, you hark back to the 50s and 60s when the fiat currency hadn’t yet started to fail people, but now it fails them. And if you listen to Michael, he said, unless you’re one of the magnificent seven, everybody else in plain terms is kind of fucked. And he said, what you should do, and this is crazy. He said to every corporation out there, just take your treasury and buy Bitcoin. He said, that’s the only chance you have.

13:10 Because he said the cost of capital is eight or 10%. You’re going to earn two, three, or 4%. Unless you’re some crazy, massive innovator, you have no chance. And yet with Bitcoin, you’ll get what he sees as 20% returns. And so it was fascinating to see Michael distill down a point maybe you’re trying to make a little bit here and that a fiat currency system, especially one where a lot of money is being printed, which we didn’t even really go there. And if you listen to people like Max Keiser, who’s on the wall here, who originally was talking about Bitcoin, you know, he says that all wars are because of fiat currency here.

13:45 I don’t know if I’m there yet, but I can see where they’re going. You know, a lot of problems we create because of money that’s not worth anything, or because of a banking system we can’t trust. Even the fact that as humans, we know deep down inside our money isn’t sound. This was an interesting point someone made the other day, is that let’s say you’ve never taken an economics class in your life. Let’s say you don’t even know how to write. But you watch and you realize that your money isn’t really that sound. So why work for it? Why save it? Why even show up every day to life? If you know you can’t trust, in a weird way, the universe around you. Imagine if you had extremely sound money like Bitcoin, or you know, kind of what you’re building where you don’t have a fractional reserve way of saving. Would it even change how we show up as humans every day in this world? That’s right. And you know, when we look at those who are accruing wealth, most of their assets are actually not liquid. They’re not in fiat. They’re in real estate or crypto in other areas where they diversify because that’s where the growth happens.

14:58 Cash tends to be where, well, we end up losing out. Fiat is like that. And when it comes to Bitcoin, it is something that allows all of us to participate. And when we think about DeFi now, so blockchain is one thing where we have Bitcoin, it’s an asset that has continued to hold value and grow over the course of time. If at any point in time in Bitcoin’s history, you held it, then is a very small percentage of people in over the course of time who were not in the money, so to speak, right? Yeah, it’s a wild ride. So strap on your seatbelt. But if you hold it for any period of time, you do make money. That’s exactly correct. And now when we think about a level beyond or below Bitcoin, right, we’re talking about financial freedom to operate, right? It’s about self custody that I’m holding my assets for myself. And I know exactly what I’m doing with my own money. I know where it’s going. Someone else is not custody. And the value of my assets ideally is hopefully increasing over the course of time. But when you’re holding cryptocurrency, Bitcoin or other assets, it is at the same time, in a sense, holding those assets under the proverbial mattress like cash under the mattress. People are not putting that money to work. So what DeFi allows, it’s sort of it’s a section decentralized finance. And it’s sort of like banking, but on the blockchain. Now, what’s the difference? The difference is that these

16:43 Decentralized finance banks like Minterst, we’re trying to build, it allows for anyone to participate, number one. So it doesn’t matter where in the world you are, you can come, you can make a deposit, you can earn an interest rate, right? And typically the savings rates in blockchain in DeFi are definitely much better than that in the traditional space. The other thing it allows for you to do is have complete transparency with where the money is actually going. So you can’t just magically invent money in this system. There’s no factory reserve banking going on. $100 goes into the system, everyone can see it. Everybody. And on the flip side, when you’re making a deposit, there’s someone that’s possibly borrowing that. When someone borrows, they’re paying an interest rate, and that interest rate is transparent. And the interest rate that you earn as a depositor is transparent. So you earn proper yield, you have complete transparency with what’s happening. And on top of that, it’s run by code.

17:53 Anyone can audit the code. You can’t audit people. You can’t audit institutions with centralized databases. But in decentralized finance, on the blockchain, you can have a banking system where anyone can look in and see if something is working properly or not. That’s not something you can say. Yeah, there’s a great quote from you where you said, imagine if a traditional bank acted as a cooperative, where every account holder was entitled to a proportion of the bank’s proceeds, in addition to their savings account interest rate. And if every account holder had a real time transparency into the operations of the bank, and had a vote in its future decisions. Now people are listening to this, if Arne and DeFi are thinking, what are you talking about? Like, I just go up there, I go to my bank, when I was a kid, I always realized the bank had the most beautiful lobbies in the world, marble everywhere, these huge places, you know, think about that for a while. But people are listening to this thinking, I didn’t even know that was a possibility with a bank. And yet you are describing interest really to a key and what you’re trying to build, which is much more than a bank can ever be. That’s right. So as we were saying earlier, right, your traditional banks, you’re earning a fraction of a percent in savings, and yet the bank is making so much more. And where the profit that is being generated, where is that going? Well, sliding the pockets of

19:20 Shareholders and the executives at the end of the day. What would happen if instead, not only did you know what kind of profits that the bank was making, but you as a participant in that bank received a fair, equitable portion of that profit. That’s what we’re trying to build. So when you participate in DeFi, when you participate on Minterist, yes, you’re earning a fair yield. But on top of that, in the background, there are fees being generated by the protocol by Minterist. And those fees that are generated, which is the profit, goes right back to everybody who actually deposits and borrows on Minterist itself.

20:09 So it is a cooperative. It allows for people to have a stake in governance, meaning if you participate on Minterist, you can vote for proposals, create your own proposals to make the system better for everybody. And you do receive fair share of everything that the protocol makes. That’s how banking should be. It should be aligned. The incentives should be aligned. And what we see in traditional banking is they’re not. They’re entirely misaligned, and they’re benefiting a handful of few people and leaving the rest of us out.

20:43 And that actually doesn’t empower the ecosystem. It doesn’t empower growth. It’s one thing, all these people get the money, but imagine if you got a real interest rate, what more could you do? What more could you create? It actually, it’s not just being myopic that a few people make the money, you’re actually not able to grow maybe orders of magnitude, if you could just let this money flow, right? That’s exactly correct. And so now, what that means is you have the ability to have proper savings to earn. And that means there are more opportunities for you in life, right? It opens doors. And that where we’ve seen over the last 50 years, traditional banking is just not doing, particularly over the last 10 and 15, right? And that’s the whole point. This is why when you look at developing countries in particular, right, Southeast Asia, Asia at large, you’re seeing a huge migration towards this space, towards Web3, towards crypto, towards holding these assets. And that’s because it’s the same problem. You have massive inflation, low opportunity. And here, not only can people earn some kind of income, but there’s also job opportunities too, because the space is growing so rapidly. So learning about it has been empowering to so many people.

22:02 I used to live in Vietnam as one of the one of the opportunities I had as head of business development for Tomo chain. It was very interesting. This was back in 2019, story of bear market. What’s very interesting was to see how many people were so interested in crypto at the time. There were so many gatherings that we would put together just to educate.

22:23 And those same people, I’m in touch with a number of people that we met at that time. They over the last cycle, they transformed their lives at the time, because they learned about this, they learned about what crypto is, learn about what DeFi is, they put that opportunity, they took the opportunity and take away the most of it. Their lives are better for it at this point. And now they’re doing the same thing. A number of them doing this and they’re re educating new people in the same way, because they saw that the system was not working the way they want it to. It was a very empowering experience for them.

22:55 And I’m very proud that I was able to at least have some share in that for these people as well at that time. Now, Web3 gives us this promise of ownership. And so, this is London Real. So let’s get real. We had the DeFi summer of 2020. And all of these ideas that we always hoped that would happen in this space started to happen. Now, I had Andreas Antonopoulos on the show back in 2015 and 2017 and 2019. And he would talk about the internet and money and the future of money and all these grand ideas before the stable coin was even invented at the time. And then all of a sudden it happened. And all we saw, wow, compound was growing and Aave was growing and people were financing and total value lock was going up and it was actually happening. And it was amazing. And so, we finally saw this happen. And so, I’m sure people are thinking, Ken, that’s old news. Aave is doing that. You can go in there, you can stake your coins, you can get your interest rate, you get your Aave tokens.

23:55 What’s the problem? Why do we need interest? And so, let’s call this out. And I had Stanley on this show. He sat in that chair a few years ago. I love what he’s done with Aave, amazing innovations. But there’s also a problem with that. And there’s room for someone to come in here and optimize that even further, I think. And I’d love for you to explain the difference between what you do and say in Aave. Sure. Absolutely happy to say that. So, you’re right. Aave compound, they absolutely innovated in this space with DeFi lending.

24:25 Stanley’s awesome. I’ve met him once in the past and he’s a brilliant individual. The thing that we noticed in DeFi lending three years ago when we were designing interest was that DeFi lending is, number one, it’s inefficient. And number two, it can be predatory. So, let me explain what that is. So, number one, inefficient. So, as I was talking about, when you’re on interest, it is like a cooperative. You are earning a share of whatever proceeds the protocol earns. Everybody is. 100% of proceeds goes right back to the users. That is not the case with any other lending protocol at all. What happens there? What happens with other lending protocols is that those proceeds, they go to a handful of people. Again, protocol owners and to third parties. Let’s talk about the third parties. On all lending protocols, there are a couple of different individual or groups that operate. So, when you’re depositing your assets, you’re earning an interest rate from a borrower. The borrower must back their loan with some kind of collateral. So, if I want to borrow $50, I need to back it by about, say, $100. You have to over collateralize. You have to have something that’s backing your loan.

25:51 So, when the market moves and the asset goes down a little bit, you still have enough collateral for the loan. So, you over collateralize this. This is common in all lending, right? Exactly. Well, at least in DeFi lending it is. Over collateralization absolutely is. And what happens, as you were saying, when the market goes volatile, in order to keep the system, this DeFi bank, solvent and healthy and all users healthy, when the price of an asset drops below a certain threshold where the user may not be able to pay it back, pay back their loan properly, there is a liquidation event, meaning that that collateral is then sold on market and it repays the system. So, that means that nobody’s locked up from withdrawing their assets if they want to, right? But with every lending protocol in the space outside of interest, this activity is outsourced to third parties. So, you have all of these different individuals and whales and bots basically sitting on the outside of these protocols looking in.

26:53 And what they do is they buy out these distressed assets, but they buy it out at a profit, significant profit. So, if I’m in a situation where I’ve taken out a loan and unfortunately, the market has moved against me, I’m going to be liquidated. What will happen is with every single day of the week, these liquidators will take much more than they need to from you. They may take $10 from you, but they have the opportunity to take $50. They’ll take $50 every day of the week, all the time. That’s unfair. And all the fees go to them as well. It all leaves the system to these third parties. With Mintris, what we do, we have excluded these third party liquidators from the system entirely, number one. Mintris handles the liquidation process itself, but when I say it’s not predatory, we don’t take the $50 in this example. We just take maybe 20, put you right above the healthy threshold so that we keep you in on the bank. You keep your money as much as we possibly can. We don’t want to profit from our users because the users are the stakeholders.

28:02 They’re the people who are determining what happens with the future of the protocol. Why would we want to remove you? We’re not looking for the profit. We’re not looking to over-profit from anybody. We’re the only ones that do that. Everybody else, no. They’re all looking to take your money anytime that they possibly can. Right. So, it’s kind of this concept of a web three. We all own the protocol. We all get the tokens, but the truth is behind the scenes, that’s not exactly the economics of what happens. And so, it’s worth always looking at this stuff.

28:32 It’s interesting because I have a crypto and DeFi academy. I’ve graduated over a thousand students. And I always tell them, I’m like, look, when you go to Coinbase and you want Coinbase to change your Ethereum for Bitcoin, I’m like, let’s not get it twisted here. That’s a stock broker in disguise. Wall Street’s been running that game for 100 years. It has nothing to do with the blockchain. There’s no piece of code that’s optimizing the rate. You can’t watch it happen on eScan. There’s some dude, and I used to be that dude on Wall Street, that’s market making and thinking, how much money can I make on this to where you don’t know? And I’m going to make as much as I can without you walking away as a customer. And I’m guessing the same thing happens with these liquidators. And they deal with these illiquid situations and it’s fast timing and they’ll make as much as they can. And so, that is ultimately not in the spirit of this.

29:18 We all own everything. And so, you’re going to get a different result. And we’ve seen this happen. This has been called out on a few protocols, even places like Uniswap, where they said, look, the profits are not going into the token. The profits have jacked up and the token has not gone anywhere. The TVL has gone up and the token hasn’t impressed. Why? Because all the cash is getting dumped into other actors and people are having to reevaluate what they thought was this pure web three system. Of course, it’s not going to be pure because it’s the first iteration. But one of the things we love about Mintrest is that you guys have been working on this problem for years. And you’re keeping it not simple, but you’re just keeping it your intentions are pure. And like, we want to do this one thing that no one’s doing better than anyone else. And the other piece of this is that how do we actually distribute those proceeds, right? Back to our users. The devil’s in the details, right? Period. Because you can say, oh, I get an AVE token. So of course I participate. But unless, but it’s not true. So the details are important, aren’t they? You’re absolutely correct. So the way in which these systems were developed was brilliant again by AVE and Compound. How do you onboard people onto your system? How do you have them deposit their dollars? There was an incentive structure set up where if you deposit, then you also earn this governance token, right for the for these protocols. And what is the

30:41 Value of the governance token allows you to create proposals and to vote and to participate. But the question ends up becoming, what is the value of that, of that, of my governance participation. And what we’ve realized over the last three years and data shows it, is that the value of that token of participation is very little. As what happens is you end up having a market value that’s largely sentiment driven. And so you hold onto the token, but it ends up not holding retaining value. With Minterist, what we’ve done is we have looked at this issue for an extensive period of time. And so what we decided to do was all of these fees that we are able to capture, by the way, we are able to capture about five times more fees than anybody else because we handle that liquidation process in house, right? While still protecting our user from predatory liquidations. All those fees that are captured, go back onto market. They buy back the Minterist token called Minty. And then it redistributes that token back to the users of the protocol. Those were depositing, those were borrowing, they get it. What this does is not only is the Minterist token, does it allow you to participate in governance, but it is a way to transfer that value, that fee value, the profit from the protocol, right back to the users. So it is a method of channeling that value back to the users through the token, meaning that the token has the ability to retain

32:13 Some level of value beyond just the pure governance aspect of it. And that is where we believe there is a real win. Why you would want to actually participate in governance and also hold onto that token as well over the course of time. Yeah. Now look, this is a great theory, and I’ve seen so many proposals and so many pitch decks that have these amazing theories.

32:36 But recently, you put this to test on the mental network, and you came out and with this brand new concept, that, you know, who knows how it could have been received. Some people will be like, well, it works great, leave me alone. But I think what you found was this huge insurgence of organic interest on your protocol. Can you tell me a little bit about the early signs of how that was received? Because I think even you were surprised.

33:01 I was, you’re absolutely correct. So with Mintress, as I said, we’ve been developing it for years, we finally launched on the mental network, mantle is a blockchain, it’s a layer two blockchain that sits on top of Ethereum. And they have their own ecosystem of projects that are there. And so we entered in January, we deployed Mintress in January. And what was so surprising was within the first month of being there, the message of what we were trying to create was so powerful, that we moved into the top five by number of users, like as an, you know, on mental network within one month, meaning that, you know, we have the largest user base already just a month in to our deployment. And this is compared to other projects that have been there for almost a year, right? So we have over at this point, over 9000 users on Mintress, which is massive for that blockchain. And we’ve been building TVL liquidity ever since.

34:05 It has been it’s been amazing experience. I mean, week after week, we continue having growth, because people realize that they’re actually able to, well, essentially earn better on Mintress, and they can see that the value of the token itself and retaining it will make a lot of sense, because the protocol has already been generating fees that are far greater than any other protocol in the same exact situation as us already, and they will be benefiting from that. So it’s been an incredible experience. And mantle network themselves have been great partners, they’ve seen the value from the beginning, they put a lot of faith in us to market us to share the news of what Mintress is before we even launched officially, right? And that was a great partnership as well. So I’ll have to give a big shout out to those guys too.

34:48 And you crossed $10 million TVL really quickly, right? That’s exactly right. So we were celebrating that just a few weeks ago, itself, it was pretty massive, just to be able to get there. We reached the top 10, and top 10 by TVL, basically on mantle network within just a couple of months of being there, which surprised all of us, how quickly we moved. Do people just get it? Do they just see it? And they’re like, wow, this is transparent.

35:14 Wow, actually getting more yield. And I can actually see that this token is going to correlate to the future. And they’re like, okay, this is, it just makes sense. It’s simple. I mean, that’s the beauty of a product market fit, right? Is it so much better than the current market?

35:27 Is that the feedback you’re getting from people? So initially, what happens is people will, they’ll come to Mintress and they’ll notice the, first they look at the design. It’s a very unique design. We, it’s sort of tongue in cheek a little bit, but it’s sort of inspired by the Porsche GT3. We have a dashboard that has like these dials and, you know, kind of speedometer and it kind of, it actually, and it works very well. It tells you what is your supply rate, what’s your borrow interest rate, you know, it gives you all this information. That’s the first thing they see. The second thing they see is I can get a decent, I can get decent yield on this. Okay, interesting.

36:02 Let’s try it out. Then they try it. And then they get a little more curious. Like, how is it that this works exactly? That’s when the questions begin. And that’s where we end up having users who are now, they’ve been sticking by for the last several months, they haven’t left at all, because they get it now. So that’s usually kind of that funnel process. They, they love the look of it. They love the yield. And then all of a sudden they’re like, how does this thing work? And once they get it, they’re there, they’re locked in.

36:30 And as we grow, the thing about Mintrest is that it’s unique in that it’s a, it’s a vanity point. It’s a vanity metric to have TVL, right? The larger, the better. But it doesn’t necessarily mean much for other lending protocols. When it comes to their users, it means a huge amount for Mintrest users, because the more TVL, the more liquidity that comes onto Mintrest, the more fees are generated, right? The more fees that are generated means that there are more Minty tokens that can be purchased back, can be swapped for more Minty tokens that can be distributed then to users of the protocol, meaning it makes everyone else well off. The more TVL that comes on the system, it just makes everyone’s portfolio that much better.

37:20 Right. So say I’m lending out $1,000 worth of tokens on your platform and the TVL is $10 million. If I get that, if we get that TVL up to $100 million, I’m just making more money, even though I haven’t lent more money. Even if my interest rate hasn’t gone up, because the platform is a success, you’re distributing that money back to me. Exactly correct.

37:39 What, where do you go from here? Like what are next steps? Because you clearly have a product market fit, which is you’ve done a lot of companies over the years that doesn’t come along every now and then in a very competitive market where everyone and their mother has a DeFi platform, you obviously have referenced you guys been working on this for three years, and it shows you guys work through the bear market on this and have obviously planned this out, done all the work. What do you go from here?

38:08 So, Mintris has a much broader vision than just, you know, a single deployment. And that’s it. When we look at the blockchain space, it is getting fragmented. And what that basically means is that you have new blockchains launching all the time. Crazy.

38:26 It’s crazy. I never predicted this two years ago. I thought we would consolidate, but now there’s like three or four X the number of blockchains, all with things happening. And they’re all fighting for the same liquidity. There’s no new users coming in really, not yet.

38:42 And so as a result, exactly. So as a result of that, it’s like, you have to bridge, like your, say, USDC stablecoin to n number of chains, right? So what that means then is that it’s you’re not able to pull funds together anymore. And that was the beauty, that is the beauty of DeFi. It’s like everyone can pull their funds together, be a cooperative and move forward together. But now you have pockets across all these chains. And that it’s great that we have chains, but that fragmentation is a big problem.

39:13 So what we’re looking to do is to unify that fragmented liquidity back together again, through lending. The idea is very simple. You can just matter what chain that you’re on. You can deposit and you can borrow on whatever chain that you want to borrow on. Doesn’t matter.

39:37 This way, what happens is you’re supplying on Ethereum, you’re borrowing on mantle, but you don’t have to think too hard about it. The point is wherever you are, we are. And what this will allow the space to do is the fragmented liquidity. It means that any chain that has liquidity can tap into liquidity on every other chain that we’re on. It builds their liquidity by us being on every other chain. So everybody benefits.

40:06 So it’s what we call true cross-chain lending. Lend on one chain, borrow on another one. And then that fragmented space comes right back together. And we’re one again. And it’s about unifying that liquidity together.

40:19 Because that sounds like a technological nightmare of a challenge. It is. I mean, Mintrest alone doesn’t sound like the easiest thing to pull off with what you’re doing behind the scenes and doing your own liquidations. I mean, if I poke into that, that’s not easy. And so now you’re going to bring all the chains together, cross-chain liquidity.

40:37 Exactly. See, what’s the point in doing something unless you’re actually doing something hard and that can actually be meaningful for the space? There’s no point. If it’s just a matter of copycatting something, then okay, it’s very easy. You can just go and fork another lending protocol, launch it, you’re done, done and dusted.

40:54 There’s no point in doing that, at least not for us. We want to solve hard problems. This is a very hard problem to solve. So we are working with Layer Zero, which is a bridge. It’s a bridging solution, meaning it allows for users to move their assets from one chain to the other. And so we’re working with them and with their liquidity layer, which actually has a lot of assets sitting on a crypto assets called Stargate.

41:21 And the idea is we’re working to develop something on Stargate that would allow for those assets to move to any chain that we are on to enable that true cross-chain lending. It’s not an easy problem to solve. Our team is still working at it, architecting and building it. And it’s going to be something that we’ll be launching early next year, because it’s not an easy problem to solve. For the moment, what we’re doing is we’ll be launching on new chains, on additional chains, preparing ourselves and our community of users for that moment where we will to actually enable the true cross-chain lending early next year.

41:56 Okay. What chains are coming next? Ah, that’s something that we’re still a little hushed about because it’s still confidential right now. But it’ll be we’ll be announcing it within the next month. Some of the big layer twos I’m guessing coming up and some of these.

42:08 Some of the ones, the way that we think of it, the way that we base is actually a very interesting one for sure. The way we think about it is there are a number of new chains that people have not spotted yet that are going to be massive. Those are the ones that we’re initially targeting. Because it’s a huge first mover advantage. And so yeah, there are a number of really cool chains actually that are doing unique things, unique consensus mechanisms, the way in which the security takes place.

42:39 There are ones that also are very DeFi friendly. Their entire system is set up to benefit their users in a very DeFi focused way. So yeah, we’ll be making an announcement within the next month or so on that front. And what’s the plan with the Minty token for generation? I get to talk to a lot of founders. We obviously do some investing and it’s a big thing to launch your token. It only happens once. You want to do it right.

43:04 So what are your plans there? Your thoughts there? Is it on your mind? You’re concerned about it? Tell me. Always. Always, right? Because so we have proven so far that what we have built works. Mintris is fully featured as a V1, from a V1 perspective, version one perspective.

43:25 We completed the liquidation engine, the solvency engine is what we call it. We completed that just three weeks ago, and it’s been working really well. So V1 is done. But in order for us to start deploying on other chains, in order for that to be a real success, it is important that we finally do go through that listing phase. So that is top of mind right now. And that is something we’re planning for this quarter, that it’s going to get done. And sooner, the better. Right. Next few months, sooner the better because you want it in people’s hands and people’s wallets. And that will just help the user experience get more people onboarded. Absolutely correct. That becomes much more attractive than utilize a lending protocol like Mintris because then you can put those tokens to work. You can vote, you can utilize them, you can earn more of them as well. And there’s always a way then for users to swap out or to exit if they need to from it, or to get access to more. If they want to have real voting power, they can accrue more tokens on the open market and then have a real say in the work that Mintris does within the DAO process. So it makes a ton of sense to empower our users that way. And having a liquid token is the way to do that. So it is top of mind at this stage. Okay, so that’s important. You’ve done a bit of a raise, I think recently, you got some capital, I guess you’re going to deploy that this year.

44:44 What do you think? And just like more devs, you being a little conservative, but I’m just trying to Yeah, a few more things that you’re doing at Mintris. So the purpose behind that is in order for us to scale up our team just enough so we can start to scale the deployment of Mintris across new chains. It takes a lot of work to do that to deploy Mintris because as a lending protocol, you don’t just it’s not so simple as just launch it on a chain. There are a lot of dependencies when it comes to lending the infrastructure on the chain really matters.

45:13 And there are multiple areas that we have to focus on. The reason for is we have to protect our users. So we have to make sure that, you know, when we have to manage these liquidations, is there enough liquidity on a DEX, decentralized exchanges basically on the chain is the the we have to always keep track of the price of every token market, basically Bitcoin, Ethereum, things like that. Is there a pricing Oracle there, that’s sound, that’s, that’s reliable, right? So we have to look at all the infrastructure before we deploy. And that takes a lot of work from our team. So one of the things that we want to do is have it so that it’s much easier for us to spin up a version of Mintris to deploy across any chain. That’s a lot of background work that needs to get done. And that requires us to increase our staff basically on the engineering side. So that’s a big part of what this is going to be used for. In addition to that, architecting and fully completing the cross chain lending side of things. So that’s the entire focus. It is about building, building and deploying, and deploying and making sure that this works the way we want it to. And as always in the background, one of the things that we do that I haven’t seen other lending protocols do, except for the biggest in the space, is the amount of security audits that we have done. We work with the best in the space. We’ve done seven security audits at this point, Trail of Bits, Peck Shield, Hacken and Zocchio. And this

46:37 Is a part of our development pipeline. It doesn’t end. We need to make sure that our users are safe at all times. And we have to do as much as we can to ensure that. And regular security audits are a big part of that piece of it. So we spend on that. It’s important because lending protocols, in particular in the space, can be considered to be honeypots of sorts, right? A lot of funds go there. And the last thing we want to do is be exploited. We’ve seen it in the space and it creates all kinds of challenges for those projects and for the developers of those things.

47:15 We want to ensure that our users don’t have to deal with that. So it requires us to spend big, but in the right places. What makes you guys different? Like what would you say is your unfair advantage as a company? I mean, what I noticed is you’ve been doing this for three years and you’ve been just focused in a time where it was very hard to stay focused. And you’ve also kept it simple. Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of flashy, shiny things out there. A lot of people go into the eigenlayer play and this and that. And you guys have to just be like, no, we believe in this idea. We know its value add, we’re just going to execute on it.

47:49 Obviously, you just mentioned security, so important. But why do you think, what’s your unfair advantage, do you think? So for certainly one thing is we are heavily focused on our vision. Again, we’ve been building this for three years, the design and the approach, no one has taken it on. Even though we’ve been building this for three years and talking about it publicly for three years. Why is that? It is a very I asked you this, I think, when you came and pitched to us. It’s like, why? How come no one’s done this? Because it seems so obvious, you know, unless you want to disrupt a big player, they might not want to do it. But it just seems like, okay, yeah. And now you’ve kind of proven it with the TVL accelerated. But why? It’s a great question. And to be honest, I’m also trying to figure the same thing out. Because I have talked to other lending protocols and I have, you know, I’ve looked at it, they haven’t really just they haven’t bothered to consider, because it’s just not something that’s done. There are other areas that they want to innovate on. And but the liquidation side in particular, is not one of them, the buyback side of things is just not one of them, they want to focus on building other feature sets. And that’s just to compete with everybody else. But at the end of the day, you know, we all have our own approaches to to want how do we attract users? For us, it’s a very basic fundamental piece that

49:06 When you build a business of any sort, how can you attract users and keep them for the long term? Right now, what we’re seeing in the space is this, this movement towards a, I think it’s a short term approach to building liquidity, and that is point systems. So you have protocols that are just launching, and we have a point system, meaning that you provide liquidity, you deposit, you borrow, you’ll get these points, and at some point in time, you’ll get an airdrop sometime down the road. I don’t know if that’s going to be a proven way, a long term way to retain users. For us, it’s about fine tuning the existing design, we know it works. And you know exactly what you’re receiving as an end user. So focus is one thing, right? We’ve doubled down on our approach, and we’re going to stick to that. It doesn’t mean we don’t change where we need to, of course, we keep our eyes out, ensuring that we have the best security that we can, as I mentioned. And the other part of it is our team, the background of our team, they have very deep experiences in different backgrounds. So for me, it’s gaming, finance, we have our other team members are from areas of high gaming, like online casinos and things like that, they understand where liquidity comes from. And we have very deep relationships with those players as well. So sourcing new liquidity, where can we bring it from, where nobody else can? Our networks are in that space as well. How do we innovate to onboard

50:41 That liquidity to interest? Those are areas that we’re working on, as well in the background, because we do have a veteran team where our CMO was the former CEO of all the bet, which is the largest online casino out of the Baltics. And a lot of our team members, similarly high level executives from different companies that will all come together to build an interest. So I think it’s a combination of experience, and just sheer dedication and focus towards that one vision that we have, and how we can bring value back to our users, not looking at short term gimmicks that I think will just basically die out. Yeah, and that’s the vibe we got from you from the beginning, you’re like, look, we’re like, we’re slow and steady wins this race, you know, bulletproof technology, the vision, and we’re going to build this one thing and make it better than anything else. We’re not going to get sidetracked with this and that and try to rush a launch and this and that. And, and I like that it’s actually in even in your persona, I would say is that and it’s, it feels good to be a part of something like that, because it feels like that’s the way you’re going to win in this space.

51:50 It’s very easy to get distracted and chase the new shiny object. And, you know, DeFi is something that we see is a fundamental part of blockchain, it’s not going anywhere, because if you think that DeFi is going, it’s just going to somehow evaporate, then basically, that it also means that, you know, you don’t believe that pooling funds together, banking makes any sense that people are just going to, they’re not going to put their money to work. That’s not how any economic system where the last thousand years basically worked.

52:19 We’ve all found a way to work together, right? DeFi is not going anywhere. Now, it’ll have its moments where maybe it’s sexy or not sexy, but it’s sound, it’s fundamental, it’s not going anywhere as long as web3 is here. And so it’s a matter of how do we make sure that we build value out of that? It’s not a meme coin. Yeah, I like how you’re backing backgrounds and gaming as well, because, you know, every, every user experience needs to have some kind of gamification. So grid dashboard, etc, is interesting. Again, I teach students in my crypto and DeFi Academy. And a lot of times, it’s the first time they’ve ever lent, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re blockchain assets. And so they’ll go into the compound or an Aave, and they’ll try to figure it out. But there’s, you know, there’s no Porsche dashboard in there.

53:04 And it’s important, you know, it’s important to have that, that part of it. Absolutely. And the, the gamification aspect, you know, one other thing that we have is we look at how do we expand the user base as well, right? Often what happens when it comes to lending is it attracts a very particular rich audience, as we call whales in this space. They understand how lending works, they know all the ins and outs. And so they don’t care about your user dashboard interface, they don’t care about anything else, they’ll just come in.

53:35 What we want to do is expand the user base. So we have one more thing. And if we have these NFTs. So, Minterus NFTs have been a part of the design of Minterus from the beginning. And the idea behind these NFTs is NFTs, they are a representation a, they’re, it’s a, it’s a digital object that is unique. You can’t copy it. It has a unique identity. And one of the ways in which our space has tried to educate people about NFTs is by the initial use case was in digital art. You know, so you have 10,000 collection, you know, NFT, and, you know, unique pieces of artwork, people were collecting them. So it allowed people to understand that there’s, you know, my NFT, which has a unique piece of art, there’s only one of them, right? It’s a great educational tool. But NFTs are much more than just a piece of art. They’re actually, they’re a container that can contain anything, anything digital. And so what we did was we put a face on it, which is beautiful artwork. It celebrates, our collection celebrates the top 100 most influential in blockchain circa 2021. So there’s some very interesting and infamous people that we have actually put there and we’re not changing it. But beyond the beauty of them, they serve a real functional nature in the Minterst Protocol. So if you hold one of these NFTs and you are depositing on Minterst, you’re earning a yield, or you’re borrowing what this NFT does, it allows you to earn a boost in your yield. It’s very simple between 20 and 50% just by holding

55:19 The NFT and by depositing. What this allows us to do is then highlight Minterst to an audience that may not be in DeFi, what we call retail audiences that love NFTs but haven’t thought beyond what they can do, beyond the piece of artwork. So it’s been attracting a large number of new users to Minterst because it overlaps with that unique NFT audience. So this is just part of some of the game design aspects we put in place for this. It’s been pretty fun.

55:49 Yeah, that’s smart. And I’m glad you explained it to me because I was researching and going deeper on your project. I was like, what the hell, these NFTs, Vitalik’s there. And I’m like, how does that work with DeFi? Because usually DeFi protocols have a bit of that banking stereotype of everything’s very boring. And so I was like, what the hell is this? And so now it makes sense.

56:11 So again, it attracts other people, has that gamification aspect. And it’s an asset now you can buy that will now get more of that community pool. And then people can buy and sell that asset. And so it’s a community artifact, I guess. It is absolutely. And it’s been fun, because what happens is we’ve had some of our community members do in finance, we call it like a discounted cashflow model. So they basically say, how much will it cost for me to purchase this NFT on the open market? How much can I earn on Minterst by holding the NFT? And they calculate the profitability, how much time it’ll take them to make back a return on their investment for buying the NFT. It’s very interesting just to see that kind of stuff. You don’t see that with any NFT out there. And so people have built calculators and all kinds of things for these things. And that’s part of the interesting thing about Minterst is that we will keep trying to surprise with new angles that are all focused on the same core principle, which is how do we attract more liquidity to Minterst? Because more liquidity to Minterst means more fees, means we get to distribute more fees back to the user that protocol. So everything has to align towards the same common goal. And that’s what these NFTs are for. That’s their purpose.

57:30 How can people try this? How can they road test? So simply need to go to minterst.com. And right there, you’ll have all the information that you need. You can go into our docs, you can just hit the app button. It takes you right to the app.

57:45 We have all the information on site in terms of how to specifically utilize it if you want to, but it’s very straightforward. Hit the app button, hit the wallet connect button. And from there, you have access to just depositing and borrowing. And we walk you through every step of the way how to do it. Nice. And right now live on Mantle and then future blockchains to come.

58:05 Exactly correct. Beautiful, man. I love it. Zooming out a bit, I’d love to get your take on where this market is right now because you’ve been in it for a long time, obviously. You’ve just made reference to the fact that everybody’s chasing the same liquidity, which is an interesting point. I’d love you go a little bit deeper on. Obviously, we’re at all kind of near all-time highs of Bitcoin of the ecosystem feels very bullish out there for sure. We got Bitcoin ETF approved, potentially Ethereum ETF on May 23rd, probably at 30% delta on that. Although people behind the scenes have said it’s higher than you think. And I’ve had some people in that chair that know other people that say it’s higher than you think, and even higher for this happening this year.

58:49 Then again, BlackRock says they’re not seeing the interest. But then again, who knows? What do you think we’re going? What do you think we are? What do the next one year, 18 months, 24 months look like in your opinion?

59:01 I’ll start with the cycle, right? The current cycle. It’s been unlike any previous cycle that we’ve seen. The typical cycle for crypto until now has been with Bitcoin. It hits all-time highs.

59:17 And when it comes back down in a bear market, it doesn’t breach the previous all-time high. In 2022, we breached the previous all-time high in 2017. It was about 20,000, went below 20,000 in the cycle. Never heard of in the space of that. That was unusual.

59:32 Because we had macro factors in particular that our space has never dealt with bear markets in the macro sense, right? Right. And jacked up interest rates so fast. We’ve never seen that before. It was nuts, right? We had no idea how our sector was going to operate. At the same time, the recovery has come much faster than I think anyone had anticipated. And I’ve spoken with a lot of people myself too. No one expected that before the Bitcoin halvening, which is happening in about a month’s time less, that we would reach all-time highs. Bitcoin would actually surpass $70,000. And that is, again, a very unusual, completely unheard of situation.

1:00:15 We’re in unknown territory because of that. But certainly, the ETFs have been very interesting because the one thing our space has consistently tried to push for is greater credibility. And a number of people would just simply not take the risk of trying to buy Bitcoin on their own and trying to manage their own wallets and things like that. The ETF has opened the floodgates for new liquidity for users to come in. They may not hold Bitcoin. You’re basically holding a proxy essentially of it, right? But if you have an interest in it, then those who are creating the ETFs, they’re the ones buying all that Bitcoin. And back at the very beginning of January, I believe the Bitcoin ETF market cap was around like $67 billion. And fast forward just a couple of months, we’re at $60 billion. It’s nuts, right? BlackRock, as you said, has come in and they’re already ranked number two, just under grayscale. Fidelity has come in, right?

1:01:19 There is an insatiable desire and interest when it comes to Bitcoin right now because of the ETFs. And there’s only a certain amount of Bitcoin to go around at the end of the day. And if more people want to have access and now they do have access, it makes sense as to why we ended up hitting this all-time high position so early. That credibility has now hit. And it’s a huge factor in terms of where we’re at right now, I believe. Now, moving forward, whether or not this will be an extended cycle or whatever you want to call it, the way in which we’re planning it out and we have even in the past in terms of our roadmap is we do see that the market, we believe at least that the market will continue in a bullish upward trajectory at least until the end of 2025. It may go beyond that, I don’t know, but that’s how we plan for it. And we think that with all the liquidity coming into the space because of these ETFs and more likely because of it, perhaps with the Ethereum ETF, the same thing, I’m not sure if it’ll happen right now, but if and when it does, it will eventually trickle down to the other tokens, the other assets, and it will then generate a greater interest for more people to enter the space. And what’s also interesting about it to me is with new regulations coming in place, with more, I should say, maybe lobbyists and politicians who are more interested now in holding crypto. That just means that we will have even greater

1:03:03 Demand for by normal people, because if everyone else is holding it, and they’re making it easier for people to access it, they will buy it themselves. PayPal, they just opened up, they have their own stable coin. And now what you can do just as of the other day, you can use it to do remittances abroad. So you’ll use your stable coin, they’ll move it into fiat, and you can wire it across to anybody else on the other end. They’re allowing for that now, right, with their own cryptocurrency. So it’s making it easier to, again, reduce those borders to cut them down and make it easier for all of us to participate. And the more we allow for people to participate, I think it’ll end up being a much better benefit and cycle for all of us.

1:03:51 That means more liquidity, that means more need to unify that liquidity across all the different chains as well. You said end of next year, maybe. I think right now the total market caps about 2.6 trillion, maybe all blockchains, maybe all equity. Some people are looking at that as a metric as opposed to what’s the top price of Bitcoin. What do you think, I mean, I’ve heard people say when it gets to six, you better keep an eye on it, and it doesn’t even seem to be possible to go over eight in a cycle like this. Do you look at those bigger numbers as well? Do you look at the price of Bitcoin? Do you look at the price of Ethereum? What do you look at? So again, things can change, but Bitcoin has always been king and has always decided the direction of the market.

1:04:35 And so I still believe that that is the case. So I look at Bitcoin and look at where can it potentially go, how much liquidity will come into the system, because it has always been the leader. Because even right now, if you have a Bitcoin ETF, but nothing else available in the same capacity, then it will continue leading the charge. So the problem with looking at overall market cap is it’s an interesting metric, but again, it’s a vanity metric. Why do I say that? Because if you’re including every single token project in that, right, that means that you have token projects, which perhaps there’s one person who loves that project, they hold one token, it’s not being traded, but that one token is worth $100,000, right? And they’re 100,000 tokens. So are we actually talking about a situation where that token is worth over a billion dollars market cap? No.

1:05:28 If you only have a handful of people holding a token, doesn’t matter what the price is at, you can’t say the market caps that high, right? Because there’s no trading volume, right? You don’t have significant interest in it, right? So you can’t treat every project as equal. Bitcoin has the most liquidity, it has the most trading volume. It’s the easiest one to get in and out of. So that makes a ton of sense. But if you go down the ladder to something that’s ranked number 500, it doesn’t have the same liquidity. So there’s no way you can give it the same dollar for dollar value. Okay, good. So give me your Bitcoin prediction then.

1:06:04 Boy, that is a very hard one to say. But certainly, I do believe it’ll hit well over 100,000, maybe cross the 200,000 threshold, perhaps. Because when you look at the math of it, the amount of money that’s coming into the system, if it continues doing that, it can probably support a price that reaches that point. Now, it may not stay there, but I do believe in the mid to upper 100,000 is definitely possible. Definitely possible.

1:06:32 The credibility factor is such an intangible that it’s so hard to value that, but it’s such a big deal. You know, that Bitcoin ETF, it’s just anybody who ever naysayed Bitcoin now, you cannot come back on that. Peter Schiff? Yeah, I’ve been on the show. He came on my show back in 2014, actually. And so I’ve been on many times. And so yeah, I’ve had a lot of people that have just shamed it over the years.

1:06:56 Goldman Sachs still does not believe in crypto, and they are not putting their clients in it. And they are not doing an ETF. I mean, it’s shocking to me. And you’re that some of the smartest minds, especially when it comes to derivatives and financial markets, but they’re, I think they’re ahead of whatever. She’s just not a fan, which just boggles my mind still.

1:07:15 I mean, it’s one thing if it’s said Jamie Dimon, who talks to the both sides of his mouth and says it’s rat poison when he’s talking to Congress and on the other side is, you know, busy saying other things, at least I understand that devil. But you know, Goldman, I don’t know, they just seem to just be choosing not to get it right now. But the credibility is huge. And then there’s the lag. I think we don’t realize the lag. Because you’ve seen the metrics, like you said, I mean, there’s 900 Bitcoin being produced every day. In 20 some days, they’ll be 450. And yet on some days, there’s a demand of 12,000 14,000 Bitcoin in the ETFs.

1:07:48 Yeah, again, I always joke, it doesn’t take a PhD in economics from MIT to tell you which way that’s going to go. But there’s also a lag. And look at the foreign the sovereign wealth funds, you know, in Qatar and Saudi in these places, you know, they weren’t going to move until they saw a serious blessing by someone in America. And now you really have it on top of that, people forget more so than Coca Cola more so than Disney Wall Street is the greatest marketing machine it was ever created. And now you got Larry Fink behind it. And he is going to sell the bejesus out of this thing. It’s his last swan song. And I see him on these Fox News programs.

1:08:26 Honestly, he’s not the most articulate guy about it. I salute him for being in this space. And Michael Saylor gave a great talk in Madeira recently. And he said, Look, these are not our enemies. These are our friends, anybody who supports Bitcoin, which is an asset that gives you freedom and freedom of speech and all these things are by definition, our friends. And I really glad he gave that speech because us this D gen culture of us versus them. It’s okay, maybe when you’re building something, but now we’re getting to that second phase. And I think we need to welcome them in. So and again, if it makes if it makes the price of your asset double, when someone else acquires 1%, he said you want more of those people. And so I agree with him. But like Larry Fink gets on there sometimes and he can’t really explain he’s like, it’s an international asset.

1:09:11 And someone’s like, you can’t buy a pizza with that. And he says, well, you can’t buy a pizza with your gold. And I think he’s great. But he’s going to market the hell out of this thing. And he’s going to put it in my dad’s 401k. My dad is a very smart electrical engineer from Caltech.

1:09:27 But he doesn’t like crypto, he doesn’t get crypto because it’s an age thing. But Larry Fink’s going to get his money in it. And that’s a blessing. So and this will all take not only months, but it’ll take years and maybe a decade for that to wave through. And so for the people that are antsy, and they’re thinking, how come Bitcoin’s not at 100,000? And some days part of me wakes up asking me that, I think we just need to take a deep breath and realize this is going to take time. But those kind of predictions in this cycle, I think are really reasonable.

1:09:56 I mean, 15 years ago, when Bitcoin was initially introduced, what was it worth? Fraction of a penny. Yeah, right. And if you look at it from an asset that has accrued value over the last 15 years, there’s nothing that comes close to it at all. You’re right, we have to zoom out. Like, you know, you can’t just keep opening up your app, your centralized exchange app every single day and looking at your portfolio doesn’t make any sense, right? Like, let it do its thing.

1:10:21 You know, you live life, do the things that you need to do. The other piece that is, when you look at trajectory, when we look at the younger generation, they are growing up on crypto, they understand it, innately, you just all you need to look at is, you know, the one thing I’ve been waiting on in this space, which is another area of passion of mine is the merging between gaming and web3. And right now, we’re finally seeing that it’s it’s finally hitting starting to Yeah, right. So when we look 510 years down the road, it’s not going to be surprising, having Gen Alpha, focusing on having completely immersed in digital asset swaps, you know, and playing games and having, you know, competitive tournaments, where the rewards are not cash anymore, right. And that, I think it’s only 510 years away, which may seem like forever, but in our space, you know, I mean, in our space, it feels like forever. But in reality, it’s nothing, right. And if your younger generation is adopting this form of asset, you shouldn’t bet against it either. So I think it’s on both ends that we’re seeing it, right. And patience is the key and keep learning. Keep using it. Right.

1:11:45 Yeah, I am good friends with Dan Tapiero. And he’s, he’s been trading on Wall Street since kind of the late 80s. And he was one of the risk guard guys and used to do a lot of currency bets against the Passeta and the Thai bot and all this stuff. He’s old school, but he has a fund called get originally 10 T holdings, which was referring to a $10 trillion market cap. And we’ve actually invested in some of his funds, but he was here and he said, and he travels all around the world. And he said, Brian, if I can get anyone in a room, no matter how old school or new school, he’s like, I can usually get him to start to understand how this digital asset ecosystem is going somewhere. But he said, the one marker of whether you can tell if someone gets this or not, it’s not where they got their MBA from. It’s not how much money they have in the bank, how many billions they’ve made. It’s their age. He said, that’s the thing. He said around the 50 mark, he’s like, if you’re over 50, you could be super educated, super successful, the biggest degree, but you just don’t get it. And if you’re under 50 or under 40, you could have everything else against you and you do get it. And that’s a really fascinating observation from a guy who’s had more meetings in more countries, probably with more people of net worth. And again, we saw it with the Buffets and the mongers where, you know, they never got it. Monger didn’t get it

1:12:58 Until he died and God rest his soul. But for him, it’ll always be rat poison. And yet I woke up the other day and my son Damon is playing Roblox and I look on his game and he’s literally trading digital assets and he’s showing me off. I got this thing and this guy wants to buy it right now via DM. And I don’t know if I’m going to pay for it. And he’s literally trading digital assets. And I’m just thinking, like you said, you got that generation and the rest of us are going to die out. This is coming. And again, you can’t criticize a monger because why should he get this? Why should he? And again, some people said the internet was just a fad.

1:13:40 Why should they get that? But then again, look at our kids. Why won’t they get that? Of course, they’re going to get this. So it’s the right question. Yeah, absolutely correct. And that’s what we have to look at. We actually have in that that tells us the direction of the future and where we should be focusing our attention. Yeah, that’s amazing about your about your son as well. That’s very cool. I would say I’ve hired them now as full time gaming consultants for London Real ventures. So they can guarantee you in a few years, that’s going to pay off.

1:14:06 I’m constantly asking questions. I’m watching them. And I would say to parents out there who have kids that are playing games, first of all, try not to be hypocritical, because I used to play games when I was a kid. And I used to play them on my Apple two plus computer and Castle Wolfenstein. And, you know, not to mention the Atari’s and the things. I mean, I was crazy about him too.

1:14:27 So I was just as degenerate as them. But games these days are different, because they’re social. So my boys will be playing and they’ll be playing with each other. And I’ll come in, I’ll be like, it’s bedtime, you got to go to bed. And little I know, their buddies on FaceTime playing as well. And he’s listening to me, parent, my kids. So first of all, you never know who’s listening. And so for them, it’s social. It’s also creative.

1:14:48 They can create parts of the game, they can create their own digital assets. So a game isn’t an arcade game, like you used to play in Chattanooga back in the days, right? Where you’d go in and play Galaga, and it was amazing. Now, it’s social, it’s creative. It’s part art. It can teach you about money, can teach you about markets, can teach you about life. So I would say when you tell your kids put the game down, don’t forget that they’re learning about life in a way they’re not going to learn about at school. And then maybe we zoom out a bit school doesn’t teach you about money. School doesn’t teach you that a lot of the things that you should be taught. universities, schools, they do one thing, and they they teach you how to be a good employee, not an employer, not someone who can build something beyond that.

1:15:33 That’s very true. On the gaming front, I completely agree with you. That was the one thing that it taught me that my mother was the original gamer, she put a controller in my hand when I was one years old. Of course, I don’t remember that, but I grew up playing with her. Wow. And he still played together today. And the one thing that it taught me was it taught me to be okay with losing all the time. And not minding it, I don’t get frustrated when something’s not working. And so I mean, I get frustrated, but not to the point where I’m like, I want to give up. Okay, why? What is it? What is it about? Because when you’re playing Mario or something like that, right? You play a level, you’re running, you’re jumping, you fall into a pit, you die. Now, okay, start again, right? Oh, this time, let me not fall into that pit. If I can help it, right? It’s about not giving up.

1:16:22 Saying that there is a solution here. And for me, that was a big part of my gaming experience growing up was saying, I’m just going to keep trying it until I figure it out. And I think that skill set is a, is a big part of, you know, everything about me today. You know, like there are so many challenges that we face as people running businesses, personal lives. But the one thing is not to give up. And I will even though it’s maybe a little cheesy, but it was a big part of my life and still is today. And that was one thing that it taught me. And I love it about that. So I don’t give up on those things. It’s fun. So important. I mean, life at the end of the day is just a big game. And it is and your son is learning a lot from playing Roblox, because it’s a, as you said, the social aspect of something that we didn’t have at that time. Yeah, right. So how do you cooperate with others? Right? And how do you have it so that you can all hopefully benefit from it? That’s pretty cool. That’s really cool. Yeah. I love this fact that life is a game. I think some and I think the problems that we have in life is when we get so emotionally attached to, to what life throws at us. And then you can’t make correct decisions. But if you just realize it’s a game, there was a famous comedian who just said it’s all just a ride. Bill Hicks said that it’s all just one big ride. And it really is, you know, nobody gets out alive. And so if you can detach a little bit and realize, it’s just like a video

1:17:50 Game, life is throwing you this is throwing you that it’s throwing you seeing what you’re going to do. What are you going to do? Like you said, are you going to come back? Are you going to not give up? That’s really what it’s all about. If you never give up, then you’ll always make it. You’ll find a way you’ll find a way, right? Because what you’ve done is you’ve trained your mind to look for potential solutions all the time, right? You may not consciously recognize it. But you know, our minds are pattern recognition machines. That’s what they’re that’s what they’re built to do from the beginning. So you’ll always be on the lookout for some pattern that will work. Right. And I think that’s the point. What’s your advice to two groups of people?

1:18:27 Let’s start with founders and people that are building something or that have been building something. What’s your advice to them? You know, as they go into this bull market coming up, as they go into the bear market that’s going to come after it, the do’s and don’ts of this space, because you’ve been there and done that. I’m sure you’ve seen founders make good and bad decisions. What can you tell them? Sure. So the first thing, right? Don’t believe your own BS, right? Just because you’re doing well in a bull market, it’s not necessarily just because of you, right? Partly, sure, potentially. But don’t believe that you’re the Messiah just because of it.

1:19:06 Second thing, if you do a raise, tether it. What I mean by that is, don’t bet your company on holding volatile assets. There’s a reason why people invested in you. Hold those assets as even if it’s a, you know, you may be losing a little bit on the interest side of things. Be safe. Hold them in stablecoins in general. Don’t bet that the market’s going to continue going in your direction, buy a bunch of, you know, other cryptocurrency assets hoping you’ll make more money off of.

1:19:38 That’s not why investors invested in you in the first place. I know this because back in 2017 and 2018, during the ICO run back at the time, most projects were raising an Ethereum and Bitcoin, and they often raise at the all-time highs. And then they held it all the way down. And those projects went into distress. So don’t risk your investors money and plan. Be safe about that. Third thing, yes, there will be a bear market. What are you going to do in order to maintain your business over those hard years? How can you plan for it? That’s a very important lesson.

1:20:20 It really is because those times are very challenging, right? And a number of businesses will go belly up. Others will become distressed, right? But those accept it and understand it will come. Hopefully it can prepare better. And you should try to prepare because it means obviously you’ll have to cut costs during those times. So know what is the most important part of your business that you need to maintain. And you have to figure out how to write it out and how to keep building pieces to the whole business, the whole project, where you see that it will, you will find a benefit when you come out into the bull market again, where you can start to actually build from that because you built the right pieces in place. Always look for those pieces.

1:21:03 Don’t chase trends. It’s very easy because, you know, say how many times I’ve been told, you know what, AI is hot right now. Deepens hot right now. You should keep adding those things into onto your website, make it look more AI focused and this and that like, okay, interesting. I agree that those are hot right now. They’ll probably be here to stay. There’s no problem with that. But constantly changing up who we are, what we do all the time just to chase a trend in the moment. That’s a distraction. Figure out what could potentially be good value adds to your business, to your project and work on that with a broader roadmap in mind.

1:21:44 Don’t just add something for the sake of it for the moment without thinking about the long-term view, long-term vision. It’s very easy in our space to get, again, distracted, right? And you will always have naysayers. You will always have people, stakeholders, you know, who will tell you what to do, right? And it’s always good to have an open ear on everything. Everybody tells you, you should always be open to listening. But dictating the way in which the project operates, you must be in control of that and know why you’re doing what you’re doing, even if you may take some heat. It’s important to do that because that’s why people invest in you, in your project, because the idea is that you will make the right decisions, even if in the moment it may not seem that way, right? And I’ve seen too many founders who sway their opinion and their approach based on what someone tells them.

1:22:42 So I think that maybe that was more than a couple, but those things were top of mind for me. That’s super helpful. One of my mentors says, I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt. I love it. I love it.

1:22:58 It’s the old man with the skirt in the wall. And I’m in the skirt next to him. Yeah, but it’s great. I mean, and I think that is important in a founder. And again, that doesn’t mean you’re not listening, but they are. They’re paying you the big bucks or potentially the big tokens one day for you to make those decisions. They’re betting on you and your vision. And so yeah, you got to make them. And I really applaud the fact that you know, you’ve chosen not to like, again, you can throw in the AI powered on your website or the this or the that. And you just stay focused. I think that’s really important too.

1:23:30 And it doesn’t mean those things aren’t here, but people will know, they’ll know kind of what you’re doing. I would say for people plan for the bear market now, plan for it now. What are you going to do? What’s it going to be like? What’s your treasure going to be like? Because it’s going to come. And I’d say do that also remind people that some of the greatest companies on this planet were built in bear markets, from Google to Amazon, you name it, there were people that were building in the worst possible times. Hell, Bitcoin came out of a financial crisis for God’s sakes, you know, and I could say probably some of our greatest companies were made then. And so be able to go all in. I was on stage with Brock Pierce at Future Blockchain, someone I interviewed him, and he said, I don’t trust anybody who hasn’t been through a bear cycle. He said, if you haven’t been through one of these cycles, I don’t trust you because I need to know you’re here for the right reasons. And you got some backbone to you. And so if you’ve been through one, maybe two cycles, he’s like, okay, now, now I know who you are. And I think that’s great advice. Second question, advice to an investor in this market or someone who’s playing in this market, some people might say, I’m not an investor, I own some meme coins, and this and that. But somebody who has got assets in this market, or is getting into crypto, or wants to be in crypto advice to them, because that’s different.

1:24:43 That certainly is right. Someone who’s new coming into the space. And this is a common phrase, I think that we all use, don’t invest more than you can afford. And the reason for that is because what the volatility in this space, and you know, it’s absolutely crazy, you can gain and lose 20, 30, 40, 50% in a day. And if that is going to make you squeamish, particularly when it goes down, that means you probably put too much in to begin with.

1:25:14 So first of all, that is, it’s a common thing that said, but it’s absolutely true. The second thing is that if you’re looking in my view, at least, if you’re looking to build awareness for the space, and hopefully, maybe long term investment, long term wealth, to always start with the assets that have been in our space the longest, in my view, I think Bitcoin, Ethereum, they’ve proven themselves. So at least have, you know, I think, starting with the a little exposure there and understanding how it works, because they’re volatile too, right? But understanding their history that, you know, they, at least there’s always risk in this space, but they haven’t, at least not yet, knocking wood somewhere that they haven’t, you know, gone to zero, right? There’s a reason for them, they have that credibility.

1:26:01 From there, once you understand that, okay, maybe put a little bit experiment in other areas, basically. But I think dipping your toes is the most important point. Going all in, in wreck, wreck people, you can harm their lives and the loved ones around them. So I think that that’s the, that’s core before you do anything else. And always read and research in terms of what you’re putting your money into. Because, you know, there are so many assets that you’ll, you’ll see people saying, chase this, chase that. But if you don’t do your own research, if you trust someone else all the time, same thing, you’re not going to make it into space, and you’ll be very unhappy as a result of that. So I think it’s just taking being safe and taking moments, right? To take the time to come in. Don’t go overboard.

1:26:56 Yeah, good advice. I try to advise my students, even though I’m not a financial advisor, but I do tell them, you know, never invest anything you’re not prepared entirely to lose. Correct. Entirely. So just write it off, first of all. Second of all, the volatility. I mean, our human brain was not designed to have exposure to an asset like this. And it will take us millions of years of involvement until it can actually handle an asset like this.

1:27:24 When we were on the Savannah and you went to sleep and there were three cows, you didn’t wake up the next morning and there were 19 cows, let alone if you’re on a salon of meme coin and there’s 90,000 cows, you know, you don’t know what to do the same thing. You go to sleep and you’re surrounded by a lake and then you come the next morning and it’s a desert and there’s not a drip of water and you don’t know what to do. So we don’t know what to do. When I worked on Wall Street, if your asset gained 14% in a year, it was a great year and everybody got seven figure bonuses. Here in crypto, if your asset doesn’t go up 14% in a week, everyone thinks it’s a dud.

1:27:54 So it’s like you’re in this crazy world that doesn’t make sense and most people can’t handle it. And people think they can’t handle the bad news. Sometimes they’re very bad at handling the good news. And so you tell people, well, what if my asset went from a hundred thousand to 200,000 and back to a hundred thousand? They’re like, well, I’m flat, no problem.

1:28:12 But you couldn’t handle that because when it goes to 200, you start making stupid decisions. You buy things you don’t need your friends, borrow money from you. And then when it goes back to a hundred thousand, you’re wrecked, you’re depressed and your life is a mess. So even if you look at it from some positive standpoint, then you still can’t handle that, let alone if it dropped the other way and then back up probably maybe worse. So you really have to understand you’re not equipped for this.

1:28:38 And then if you want to do that, you have to set up a bunch of disciplines ahead. You have to really force yourself to detach on a regular basis. You need to be around a community of people that can remind you and you need to stay off probably most of Twitter and most news websites, because these are just all these things. Try to get you is to transact. That’s it. They want to, they want to scare you.

1:28:59 They want to fear you and FOMO you and get you emotional. And that’s the last thing you need in this marketplace. So I was told my, my students, it’s like, you know, it’s like your kid, you’re like a kid in a fun, in like a fun fair that just won’t crack. It’s like everything’s just crazy, you know, and the tokens are different colors and they got the funny names and then this is happening. And, you know, it’s, it’ll, it’ll drive some of the most conservative, disciplined people to make terrible decisions.

1:29:27 So no going in all those things and then see if you can try to negotiate. But get involved. And like you said, this is one of the few places, and I know it’s why you do what you do with Minterst is that you can have a real relationship with your money for the first time in your life. And this is the beautiful thing. And like you said, starting with, you know, Bitcoin, the OG asset, the digital gold, like, see what it’s like to hold it.

1:29:52 You know, Ethereum, you know, again, digital technology, those two coins are the blue chips of crypto. They’re the biggest assets, you know, how hold a little bit, see what it feels like. Okay, it’s a different wallet. It’s got this great way to learn and then you can go a little deeper to a layer one, and maybe a layer two, maybe a DeFi protocol, maybe a gaming token, and then maybe dip your toe in and learn, learn, learn, small size. And that’s probably, I guess, an approach.

1:30:20 You’re absolutely correct. I think the other part of it is, you know, we all earn our stripes in the space, at least for the time being, it’s wild, wild West territory. I don’t know a single person right now. I think in my network that hasn’t been hacked in some way. They lost some funds on an exchange or this or that.

1:30:38 So as you said, right, if you’re not willing to lose it, then don’t participate that much because it will happen. I’ve even for me, you know, there’s so many times where, you know, it just hacked wallet or a down exchange. I was a Bitfinex back in 2016, had a hack and lost a third of my Bitcoin that was sitting there. It taught me a lesson like, okay, don’t for lease for me, I’m not going to hold assets on an exchange unless I’m there to transact as an example.

1:31:09 It was a lesson for me, but you have to earn your stripes. And right now it’s what happens, right? You can try to be as safe as you want to, but it’s very challenging. So yes, dipping your toes is very important. Yeah. And those things are learning.

1:31:22 I mean, Mark Cuban, you know, got his wallet drain the other day because somebody fished him and he didn’t even know it until somebody was watching his wallet told him and he confirmed. He’s like, yeah, I click some stupid link and they drained his wallet. I don’t know. It’s like $8 million or something. I don’t know.

1:31:36 And that’s Cuban. It was been and he’s been around. And so, yeah, I would agree. You got to earn your stripes. Sometimes my students have problems, you know, the funny thing is, is when my students come back and say my MetaMask wallet was hacked so far, 100% of the time is because of their own human error.

1:31:54 And so, but that’s real. And then they say, oh, Brian, I lost $1,000. And I said, okay, I know it sucks. Let’s take a deep breath, but it wasn’t $100,000. And so that’s why, start small.

1:32:05 You’re going to bump into some of these issues. There’s not a 1-800 number to call like your bank, but that’s the only good thing about your bank. The rest are benefits and the education you’re going to get is amazing. And unfortunately, our schools, they don’t teach us about money. They teach us to be competitors, not creators.

1:32:23 They teach us to be good little workers. And unfortunately, that’s not what the world needs. So DeFi is a beautiful place for you to have a relationship with money and to learn. And that’s what I’m really excited about the future and really excited about what you guys are building. Just want to thank you and the team for like the years of hard work, the success you’re having so far and this big grand vision.

1:32:44 I like that because you could probably just roll this out on some networks and be doing pretty good. But the fact that you want to bring all those cross chains into one big liquidity pool that is of the people, by the people, for the people, you can use that. I love it. And like a real cooperative, in the true sense of the word, the Web3 ideal in reality, that’s what everybody wants. And with that transparency, it’s a beautiful thing.

1:33:09 And again, anybody who’s in a normal banking world can look at their bank right now and realize you don’t know what the hell is going on there. And you’re not receiving what you should receive. And ultimately, everyone loses because of it. You know, in a Web3 world, everyone’s empowered. You know, in a Web2 world, there’s some people that make 100 billion dollars and some stocks that do really well.

1:33:28 And everybody else is sitting around thinking, well, I just gave my data away for free. In this ecosystem, everyone wins. And I remember I interviewed Sandeep from Polygon back in 21. And he said, Brian, this isn’t a technology change. This is a shift in human paradigm.

1:33:42 We’ve never before experienced something that wasn’t inter-centralized control by our king, by our queen, by our bank, by our this, by a corporation. Now it’s us. We own it. You know, with your token, you get to vote on it. You get to guide the protocol.

1:33:57 It’s a beautiful time. So, you know, I’m so glad you guys are working on it. Glad we’re a part of it. And just look into an amazing future with an interest. I appreciate that.

1:34:07 And, you know, what you’ve said is, and what Sandeep said is entirely true. I mean, the idea that people have created their own future money outside of the boundaries of government entities is just absolutely crazy. But what it shows you is that the artificial construct of these borders of countries, of governments, we actually don’t want that. As people, as individuals outside the, inside of politics and bureaucracy, we genuinely want to be one. And we want things to be fair.

1:34:53 And if you build systems together in the right way, with the right incentive structure, we can do that. And that is Web3. That is crypto. That is Bitcoin. That’s the OG.

1:35:06 It’s exciting to see that. It’s deep, man. It’s deep. They say behavior is communication. And it’s true.

1:35:12 Look what we have created. We’ve created something that we want. We don’t want this thing over here. We want this thing over here. And it embodies all these things that we want to be as people.

1:35:24 And it’s actually happening. That’s amazing. That’s the amazing thing. It wasn’t banned. It wasn’t blocked.

1:35:30 It’s actually happening and thriving. And it’s going to be rocky and bumpy, like all human endeavors. But we’re going where we all hoped we could go, right? And technology facilitated. You know, money, it’s, as humans, I think about this a lot these days, as humans, we’re like these, we’re these transaction organisms.

1:35:49 We’re constantly transacting. Even our relationships with people. And thank you for this and this. Our relationships are all the microtransactions, really. Not always money involved, but they are.

1:36:00 And so we’re born to transact. And we’ve been dealing with this weird transaction mechanism that’s slow and clunky and centralized. And now we have something that doesn’t have that. And what do you find? You find humanity emerging, right?

1:36:15 Communities emerging. People give meme coins a hard time. And that’s community. That’s communication. Those are humans coming together, wanting to connect and express themselves.

1:36:25 And that’s what you guys are building too. And that’s what we’re all moving towards. So I’d say for anybody who looks at these things and wants to hit on them a bit, it’s like zoom out a little bit. This is actually giving you signal of what we are as humans and where we want to go. It’s not just some weird thing.

1:36:40 It’s actually, it’s the future. I think Bruce Lee once said, it’s like a finger pointing at the moon, you know? Don’t get caught up looking at the finger. And miss all that heavenly glory, you know? So it’s like, it’s right here.

1:36:54 You need to pay attention to it. It’s a beautiful way to put it. And it’s absolutely true. You know, it is where we’re moving and being too caught up in the moment thinking that it’s just nonsense. You do have to zoom out and understand it.

1:37:09 When I was, I went to, just when you’re talking about community. And in 2022, I went to NFT NYC. So it was an NFT-based event in New York City. And what was so interesting were the people that I met there. When I was talking earlier about this intersection between DeFi and NFT users who don’t necessarily interact with one another, it also comes from the experience when I went there.

1:37:38 I met so many amazing people who were, they were community members of specific NFT projects. They had never been in cryptocurrency before, but they fell in love with their respective NFT project. And they loved it. That is what introduced them to Web3, to crypto. And they felt a real vibe with one another.

1:38:01 And it is about, a strong part is about community building, about being with each other. And that’s just one example that I saw that really opened my eyes beyond, you know, a lot of us coming in because of Bitcoin or Ethereum. These are people coming in because they truly believe in the art and they truly believe in the community around them. Yeah, such a good touch. Such a good touch point, man.

1:38:22 So important to get out there in the field, man, and to feel what it’s like and go to those conferences, go to those meetups because then you really start to see, oh, wow, this is something that’s happening here. More than, more than just a DAP, you know, more than just a TVL. There’s like people locked in here. It’s amazing. Man, super excited.

1:38:39 People can go to minterrest.com and start playing with it right now. Token Generation in a few months. Watch this space. More layer one, layer two is coming soon. And pretty soon, just the entire ecosystem there.

1:38:52 All into one big cooperative pool. Super excited for the future, man. And we’re happy to be a part of it. Thank you so much. Excited for you to be a part of it too.

1:38:59 And I’m excited to be working with you. It’s exciting. It’s been a wonderful, wonderful couple of months since we met each other and talked with each other. And, you know, you have such a strategic mind. So incredibly, incredibly excited for this.

1:39:09 What we’re going to be doing together in the future. Something, fate brought us together, right? That’s right. Beautiful. All right, thanks, man.

1:39:14 Appreciate it. Thank you.