Full transcript: Oyedeji Oluwoye on London Real
3:19 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Oya Deji Oluwoye, the entrepreneur, blockchain expert, and financial equality advocate. You are the co-founder and CTO of Kansa Finance, a pioneering platform that is redefining access to financial services in emerging markets by combining blockchain technology with decentralized finance and tokenized assets. Kansa Finance is solving the critical problem of financial exclusion by bridging the gap between traditional financial systems and cutting-edge technology.
3:59 You empower people in underserved regions with innovative solutions like cross-border settlements, decentralized protocols, and tokenized real-world assets, giving them access to stable, secure, and scalable financial products. Your mission is to build the world’s largest Neobank by leveraging Web3 technology to create universally accessible financial services that drive inclusive economic growth. Ultimately, you believe that by unlocking the power of the blockchain, Kansa Finance will empower billions of people in emerging markets to achieve financial independence and sustainable development.
4:33 Brian Rose: Deji, welcome to London Real in Dubai.
4:35 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Happy to be here. Thank you.
4:36 Brian Rose: We’re excited to have you here. I want to start by saying that Kansa Finance 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.
4:55 We heighten awareness, create customers, and build communities by leveraging our global audience and extensive network. Deji, we are super excited to be part of this journey with you. So, let’s jump in. What is Kansa Finance?
5:08 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Thank you. I love the intro.
5:10 Oyedeji Oluwoye: So, Kansa Finance basically is emerging market infrastructure, really assisting the demand of stablecoins that are needed within those different markets, as well as assisting with the RWA sector. So, there’s different aspects of tokenization that we need to basically implement, because when we talk about different markets, we have to build each of those stacks. So, Kansa Finance is building the innovative tools on chain, and like you said, financially accessible.
5:34 Brian Rose: You know, in decentralized finance, when we all come into this space, we hear, you know, it’s this massive opportunity in this massive ecosystem. And then soon after, we hear about the billions of unbanked people in the world. And I know you had kind of an early realization when you were looking at friends and relatives that were sending money in Africa using Western Union. And I also remind people that there’s also tens of millions of people in the good old USBA and people in Europe that are also unbanked that get fleeced by these organizations to do financial transactions.
6:06 And I believe you even said in the past, these are the very people that actually need the money. And yet, they’re being charged these ridiculous rates and not even being offered services and banking. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? I think it was maybe some of those aha moments that kind of drove you to create Kansa.
6:23 Oyedeji Oluwoye: 100%. So, I spent like seven years as a network engineer, building up the network within the Asia pack region.
6:28 And I started seeing how we’re all interconnecting, right? The world is global now. I think that’s a big ethos over Web3. It’s basically global connectivity. So, when we’re talking about different parts of the world, you go to Africa, you can use some parts of Southeast Asia, even some parts of Latin as well.
6:46 And mobile phones is one of the biggest penetration aspects. And that’s what I’ve seen from my network and engineering career, is that you can utilize the telco technology and basically the infrastructure. And then Cisco had basically a line which is called the human network. So, we start looking at people like that. It’s just peer-to-peer, same parts of what we’ve seen in the Bitcoin white paper.
7:08 Now, we can utilize those different tools and technology. And we can send all different types of data. And that’s the biggest thing about Web3. So, just about finance, as we’ve probably heard many times, Bitcoin is just the first application of Web3. But then now, you can think about other different aspects in the healthcare, governmental sectors.
7:27 So, I think that’s the part you can utilize this mobile penetration, build an overlay, different infrastructure on top of that, and now get access to different tools.
7:36 Brian Rose: You’ve got caught in a shitty story. I mean, you know, you think you were born in Australia, moved to Alabama. Now you’re, then you moved to Nigeria. Now you spend also time in Dubai.
7:45 You know, you were, like you said, you know, network engineer working at AT&T, doing all sorts of tech stuff in America. What made you decide to change it all up and go into decentralized finance, move to Nigeria, and tackle this massive problem of decentralized finance in Africa and emerging markets?
8:04 Oyedeji Oluwoye: That’s a really good question. I think when basically corporate America aspect, when you think you’re going towards the right path, right? You go to school, you do your master’s degree, you’re making sure you get all your KPIs.
8:19 At some point, I just felt like once you get into these systems, I’m a person of, if I’m putting a little energy into something, I would like to see that effort on the other side. Then once I got into these different realms, you started understanding that all of these systems are not truly for the hard workers, the real getters type of thing. After that, I started getting into digital assets. I did that as my master’s thesis. I was looking at the internet of money.
8:50 Once I figured that out, I was also, okay, I started seeing how much if I were to send money back into Africa. The Western Union fees model didn’t make sense to me. I’m a person that I dive into rubber holes. I’ve been down the rubble for less than nine and a half years.
9:03 Brian Rose: Very interesting.
9:04 Brian Rose: When did you first get into blockchain and buy your first bit of Bitcoin?
9:10 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, 100%. 2015, for the master’s thesis, the thesis was called the network infrastructure of the Bitcoin network. At that time, I downloaded Coinbase on the phone. There was a coin desk.
9:25 It was the only one that was giving me the information of the tickers. You had these different message boards. None of the information was truly centralized, so you have to really dig through it. I’ll be very honest, I probably never said this before. I went to this topic for my master’s thesis because I knew even my professors couldn’t really dig into it.
9:43 By now, that put me on this journey now, which I’ve loved. It showed so many different hurdles and cycles. I think it was around 424, because the previous cycles was the halvings. I wanted to test that out for the thesis as well. Then the halve wasn’t going to be in May 2016.
10:03 That’s when I’ve seen a price increase from 424 to 6-something. That’s all 200 bucks, so this is it. That’s when I really got into it. 2016, roll over to the end of that. That’s when Ethereum, you had these different networks breaking off.
10:21 Ethereum Classic, and then you had Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and then moved into Spring 2017. That’s when you had the old platform, such as GDACs, which would be now Coinbase Pro, and then they list the Litecoin, and then it just kept going. ICOs, Ethereum, basically utilizing that platform to fundraise. That was the biggest use case. I’ve just been stuck ever since, man.
10:45 Brian Rose: When did you decide to go all in on Canza?
10:51 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Great one. That’s a really great one. This is 2020. COVID.
10:58 COVID is coming around. There’s an opportunity to leave as well. Then I got into an accelerator, and this is why I really knew. Because in 2017, I started going back to my yearly trips to Africa. I was like, hey, man, you guys should look into this, because I’ve seen currency agents on the street, they’re doing trades.
11:20 I was like, this is like an African war street. But it was like, what’s the word we’re using? Hard delivery. People were just doing it. This is cash, and this is just FX.
11:30 I was like, okay, there could be telco tools that we could build around this to give the rates to some of these agents. We built a tool, maybe even if you’re familiar as well, the star, like 347 hash, the top-up prepaid cards. That’s called USSD. Myself and my co-founder, we started building APIs with that. With Africa’s token APIs, we connected that, fed into the rates, and then that would go into basically the short code message.
11:57 That was the initial aspect of building tools to assist these different regions, because how I look at it, the internet is a great equalizer. There’s no point of us rebuilding the same system. Looking at Web3, we can now basically build tools that are, and everyone has a fair shot. At least we can have that good restart type of thing. I don’t want these parts of the world or different sectors to be missing out just because of what reason.
12:26 We all started the white paper came out, so that was a big ask to say.
12:30 Brian Rose: Okay, and then you accelerated, and by going through that, you started sketching out what you wanted to build with Kansa?
12:36 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yes. I went to Australia for a year, got out of the tech, started working with my friend in the construction aspect, which was really good because Australians are very hard workers. You can wake up at like 5am in the morning and you’re working all day.
12:50 That’s where I really get from that part of the world. But then we got into another accelerator. We graduated with those protocol labs in consensus mesh. Very, very good, insightful understanding how to build a product and then basically scale. Then from there, as an entrepreneur, once you say you’re a new entrepreneur, you go into an accelerator, it’s like, hold on, I do this, we raise capital, and then you start like that, with everything in life.
13:18 So basically, that really had a good period of really building the right product in the right avenue. Then they came to a point as well, I’ve been really focused on this narrative since 2015, but I have another aspect that one of my uncles said, to really be like, Oliver, you need to build products for the people. You don’t really just build products for the governments, etc. That will not change if anything else changes. So that’s when I was like, I have to relocate to Africa as an adult.
13:50 And that was a really good journey. I learned a lot. It was good. It was good. And that was basically the starting blocks, I think, four months into that.
14:00 That’s when we started doing our Steve round. And then basically all the investors that we met like a year and a half before that and all the accelerators previously, that’s when they’re like, okay, hold on. It’s not just you’re talking the narrative, right? You’re really actually there on the ground. I think that was a very big factor.
14:16 Brian Rose: I think when you kind of came and pitched our group, for me, that was a real turning point in the conversation when you said, you can’t build a DeFi system in Africa unless you’re in Africa. And then when you move there and you’re on the ground, I was like, okay, this guy’s serious.
14:34 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, I think there is a lot in the diaspora, right? You go to the UK, you go to the US, you go to schooling, and you’re like, okay, I want to bring this solution back home. But the localization of basically like the products, you have to really understand the local layout.
14:51 I think you’re talking about a region that has multiple different languages, you’ve got Anglophone, you’ve even got the Francophone, French-speaking countries, Cameroon, Avicos, DRC, Congo, you’ve got Nigeria, English, and then it has its own tribal languages as well. You’ve got South Africa, I don’t know how many languages they have there. It’s like 16 or 17 that are naturally recognized. So you have to really understand the moving parts, and I think that’s the different aspects when we talk about the European or the US markets.
15:19 Even just how you talk, right, it’s just a communication aspect. So once you can understand it, then you can build products around that because the people are the ones actually going to be using them. It’s all going to be your OTC desk that do billions of dollars on the product that you want to do in Rwanda. So now you have to, and that’s the whole part, build products for the people.
15:43 Brian Rose: Powerful. Can you tell me just a rough idea of what gets transacted on Kansa Finance in Africa right now?
15:50 Like the countries and the types, because people keep saying Africa, but I mean, there’s so many different countries, and probably the majority of what you do is located in certain countries, at least currently in certain products. But maybe a rough idea.
16:04 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, no, I think there is hundreds of millions being transacted on stablecoins. We just did a report with stablecoin in Africa trade with Tevra and things of that nature to understand the data. And then we released it with CoinMarketCap, and it got a really good reception because even though, like you said, you can hear it, but once you really have the data, and that’s what’s really good about the blockchain, everything is recorded.
16:27 So once you have that and you can basically present that into these different boardrooms, etc., it really makes a difference. Because you can say, I know Shintech guys, they move 5 billion, of just pure FX of just two pairs. And there are other people that did 300 million, covering maybe four, five, eight different countries. So the capital is being moved there, especially the B2B sector. But then there is the B2C aspect, and I think that’s what we’re seeing with all these different movements.
16:59 And every time you’ve seen these different cycles in digital assets, you hear about these countries, like Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, because there’s innovation, there’s a young population that’s ready to build that are hungry, right? And hungry to really make a change. And then they see as well, like you have all these tools, Instagram, Twitter, they see how big the world is. So now they can really bring those different ideas and bring them, especially now with a Web3, APIs, open source, basically environment, they can really build and actually make a change.
17:33 Brian Rose: You said before that stablecoins are just such a massive innovation, and maybe even more so for African markets, maybe because there’s so many different local currencies, or I’m curious, why is that so important for what you’re doing in Africa?
17:46 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, so one of the challenges that we’ve seen, we were on the ground originally, is that the US dollar shortage are in banks, right? You want to go and say, I understand $100,000, that transaction might take one or two weeks, or it could take one or two months, depending on the different financial institutions.
18:03 Brian Rose: In Africa? Yes.
18:04 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Wow. So multiple different countries, we’re talking about different systems, so everything is basically decentralized, right? So when stablecoins is instant settlement, it’s all on chain, but then now, obviously, you need to have those rails, right?
18:19 Of course, on and off ramps, we hear a lot. So that’s really the big reason, because of the US dollar shortage that was initially there. Stablecoins as well, right? It’s a very simple contract. If you look at the Tevra, you look at also Circle.
18:33 Very simple contract, minting and burning, right? And sending. So those are the biggest business models that we see within this space now. I forgot the number, I think Tevra’s last quarter was in the billions. Yeah.
18:45 And it’s a simple solution. This is not like giga brain, I’m going to defy and do all these, all these different tools and parts. So I think, you know, simple and being clear is very, yeah, it’s very effective as well. Yeah.
18:56 Brian Rose: The Tevra business model kills me. It’s like, we’re going to issue tens of billions of dollars in stablecoins and we’re going to keep the interest.
19:04 And then, but you get the digital coin and everybody wins because the whole system is so slow and so antiquated and so expensive that they don’t have to give you the coupon and it’s still a value add for you. And then they just pocket the coupon. There’s no rocket science here.
19:17 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Exactly. And they’re going to keep doing that because they got network effect.
19:20 And God bless them. You know, why not? It’s effective and it’s actually solving. When you’re talking about import, export, you know, you’re coming from either Western countries, China, Asia as well. There’s a lot of B2B.
19:35 One time we had a request for quotes, like 300,000 just to buy bedsheets from Korea. Right? So like people don’t truly understand that. I think, I’m just going to be frank here. Like I think, you know, media, right?
19:47 And it’s just perfect that we have a media aspect is that we’re growing up seeing, you know, the $1 a day, the aspect of all these different parts of Africa. And now where we’re older 20 years, 20 years later, you see all this new technology and that’s why now people are like, Oh, I want to visit, you know, Dakar. You know, I want to visit, you know, Zanzibar in Tanzania. So I think that’s the beauty of everything is that, but the whole part is that the capital’s there.
20:12 The capital’s always been there since, you know, Mansome also in the gold trade, you know, to one of the richest of the man on earth at that time. So I think it really comes out the narrative and, you know, platforms like this are telling like the real stories. I think that’s, that’s really, really, really big because I started thinking about like TV and watching Friends or all these shows growing up in like the nineties. But this is the exercise that I do when I’m in like New York.
20:39 I always talk to the Uber guys, right? And they always come from all these countries. I sort of viewed about New York is, but they’re always, there’s always a part going towards like the American dream, right? But the American dream aspect of them is I have to go to New York city. I’m like, you can go ahead and make right now, you know, $800,000 in Wyoming, you know, so I think now we’re at this part where the stories and, you know, taking pride of where you’re from.
21:04 I think we’re in that era now and I think that, yeah, that’s a beauty part because we see it from Netflix, the categories, the movies, it’s a story aspect.
21:11 Brian Rose: So just drilling down to that, you’re saying that we need to change really the perception of Africa from the financial markets. Because like you said, when we, when maybe I grew up, I think you’re a little, little younger than me, but we’d see on TV, like, yeah, I support this poor African country, a dollar a day.
21:26 I mean, if you go back to the eighties, it’s the images of starving Ethiopian. So I’m sorry, is that the family? Yeah. And by that, back then, that was the only media, let’s be honest. And so everybody got in their minds that these are capital poor countries and everyone’s suffering.
21:39 And so they don’t think of it as an analysis for making money financially or building financial markets there. And so, you’re like, wait a second, wake up. The only reason that we’re talking about these places, we have massive financial resources and massive populations and their massive opportunities.
21:53 Oyedeji Oluwoye: A hundred percent. And the narrative is the thing holding the back as well.
21:57 Brian Rose: And you know that because you’re on the ground.
22:00 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah. And I think from what you said, that unique aspect of the Australian part, the US, and then going back to Nigeria, is that with that, let’s say the American system, right? You go to school, you go to college, you get a job. But then Australia with the hardworking aspect that I mentioned, I know people that have stopped at year 10 and they’re multi-millionaires right now.
22:23 So the whole thing about what I’ve seen globally is that as long as you have that passion and you have the will, you’re going to make it, right? The US is really good because it offers a lot of opportunities. It’s very structured. So as long as you understand the system and you can go to different parts, then you can really make it, right? Really coming from that thing.
22:43 Australia is very, like I said, very hardworking and very family orientated type of thing. But the Africa aspect really shows you what you can do without. I probably someone who will kill me right now. But the things that I liked initially before now, I got what’s it called? Solar Power at the House now, is that power was coming off and on, right?
23:07 And that was a part when I was like, hold on, this is why I see so many people naturally entrepreneurs, right? Because if you really want to get something, and it’s really going to, it’s like you can really make it happen. And then I think as well, like vision and dreaming, like when there’s not too many different aspects, your brain is like focused on other things. But then when you have the opportunity to get access to those tools, then that’s how I see a lot of people succeeding.
23:35 I think there’s one stat that is like, I don’t want to miss coming here. It’s like 80% of doctors in the US are from like an Nigeria aspect. But then when I went back to Nigeria, it’s like, hold on. How’s this happen? When you see all these people on the streets, everyone’s just hustling and bustling.
23:50 But it’s a very unique aspect, which I love about the country and surrounding countries as well. The Cameroon, my co-founder is Cameroonian. I started seeing the French influence, like the breads and all these other things. So it’s such a beautiful place, man. And you think that kind of, you said you were lacking power and stuff sometimes in Lagos and they were just like, okay, it makes people think, all right, how can I fix this? How can I solve this?
24:15 How can I work harder? This doesn’t happen to me. Yeah, I think a lot of people are natural engineers, right? Because you’re always problem solving. As well is that there’s so many people as well.
24:27 So the competition in different aspects is high. So you really have to study or whatever path that you pick going forward. But I think what it shows you is that, and I think I’ll get this from my grandma. She doesn’t know how to hold these cans or all this technology. She’s still in the village and now I’m in Edo.
24:47 And basically it’s like, you can understand what makes you happy. I think that’s one of the biggest things when we talk about life in general. Like family or kids and all these other things. Because you see people with very little, but then somehow they’re still smiling on their face. It’s very unique, man.
25:05 Brian Rose: That’s an interesting thing about Africa is like, it seems like a happier place. And then you meet the people that are really happy, they seem more genuinely happy than the happy people in G7 countries. Exactly. Isn’t that true? Exactly.
25:20 That’s weird. You know, people say that also about people in India as well. We go and with apparently less stuff, they’re more happy. And so, all right. So you’re there on the ground and seeing the potential, all of this human potential there.
25:36 And like back to Kenza, like if just to people get an idea, I think I asked you this on the call. You know, if you looked at a lot of the transactions or potential you’re seeing, is it like a lot of kind of oil money moving around in Nigeria? Is it, you know, tourist money moving around in Kenya? Is it South African diamond money? Like just to give a rough idea of the lay of the land, what are some of the kind of activities happening?
26:00 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, I think you hit all the sectors pretty well. Obviously, massive oil and gas, always had a rich history on the oil and gas sector. But obviously, there’s a massive import-export. You know, there’s so much, almost 200 million people, right? In Nigeria.
26:15 So now you’re importing, you know, you have to import all these different aspects. But then you have, I’d say, obviously, internet effects to the trade from that side, commodities. I think the import-export and oil and gas sectors rely. But then as well, financial services, you know, you have regular, you know, stratified banks, you know, it needs to serve as that financial inclusion sector. So you need to get them into the system and get them basically on accounts and other different things.
26:42 So that sector has been doing very, very well. A lot of fintech companies all across the whole continent.
26:48 Brian Rose: If there’s 200 million people in Nigeria, how many of them are banked?
26:52 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Good question.
26:53 Brian Rose: A traditional bank there?
26:54 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah. I don’t know the rate currently right now, but yeah, I don’t know then. I don’t know.
27:01 Brian Rose: Because in America, like 80% of a bank account in Nigeria, would it be 20%?
27:06 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Maybe 30 to 40 could be 50, but then there’s so many remote parts.
27:11 Because even myself, I’m much more from Ibadan. It’s maybe an hour and a half from Lagos originally. Much more like the Yoruba, top of like landscape. So that was where I was going to when I visited like Nigeria initially. So it’s totally different lens with you, like, you know, born and raised in Lagos.
27:29 So there’s so many different flavors and that’s just one country, right? I went to Senegal. That was amazing, right? But, you know, I’m lucky I have my co-founder there because you have to speak French. But at the end of the day, you know, they have beaches that, surely has the best beaches, I have to be honest.
27:45 But they have very nice beaches in Dakar, you know, it’s like, you know, you have like French tourists that come over. Like, there’s so many different hidden gems. And then you have North Africa as well. And I went to East Africa, good as well. Kenya, Uganda, Kampala.
27:59 Brian Rose: So like, you’re one country, obviously, that, you know, that’s a, it’s really good for the trade and business. But then, you know, so many different countries right next door. I’m spending more time in Dubai. And one of my goals is to spend more time in Africa. Because it’s five, six hours away to all these places.
28:14 And I’ve been, I think I was telling you earlier, I’ve been in South Africa and Botswana. But I mean, that was a long time ago and it was great. I got a vibe, just very different than what anywhere else. But I want to check out all these places. So you talk about Nigeria.
28:28 If you had to talk about four other countries right now that are active, what would those be? And if you had to talk about five more countries in Africa that you think you’ll be rolling out to, what would those be?
28:39 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah. You know, I take the Web3, like, ethos, pretty like seriously, like working with each other, working together. Like, I know a lot of people just be like, you know, solo minded.
28:49 But like, that’s the part of what this whole Web3 aspect is to build together, right? Open source. So like, if I don’t have the coverage, I know I have very good, like, trusted OTC partners that do. So East Africa, where I’m talking about Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Congo, even Congo, Brazil, South Africa, to be very honest, is a massive market. Very, very big.
29:11 Then you also have Kenya as well, with their buzzer technology as well. So I think, you know, from our side, we really cover a lot of different reach, either us directly or working with our counterparties.
29:25 Brian Rose: Okay. And when you talk about individuals, is it individuals or also small businesses of those individuals?
29:32 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, small businesses, right?
29:34 Obviously, you have these FX desks that are doing much larger, but we’re talking about, you know, like a mom and pop shop, basically tourists, like you just said, like a tourist or a travel agency. You know, they need to send money, like Citibank to New York to pay for, like to pay for the airfares and things like that. So all the different factors are all part of the economy over there.
29:56 Brian Rose: Okay. And right now, with Hands-Up Finance, what are you building in DeFi?
30:00 And like, what are you hoping to roll out? I know you got a token coming soon, which is pretty crazy and exciting. I’d be curious what that’s being used for. But like, what are you building out in the DeFi space right now?
30:11 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, for sure. I think from everything we just talked about previously is that that’s how I see, like when you talk about like both chains, like layer one, the other off-ramps is what’s needed for everything to be connected.
30:23 But there are so many different, you know, companies or startups doing that, which is needed. But then once that layout is complete, and what is the layer two, right? Like what do we do? We see now maybe the 2020 DeFi boom of right now is like the lending and the borrowing. So from our side, we wanted to take the web to composability and solve the rule problems that we’ve seen from the layer one aspect, where we can like mental burn assets towards the rates that we actually see online.
30:53 But then you have different rates that you see on the street. So that was one of the products that we’re testing around, which is Baki. Then we will ARB there. Yeah, there’s ARB aspects there, but then also getting the pure feet of the data to understand now, because that’s going to affect the real financial aspects, right? And if you’re going to get older.
31:14 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Because we’ve been playing around with the coin market cap API now, but then also there is, you know, data that’s, you know, there’s, basically, yeah, just parallel markets, right? So we started building tools around that. I think we started now, of course, to have another product, which is credit default swaps, which is for centralized exchanges. So what we’re seeing within like FTX and like Malacox, if you had a tool that basically could take out that type of reverse coupon of a disease exchange, and actually have the proof of results that they’re saying, that could have been a different trading opportunity.
31:53 So what we’ve seen is that our team, we look at, you know, obviously started from the academia space. I think even I started from like getting a graph, like Zcash and just talking to people. And I think that’s one of the best ways to really understand the problem. You don’t want to go too long where you know, you want to be an AUS PhD, right? But you want to like really understand it so you can build the cultivated tools for that market.
32:14 So we took the financial aspects, got some guys in from like Europe and things of that nature, so we can understand the different melting pots and then bring like the right information to fill in the right gap. So very like financial innovation. So credit default swaps, FX trading on chain. Then we also had some really cool things that we’re doing with stablecoins for like RWA vaults and guilds. So we partnered up with some really big names that should be coming in the next quarter.
32:41 So yeah, it’s going to get really interesting.
32:44 Brian Rose: Do you think we’ll get stablecoins for African currencies?
32:48 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, I think it just depends on the market, right? But even with our testing aspect with Baki, we’ve tested out some different formulas for that. It just comes down to the real demand pertaining to that Pacific region.
33:01 But I mean, 100% because it’s just a matter of time because it’s innovation. I think that’s the part about all these different startups is a lot of people is just copy and paste. So when you really have true innovation, then you can really, that’s where you really get your edge. I think that’s where if you’re a VC or if you’re an investor, that’s where you’re looking. Because it’s easy to copy and paste things, right?
33:25 But I think you have to try something different. So 100%, there will be different stablecoins.
33:30 Brian Rose: So you got the Baki exchange, obviously your credit as centralized exchange default swaps, the JARA network as well. Is that something you guys have built for cross-border settlement?
33:38 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, that’s full full of tried-fire type of solution.
33:41 Basically, going back from you have to build each layer, right? So you have to build that layer to a certain degree to understand how that really operates. And then we can build these innovative tools.
33:53 Brian Rose: And so when you go to Nigeria and you’re there to do Kansa business, what’s your day look like? Are you going to meet with banks down there?
34:01 Are you going to meet with people on the streets and asking them, like, what do you need? What do you use? Let me see how you might use this app. Are you talking to businesses? You’re smiling.
34:09 Oyedeji Oluwoye: No, no, no. That’s a great question because myself, our co-founder went in 2020. That was the major part. It was like the customer discovery phase, right? You have to get those answers to these questions that you just asked.
34:22 And then you have to then cultivate the information and start really moving upon that. Right now, just like with any other country, I’ll say probably Africa, it’s regulation, obviously. That’s a major part. So you want to have an open dialogue with the different regulators because for what we’ve learned is that for the regulations to go through, they have to know what they’re regulating. So you have to talk to the entrepreneurs and the innovators in these different sectors.
34:48 Right? So that’s probably priority number one. Then obviously, the current business aspects and our client meetings, but there’s really good developer communities and then there’s really communities that want to learn as well. So a lot of outreach as well. I think from that outreach, we’ve learned a lot.
35:07 We had a university outreach program we did with CELA a few years ago, and we’re going to really far out universities, but these universities have 40,000 to 50,000 students. And moving the crowd talking, and these guys are talking about Tezos and Jiff and Oliver, like blockchains that you would have never thought. And then that’s when that part came about the fees.
36:31 You’re not going to be in Burkina Faso. And you’re going to be developing on Ethereum, paying $16 just to do some testing contract. $16 in native currencies, what? So that’s when we’re like, hold on, this fee aspect, and then maybe there’s so much development on the smart chain and anything that has the lowest fees because it all plays in the economy aspect. But then now that economy part gets into the developer community.
36:58 So you got to now have these different infrastructure and even onboarding tools. Let’s just say this. If you want to do coding right now, majority, from what I’ve seen, and if I’ve talked to you, it’s all English, and you’re developing your smart contract or whatever. But if you’re on Cameroon or Avicos, you’d learn French your whole life. So then now if you do a wrong step on the keyboard and you want to build a multi-billion dollar project, you see what I’m trying to say.
37:26 So the outreach is very, very important.
37:28 Brian Rose: I always hear that Ethiopia is like a place or Cardano is there, Halaskinsen goes there. And then I used to see the Bitcoiners talk about how people are using it more aggressively than you thought. Is that true? And does that relate to what you’re building?
37:44 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, I think Ethiopia is a very big hotspot right now. Mining is really massive there.
37:49 Brian Rose: Bitcoin mining or regular mining?
37:51 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, I think Bitcoin mining. Probably regular mining too.
37:54 I don’t have another idea at the moment. But the energy sectors, the regulations, everything supporting that, I think I just went to a conference, or the blockchain life or something in Dubai.
38:03 Brian Rose: Yeah. I had a whole section about that. That was very interesting.
38:06 I stopped. I’m all Africa, right? I’m all the same. So I’m all Russia, Russia, Russia. They’re like Africa, down there.
38:12 Oyedeji Oluwoye: I sat down and so Ethiopia. But then also, like I said, all these economies now, it’s just going back to the people, right? There’s people everywhere. So the thing I’ve seen much more early, I say in the late 2017, 2018, is that we all have all this capital and investments, vehicles, right? But then there’s a lot of people that’s just like my grandma, there’s money probably in the roof or something.
38:39 So now we’re in this digital age is that those scenarios is now brought into these systems. And then now it’s like, okay, hold on, this capital is on chain or whatever, a trad five is in a bank. So now it’s digitalized. So now it’s like, okay, hold on. Now we can really start building because then that builds the economy by foreign investments, all these other different things.
39:04 So I think that’s what we’re seeing now is just like the digitalizations basically across all different countries. And now it’s just connecting all the dots back to my human peer-to-peer network thing.
39:14 Brian Rose: God, I imagine there’s so much capital that’s just tied up. It’s like you said, as we say in the States under the mattress or in the attic or tied into a business. And that just slows the country down, right?
39:24 Brian Rose: Because in a Western world that would be in the bank, which means it would be lent out, like capital resources.
39:29 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Exactly. So that’s what you want to encourage. And when it’s on the blockchain, it can go even fatter and more opportunity. And that’s the part as well.
39:36 And that’s how I think the outreach and the education is very important is because these decision makers, right, it could be, you know, it’s only one generation apart, but they think totally different. So you have to really get into their ears and really make them understand in the best ways possible. But then there is, like you said, now all this capital is coming in these digitalized systems. And how do we use that to basically benefit or better, basically the quality of life?
40:08 And why not benefit the people for once and not the bank?
40:11 Brian Rose: Exactly. And I’m sure that would be refreshing for everybody in Africa, not to mention everywhere else, right? Sure. Because I’m sure there, maybe there are more than else where centralized institutions dominate.
40:22 Mm-hmm. Before we were talking, you said you guys were ready to scale. And obviously you’re looking to support billions of people in the future. And so what’s Kansas plan? Obviously you got a token coming up soon.
40:34 Maybe you can talk about that. And then what’s the plan to scale going forward?
40:38 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah. So basically, you know, our vision now is like, really building that Web3 NeoBank. And I’ve had a lot of talk with the team internally.
40:46 It’s like, what does that truly mean? Right? But like, now we talk about Web3, it’s not just the financial aspect, it’s the data part. So I think we have a very good cohort of investors, like our protocol labs and now also that coin market cap. So now we have access to very good high quality data.
41:04 So now with all that data aspects and these different type of, you know, tools that we can really build on, that’s what part of how I see, speaking from my perspective, is that you have the stablecoins and FX for an exchange. You have your financial type of trading instruments, like centralized credit default swaps. And then you have this data element part, because the stablecoins is going to do the cross border. And then now you need to have this, like the B2C part.
41:33 So, you know, building apps around the localized ecosystem. So we’re talking about a telegram, right? X amount of users, okay? So it has accessibility to the wallet. So if you can build tools with that, with all the different investors and ecosystem partners that you have already, you can scale.
41:56 So that’s now, if you’re looking at it, even at the banking application, how simple is it, right? So if you have your access to your wallet, and it’s ready in a tool where you’re doing the messaging, and the messaging is the data element part now, and you can really basically… Because when we did an analysis of all these different mini applications and all these different startups that we’ll do in gaming, like the top countries were all within Africa, but then if it wasn’t that, it was like Bangladesh, Turkey.
42:26 So like mobile penetration, narrative, plus the blockchain. That’s how we see, or how I see now, like web3 type of banks, because it’s the data part. So you need the financial aspect. So with the wallet capability, that’s the financial part. That’s done.
42:42 Brian Rose: It’s like the WeChat for Africa, so by leveraging Telegram. Is Telegram going to be the future of scaling for you guys in the medium term?
42:50 Oyedeji Oluwoye: I think from a B to C angle, for sure. That’s going to be a very good tool. If you’re told by creating your own application and go all these different marketing channels, but if you’re, like I said, localized, if I’m ready to use in this, let’s build on top of this, let’s build on top of infrastructure stacks.
43:07 But the B to B side is really now onboarding clients. Everything within, in every part of the world, is all trust. So having these trust systems with the right partners and then everything should be good to go. And I think that’s the part now where we can take all of our globally recognized investors and partners with all these different regulations across the world, get the best parts of that, and then basically, like I said, utilize the web3 type of ethos to build and present in these different aspects.
43:37 So the interesting part that I see, especially across the African continent, is that you have all these different regulations. When other people see problems, that’s why I see opportunity, right? Because now you can build different products for these different markets. And then your connections all still interconnect because the stablecoins are still, it doesn’t matter what chain it is. I’m very blockchain agnostic because if I’m in Ghana or in Algeria, or wherever I’m at, and you want to send me 1000 USDT, right?
44:09 Oh, send it to me on. I’m an arbitrum. No, I don’t have an arbitrum wallet. What do you got to do? Like, you can switch, you can change it.
44:18 So wherever the stablecoins are on these different chains, you can utilize that to basically assist the end problem. So I think that’s the beauty of the blockchain as well because it’s all interconnected. And with the fee aspects really worked out. I think we’re in for a good ride.
44:32 Brian Rose: And the fees means we got to get off the Ethereum mainnet.
44:35 We got to get on other LGs.
44:37 Oyedeji Oluwoye: The layer twos, yeah. The layer twos are important going forward.
44:40 Brian Rose: Are those all cost-effective for Africa or can those still be expensive?
44:44 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, no.
44:45 But the gas fees for layer twos like Avax C chains, whatever, like 0001. Yeah, I’m mostly 0001.
44:52 Brian Rose: Okay. Bases, I’m sorry, yeah. Jesse Powell, bass and all those guys.
44:57 Oyedeji Oluwoye: The Coinbase aspect, yeah. That’s a really good chain as well. A lot of builders on that down too. So I think the layer twos, if you have your own specific niche in your own market, I think that will work. You have, I say around 2017, there was a, how I looked at it, you had like NIO, which was for like China.
45:17 You had like Stellar, which was more towards Africa, right? Ethereum was really all over the global, but then Asia as well. Filecoin really in the Korean market. But now we’ve grown, I think we’ve grown past that. And now it really comes down to interoperability.
45:32 Brian Rose: How is Telegram penetration in Africa? Is it certain countries where as more or less overall, is it used? Because it’s not used in America much.
45:40 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, I think 100%, especially now with like, you know, all these like airdrop hunters and, you know, all these other different applications, but the games as well, right? You know, I think that’s like say mobile penetration, access to gaming, you know, you want to keep busy.
45:55 So I think that’s a really big hit. Be very honest man, WhatsApp is the one man. Really? WhatsApp is the one man. I know people that multi-million dollar business is just on WhatsApp all day.
46:05 Brian Rose: Okay, so that communication, thumbs up to that. But you’re not going to get an app wallet on WhatsApp anytime soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, in Nigeria, will there be like 10% of the population using Telegram, or will they use it?
46:18 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, no, there’s a big market share now already.
46:21 All right, we’re going to look at all these other different Telegram mini apps. Not just one of the countries on the list. You have, like I said, Kenya, Cameroon as well, in Uganda. So like, yeah, every single one of these countries are all pretty up there. And it’s Ethiopia too.
46:37 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Ethiopia is hot.
46:38 Brian Rose: Interesting, because look, Telegram, obviously massive app, tiny ecosystem, everyone’s super bullish. It’s still finding its way, you need developers there. And I’m always suspicious of just eyeballs for eyeballs sake, but if you can tap into those eyeballs and get them to do banking with you on there, and really to where they really see an edge, much better than their local bank, then you could tap into something that no one else can. Because they can sell you that you got eyeballs, but just eyeballs in all these places isn’t necessarily valuable.
47:07 But if you’re actually doing their banking for them, that’s huge. That’s massive opportunity.
47:12 Oyedeji Oluwoye: And that’s the part I think we just talked about previously. When you’re in like, if you’re like a really entrepreneur, like at MIT and all these different schools in the US, right? It has its ceiling.
47:24 But when you’re going out to Latin, you go to Mexico, you can go to Colombia, you can go to Chile right now. There’s all these different markets. So the ceiling is still open. So that’s 100% the reason why I moved back probably. And then I think that’s now you’re seeing that, especially with all this globalization, like people from second generation, from overseas, they want to go back because I started thinking about it.
47:48 When you’re training all your smartest people overseas and then they’re not coming back to basically spread the information that they learned, you have to feed, you have to come back with information to really grow. I think I’ve seen that in college, those are certain countries where they’ll just come from school and then they go right back home. They’re not even leaving over there. And I think we’re seeing that shift a little bit. We’ve seen that in different news stories now.
48:16 Brian Rose: A lot of the talent is not within, I guess, say, North America, so the era, and they’re going towards them. It’s going to be a massive problem. Like San Francisco, if you lose a lot of that talent, where are they going to go? They’re going to build and develop places like Dubai and all these other places.
49:33 Now you got your token coming up soon. Why is that important for like your ecosystem and scaling? Why do you need that token? How goes a TGE? It’s probably one of the most important things a founder ever does.
49:45 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, I think from my side, it’s been down these different cycles. I haven’t thought about it too much. I just like to keep working hard. The token basically is going to be connecting all those different applications and the future applications that we have in our R&D tank to basically get the revenue share from all these different products. But then also a liquidity layer, right?
50:06 All those stable coins that can be utilized now in these different DeFi and tokenization aspects to basically provide that liquidity for the credit, credit lending and all those other different aspects. So we need, how we look at it is build the tokens, have the products and then really integrate and go on towards that aspect.
50:27 Brian Rose: Okay, that’s coming up soon. It’s coming up soon. And you’re looking to have people that token globally and a lot of locals.
50:35 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, for sure. Because the thing is like, because it’s just one part of the world, right? The blockchain, it’s not country-specific. So more connectivity back to like my peer-to-peer Cisco line type of thing. It’s connecting to the world.
50:50 You’re seeing that with maybe even with music right now. It’s borderless. So how we see it now is that connecting these continents, when you have that import-export, you want to have that trading partner in Brazil if you’re living in Mozambique, right? It’s the two Portuguese-speaking countries. I can use a lot of stablecoins, your wallet infrastructure, different applications, and then we can just go ahead and sell or trade.
51:12 So it’s not just intra-Africa trade, which we had in those quite a lot of account reports. It’s also global trade. But now you’re bringing that talent and connecting them to different business partners. I say one time I went to the village and I seen traders, and when we were reporting all this data, I’m like, hold on, man, you have a $6 million business that you do trading with trading partners in Asia. You wouldn’t have ever guessed that.
51:36 So I think that’s the power, like I said, the internet-grade equalizer part. But yeah, it’s connecting global trade to government. It’s not just financial inclusion, but it’s just financial access.
51:47 Brian Rose: It’s interesting. As you start penetrating countries in Africa, like you said, you’ve got countries with links to all these countries around the world, right?
51:56 So a gig got Portuguese-speaking ones, you got French-speaking ones, then you probably got China doing business in some of these countries. And so it’s weird, like by building in Africa in a weird way, you’re building infrastructure for the rest of the world.
52:09 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yep. That’s our settlement part, the cross border on the North Front. It’s very important.
52:14 But yeah, we got a lot of interesting RFQs or requests for codes. All types of countries. You know, the European settlements, you got, let’s say, Latin settlements, intra-Africa settlements. But now it’s like, okay, what tools can we build around this, and we can really move forward. Okay.
52:31 Brian Rose: And so we talked a lot about Africa today, but you mentioned Turkey and South America, and it’s just any emerging market, and then any market.
52:40 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, for sure. I think I like this round. We had one of our investors, he did a lot of deals in Latin, before he created his own VC fund, and he started really giving us access to a lot of OTC decks in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico. And that’s what I was like, hold on.
52:56 Even from the B2B sector, you have the simple business revenue, 20 bibs, 10 bibs, whatever is the conversion fees. Like I said, they connect. You’re going to have some type of trading channels. So I think, yeah, it’s just more connectivity, different counterparts, but obviously it just comes down to each individual plan or style. Obviously people want to just get one market and go from there, but we have one life.
53:20 I think you should dream big, but you need to work hard, I think.
53:24 Brian Rose: What’s the competition look like out there?
53:27 Oyedeji Oluwoye: That’s a great question, because a couple of investors like that, one or two years ago, right? And it’s my brain and my point of view, back to my web 3E4 stuff, I think. I don’t see it as a competition, we have to work together because the problem is too big.
53:43 The problem is way too big. But yeah, there’s multiple different FX desks and all these other different things. But I think…
53:51 Brian Rose: An ill-called FX desk. Yeah, for sure.
53:53 That are trying to build a blockchain piece.
53:56 Oyedeji Oluwoye: 100%. I was just in Maroushas, they have the VAPS licensing structure over there. That’s a whole different dynamic, but there’s going to be some type of OTC that does their local feel to digital assets. So I think…
54:08 Brian Rose: That’s good for you. Yeah, yeah. That’s more customer-y.
54:11 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Exactly. And there’s going to be some type of trading channel from some guy in Cameroon that might need to make some payments to Maroushas.
54:18 So those are all the different moving parts, because like I said, the problem is so big. A lot of people do, even how we’re just talking now, Africa, but 50 plus countries, man. Like 50 plus countries. I just looked at my past with the other day, it’s full. And it’s just like, there’s a lot of stamps and a lot of pages.
54:35 And I said, please don’t stamp the last page because I need to get past the customs. But it’s massive. When we talk about the US, that’s also one country. One country, we’re all aligned to one banking system, et cetera, but 50 plus. It’s 50 plus.
54:51 Brian Rose: Is there anybody coming at it from a really high level, or from a Western financial institution that’s trying to come over there and build this thing?
55:00 Oyedeji Oluwoye: There’s a lot of interest from that, from the Western market was, because like I said, it’s global trade. I think, but now, it’s working with the regulated aspects and entities. I think that’s what we’re going towards now. And that’s what’s needed now too.
55:15 We’re not going to keep doing the same old thing peer to peer all day. So now, like I said, there’s so many different vast programs in these different countries. So getting those licenses, now you can connect to these exchanges. They need to do, if they have 60,000, 100,000, 2 million users, they’re saying, I know Botswana, right? They need to have those payment companies, PSP providers, FX or market makers in those countries locally to then do that legally.
55:42 So all these different companies are needed because like I said, the problem is too, it’s massive.
55:49 Brian Rose: And what’s your single biggest challenge for the next, say, 12 months besides the token generation event?
55:56 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Get a good sleep.
55:58 Brian Rose: Are you scaling? Are you hiring?
56:00 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, for sure. I think right now, we’re just aligning everything towards, like I said, the TGE event. Doing a lot of activations, a lot of on the ground activities, AMAs. We’ve got a lot of partners rolling out that are very, pretty big, especially in the RWA space, also in FX space as well. And then also now towards each individual product, getting some local talent as well, as well as global talent to get that mix in to really scale these products.
56:30 Brian Rose: And so roughly, like how many people do you have now and what are you going to?
56:35 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, so probably around now, around 13, I’ll say, contractors, et cetera. But yeah, I think I’ll pull out to get a good board meeting together, but at least another 10. But the developers as well, from my side, just coming up, develop a community and an impact in them. So if it’s not us doing it directly, have one of these dev shops, right?
56:57 They have the talent, right? There’s so many talented people and then they can contract out, right? And build these products. I don’t think it’s one that’s going to take all. I don’t think that’s really going to be the best mindset for 50 plus contractors, right?
57:13 But it’s now working with the best of the best, you know, to achieve the same result.
57:18 Brian Rose: You mentioned RWA, something we hear a lot about in this market, but it’s also becoming real in this market. What type of RWA do you think you’re going to be facilitating in Africa and beyond, especially with Kansa?
57:31 Oyedeji Oluwoye: That’s a great question. And you know, this could be the year of RWA, so that actually happening, you know?
57:37 We’re seeing BlackRock tokenize lots of financial assets as well as Franklin Templeton, which I think you have things with as well. Now, I think tokenization, right? We’re seeing that from at least from the angle. But even to me, stablecoins is a lot of this tokenization, right? And RWA, isn’t it? Exactly.
57:55 So obviously from that level, we’re seeing the, you know, the billions of stablecoins being utilized for B2B use cases, etc. Then now we’re talking about, you know, these old projects, I think like 2017, 15 Bitland and Ghana, we’re talking about land titles. We’re talking about now all these properties. And like I said, the narrative, all these 50 plus countries have X amount of real estate. So now it’s like, okay, so you go to a country, whatever Rwanda, now you want to tokenize all that real estate.
58:26 What is that? What is that 10 billion worth of assets? So I think from our side, we’re at the level now where the tools are built, right? They are starting to have the right technology. Now it’s connecting those channels, the marketing aspects and basically BD to really bring on all this, because the environment is ripe for it, right?
58:49 One entity over here has a problem. The technology is over here to solve it. So now it’s just bridging that aspect and finding that common ground. I’m not going to say like greed or anything. It’s like the big breakup.
59:01 But like, if it’s, you know, now with the fees being eliminated with all of this blockchain tech, there’s actually, you know, actually space to really build here. Products are actually going to be impactful.
59:12 Brian Rose: So you think maybe property is where you’re starting to…
59:15 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Property, real estate, commodities, contracts, letters of intent, any topic, like all those different assets that we see in the Western aspects. But then now from this side of the world, so we’re thinking about you have this shift of bringing all this money into these banks, right?
59:30 But now it’s like bringing all the other assets on chain. I think I don’t even know what the number will look like right now. But from our side, we’re thinking 100% like land titles, property, those are, I think, a good starting blocks. But now even complex, complex financial instruments, different things like that, connected to the RWA assets that are tokenized. If you have a commodity contract, you’re doing sugar from Brazil or whatever it is.
59:56 And then now you can utilize that as a bond. You have all these markets to have their own bond markets. You’re talking about your Treasury T-Bills, but then you have, I don’t know, XAF bonds or XOF bonds. What was the F-D-com? XOF is West African Frank.
1:00:18 And then you have XOF. So one’s for Cameroon and the other one’s for like Senegal, Ivory Coast. But they have all different bond markets. You tokenize those, you get some great yields and a lot of your customers are not some of that exposure. Potentially, yeah.
1:00:33 Brian Rose: Which customers or which part of the world wants to get interest into these different, like, arbitize opportunities potentially. What do you make of what BlackRock’s doing in general? Michael Saylor always jokes that Larry Fink is the Chief Marketing Officer for Bitcoin. But obviously they pushed the ETF through, in my opinion. I don’t think it would happen without them.
1:00:52 They’ve got this Biddle network. They’re tokenizing securities. I think usually it’s Treasury bonds right now, but they’re doing more. What do you make of that? Because they’re doing that.
1:01:03 Does that encourage you?
1:01:05 Oyedeji Oluwoye: 100%. Tell me. 100%. Because a lot of these different parts of the world, they follow the Wall Street.
1:01:12 At the end of the day, that’s just the honest truth. So if these big banks are doing this and get into these different, basically alternative or innovative type of asset classes, then that’s what other people will follow once they come through. I’ve talked to a lot of big banks about, they all have different digital asset departments. People will never know. There’s one man team, two man teams, et cetera.
1:01:35 But now with the information that we’re getting from New York and all these different other big institutions, it’s a bigger push for them to go now to their board and be like, okay, this is what they’re doing. But then now we can bring that to our local market. And that’s when everything can go X, right? So I think, yeah, that has encouraged me. I’ve talked a lot about, you know, the other way it seems like is there’s a lot of different projects maybe three or four years ago that fit the category now.
1:02:04 But now since it’s really good and it’s like categorized and departmentalized type of thing, I think we’re in for a good ride.
1:02:12 Brian Rose: Now we got a new administration coming in in America. You’re part of Americans somehow in there. I was just like American, Nigerian, you know, soon to be Emirati, I guess. What do you make of this new administration, their pro-crypto stance?
1:02:28 We got a new SEC chairman coming in, apparently all sorts of presidential orders. Yeah. What do you think? Because you’ve been in this market for, you know, 10 years.
1:02:37 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, I think it’s good, man.
1:02:38 Like 2017, I went to office, I was able to be a white melon to talk about mining, right? And then it was just like, what is this? Because, you know, they want to see different changes. So they’re actually in their financial type of documents to get into these type of asset classes, alternative asset classes. So now with like a pro-governmental aspect, 100%, because it goes back towards that talent drain.
1:03:07 Now, if your government is supporting that, you can now get that entrepreneur that, so he’s doing engineering and, you know, he’s a senior in college. Oh, hold on, I might really get into like blockchain, but then I’m going to stay here and develop products. I’m not going to go to Singapore or go to wherever, you know, She Shelley’s or something like that to build my product. I can build that here locally. I think it’s going to create that ripple effect of, and they think it’s going to hit like the entrepreneur sector, 100% in the US.
1:03:34 Brian Rose: The market is so under pricing, the government administration in my opinion, I can’t even believe that hasn’t reacted more. And it’s reacted a lot. Yes, yeah. It’s up 30%, 30% since the election results came out, but I think it should be up maybe 333% because there’s a lot coming, and I think it’s going to open floodgates and then America’s going to innovate and allow people. That’s it.
1:03:57 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Because we’re talking about, we’re in 2025 now, it was like 16 years. Obviously the world’s moving fast, but we’re in a good position for like, there’s so many different cycles. So like, you know, you had the hacks and all these other different things, but with any type of change, obviously a lot of listeners and viewers already heard like, you know, the innovation, the alcohol prohibition, like everything goes after it follows, but I think we’re really flushed a lot of that out now.
1:04:22 And we’re really getting to like products that are actually going to stick. And we can see that in the market now with, you can tell a project that’s just, you know, not 10 out of 10, right? And I think it just comes back down to like innovation and solving real problems.
1:04:36 Brian Rose: Yeah. And we’re actually seeing that happen now.
1:04:39 We didn’t see that four years ago. Five years from now, what does Kansa Finance look like?
1:04:45 Oyedeji Oluwoye: I think we’re going to be at one of those latest stages of that web-to-web bank aspect. Stablecoin utilization, innovative products around stablecoins for your generation, different access and tools for, like I said, you can do the tokenization of your assets, let’s say log into your computer, you can digitalize your own land and let you have the templates already to scan them and then they can come with asset.
1:05:11 So I think different things like that. But yeah, I think we’re going to be towards that web-to-web bank and cover very good coverage and probably hit the numbers. Billions, you know, we’re going to be working towards that, but I think we’re going to get a good start on it.
1:05:27 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s interesting. It almost feels like, you know, Africa is like that last remaining continent that still hasn’t been tapped or understood by the world.
1:05:36 I use an example of the UFC. So the UFC now is, you know, on almost every other continent. They’re building performance institutes in maybe every continent. But it’s something that Dana White’s like, you know, we have not made it as a business until we’ve done a main event in Africa, until we have a performance event there. And even though, like a lot of the champions are coming from, the company’s not there yet.
1:05:59 Exactly. And I don’t know if that’s evidence of such a massive opportunity there. Also an evidence that it’s such a complicated opportunity. It’s a continent unlike any other. And obviously you guys are going in there, you know, to do something similar.
1:06:13 Is that accurate?
1:06:14 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, I think it’s the same thing. Yeah, I think it’s the same thing for the one right? Formula One doesn’t have a race in Africa. I think that’s what they want to go to.
1:06:24 So I think what we’re seeing now is with the globalization, obviously the marketing and all these moving parts, there are, I had to talk into some FX partners in Africa. And they all fall in Formula One. Obviously, I’m not holding this, this is the success of the Netflix show, right? So like understanding these stories, it’s connected and you’re getting a whole new audience. I think I watched the interview with Israel, I understand you’re talking about USC and Lagos and Nigeria.
1:06:51 So I think where obviously it was, it was a rumble and a jumble like 20, 30, 40 years ago, right? 70. Yeah, so I think we’re ripe for that. The complexity of multiple parts, it’s just a conversation between us now, but when you’re on the ground, then someone you actually feel it, right? A lot of parts are complex.
1:07:11 This case scenario, right? COVID, right? I took one half of my flu vaccine in Australia, but then I went to get a flu vaccine and it was a different one for foreigners. So then I’m going around for like seven hours, I have to go to Portugal the next day just to get the second half of the vaccine from, that has a zenka, whatever it was, right? And I was just like, hold on, man, I spent my whole day traffic running around three different centers just to get the flu vaccine.
1:07:42 And it’s just like, those are the little challenges that people won’t really see. But on the flip side of that, when I look at this life in general, it builds character, man. So I think all that type of stuff is what then refines your brain to develop interesting cool stuff because you’ve gone through different challenges that other people haven’t. So then you can see things at a different angle. I think from the story we just talked about, I was a network engineer.
1:08:08 I learned the finance aspect for the D-Gen part. Then I have to get in, the tried-to-fire bank is to really build the right products to match the moving parts together. But I think connecting the dots is one of the biggest parts. And yeah, I’m happy about that. And ultimately, we need the storytelling and the media to change the narrative.
1:08:32 Brian Rose: You’re kind of well aware of that.
1:08:34 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, for sure. I think all the tools that we see now, Instagram, like I said, the Netflix, you see all these different country-specific, I think you have India that creates a lot of movies and I think they go back and forth to one and two. They produce a lot of content. That content is data.
1:08:51 That data now can be into Web3 and Beyond Chain, transparent and transferable.
1:08:56 Brian Rose: Yeah, look, the F1 example is a really good example because I could have cared less about F1 a few years ago.
1:09:04 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Jot to survive as well? Yeah. Yeah.
1:09:06 I was a fan. Now I hear. Yeah, I went to the one in Singapore. I was like, F1 race, some pictures, everything. I think, yeah, like that one show now, we’re going into a whole new genre.
1:09:16 I didn’t care about it growing up, man.
1:09:18 Brian Rose: I know. I remember I worked in the city of London for a long time. I took a client to the Monaco Grand Prix. And even after going there, I didn’t care.
1:09:26 I was like, I don’t get it. I still don’t know. And I know guys that go to F1 races and they’re like, the Netflix show is so much better because you get to know the personalities and you see what’s on the line and stuff like that. So it’s amazing how that’s opened up a whole new market for them. Imagine the Netflix show for Canza and what you’re doing or about Africa and also individual markets and opening people’s eyes to the opportunities and the real world aspects of it.
1:09:49 Oyedeji Oluwoye: That’s coming. Yeah, I think that’s the part that I’ve even learned now of like pre-TG and working all these different like rooms. Is that the influence part? I think, what was that show? Fire Fest, right?
1:10:07 That was one of the first times I’ve really seen influence in marketing. See, I want to move the lip. When I see that impact of it. So now I see that basically the part of individuals really having that type of like impact and influence. And then we can utilize that to these different stories or narratives.
1:10:27 Go on Instagram, it’s Instagram stories. It’s literally, you know, stories is the biggest thing.
1:10:33 Brian Rose: And so for your TGE, you’re going to try to tap into KOLs and influencers so they can help you tell the world about what you guys are about to do.
1:10:43 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, so important.
1:10:44 Brian Rose: And I love what you guys are doing and I love the fact that you’re doing it.
1:10:49 And so I would say as you go on, make sure that you put yourself front and center. Because like your story, I think is the Canza story and somehow is the story of what you’re trying to do over there and how you’re trying to disrupt and change everything. And as soon as people hear you talk, I think they’re going to be all in.
1:11:04 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Thank you, man.
1:11:05 Brian Rose: How can people learn more about Canza?
1:11:07 How can they learn more about the TGE? How can they start to do business with you from a trap eye perspective and even from an individual or an SME perspective? What’s the best way to start and really get their hands dirty with what you’re doing?
1:11:20 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Sure. I think I’ll just reach out via email.
1:11:22 Also a Telegram group. And I’ll definitely 100% do Twitter.
1:11:25 Brian Rose: Okay. And what’s your Twitter? Are you at Canza?
1:11:28 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Yeah, at Canza Financial.
1:11:30 Brian Rose: Canza Financial. Okay, gotcha. TGE coming up soon. And obviously you’re hiring, expanding, the whole thing’s coming.
1:11:38 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Billions are coming after that. That’s it.
1:11:40 Brian Rose: Deji, again, we’re super pumped. I remember after you pitched, I told my team, I was like, you know, so much of what we believe in and why we’re in decentralized finance is because we want to bring banking to the whole world. And yet most of our projects aren’t doing that.
1:11:55 And I’m like, we don’t see many people like you that come from the inside and from the outside at the same point. And obviously you went on the ground and you built all of this. And I just, we know this is a super unique opportunity and every day I get more excited about it.
1:12:09 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Thank you, man. Yeah, pumped to be on this journey with you.
1:12:12 Brian Rose: Thank you for sitting down with me. Excellent conversation. And then wishing you guys all the best for TGE and beyond.
1:12:17 Oyedeji Oluwoye: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
1:12:19 Brian Rose: I appreciate you. Thank you. And I just want to say thanks to Web3 TV. We’ll see you next time.
