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Music

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I'm sorry.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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good morning guys can you hear me

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good morning marine oh my god like this new app makes everything look so weird

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have you guys noticed like everything changed like the hands the

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the laughing faces the hearts it looks more cartoonish

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i don't know what you're talking about

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everything changed on my phone i don't know maybe i'm an android and i got this

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new update like way later so i think it's a ted world problem jenny i'm sorry

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no problem it's just an update i don't think it's a problem but good morning happy friday

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let's retweet the room we have an awesome guest how are you doing maureen i'm doing

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fabulous about you

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wow

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that's definitely a step above where

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I feel

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standing on a Friday

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but I'm having my coffee

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I just retweeted

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the space

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and I'm here with you and I'll see

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Phil also join us here super early

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good morning

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good morning Phil

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Chemi are you going to hang out

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or because I wanted to co-host you.

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Yes, like I told you,

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I had some kind of last minute situation here.

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So I might be in and out,

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but you can co-host me.

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You know, I definitely have some questions

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already for the team.

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But, you know, life happens.

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So I'm here.

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Every time I want to co-host you,

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there's always another option

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just right next to it,

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which says remove from speakers.

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It's like tense.

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And you're tempted.

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You're so tempted.

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I'm like, what if I just do this instead of, you know?

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It's so nice that I...

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I'm just getting used to this new thing, Maureen.

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I wish I could, like, explain it to you.

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It looks so different.

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Take a screenshot and set it in the Kabbalah chat.

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gm y'all my app hasn't updated nothing's changed for me either but um that scares me i don't want

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to update now it's been like this since they changed the algorithm i noticed the app itself

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like the posts everything which is very different but because i didn't make it to the space yesterday

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I didn't notice the space had also changed.

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So now I'm like, hmm, it looks funny.

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It looks cute.

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I'm kind of cuter.

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But usually when they do this stuff, it breaks for me, guys.

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So if you send me a request, Maureen, I didn't get it.

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You see, it might be broken.

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Definitely broken.

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All right, so retweet the room.

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We have RealFi coming in just 25 minutes.

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We want to get more people in here, bring questions, your listening ears, snack, coffee.

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Tea is allowed.

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I'm going to have to discuss your decaf options, but we might have to allow it because this new generation likes decaf.

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So I don't know.

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Imagine having enough delegation that people thank you when you vote for their proposal.

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What was that?

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I said, imagine having enough delegation that people thank you when you vote for their proposal.

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Oh.

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I mean, do you make a post telling them that you voted for their proposal?

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That's how they know, I guess.

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Oh, you mean without you announcing it?

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Just reaching out because they know who you are when you vote, I guess.

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Yeah.

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I don't know.

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Like the last couple of weeks, I've seen lots of people that had proposals

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and they would make a post and say, hey, you know,

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thank X and X whale

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for voting for my proposal

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blah blah blah

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you know

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nobody ever thanks you for the 2600

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that you put into our room

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yeah your delegators

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should thank you for voting

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on their behalf that will be the most

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rewarding thanks

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if your delegators think

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that you know it's awesome

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that you're doing the job for them

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I'll feel that to be a little bit

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probably a little more rewarding

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but yeah you're right

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so what are you guys doing this morning

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what's new in the Cardano world

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bring up this energy

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come up here and hang out with us

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do some talking

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a little banter section

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anybody's welcome to come up

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and talk about whatever

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if there's anything

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happening in Cardano that we need to know

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this is the time to bring it to our attention, pin it up at the top, let everybody know.

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Just some reminders if anything's dropping today, if people need to move their funds for whatever reason,

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if you're performing an update, an upgrade, or something that is going to affect your users,

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this is a good time to let people know.

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Or if you just want to say hi, that's also allowed.

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So it is Friday.

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What are you up to, Maureen?

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I think Maureen is having technical difficulties.

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Oh, she just came back.

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I'm back!

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I'm going to Blockfrost in the meantime.

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Please.

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I just...

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You guys do not understand you are playing with fire,

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like nuclear toxic waste fire.

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If Blockfrost does not continue to exist,

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every app in the ecosystem, something will break.

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It will cost teams so much money.

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It will cost me so much money to have to migrate all of my infrastructure on dozens of apps that I'm hosting to alternatives.

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Can you buy Cien?

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Yes, I can hear you, Maureen. You're back.

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Sorry, go on, Fio.

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No, I'm just pleading, please.

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everyone thinks about the cost of funding things

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and often they don't think about the cost of not funding things.

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Those are equally important.

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If something doesn't get funded

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and every major team in the ecosystem

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has to spend tens of thousands of dollars,

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redundantly,

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then if there's 20, 30, 40 teams,

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depending on BlockFrost,

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this is a lot of money.

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And it's a lot of money on teams that do not have this money.

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So please consider this while voting.

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It doesn't just impact me.

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It impacts, I guarantee, whatever DAP you use, whatever wallet you use, it impacts everybody.

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It will be very, very, very, very bad if BlockFrost ceases to exist.

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and this is a chance for the community to get a community-owned RPC and indexer,

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a public infrastructure indexer.

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This is a critical component that Cardano is missing as a chain.

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In Ethereum, you can go to thousands of free RPCs,

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so your first experience as a developer does not have to be you download a node,

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you run db-sync, you wait 60 hours to sync the chain,

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and then you can finally start testing Cardano development.

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In Ethereum, you just write your app and you plug in an RPC.

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Or you have an app already and you just plug in Ethereum

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using one of the 1,000 plus free RPCs.

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Without an equivalent, the developer experience

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is going to be awful.

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And I promise new developers will come.

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They will see that they need to install DBSync

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and they will leave forever.

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So yeah, be careful.

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I think I definitely could see the importance of BroadFrost.

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Sorry, I wanted to say BroadFrost.

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Of BlockFrost.

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The issue that I personally had with the proposal

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was how the funds were allocated.

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When I look at the staffing,

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it takes at least 80% of the money

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and the rest of it goes to infrastructure.

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And since I don't know what goes into,

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you know, like the work that goes in

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to keep this running,

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I can't say for sure that it's expensive.

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But at the same time,

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the proposal doesn't give me much information

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in that regard. So I guess it's a bit something I struggled with as a DREP on passing the proposal.

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That's totally fair. If you guys want to provide feedback to them and make, you know, make it into

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it. And I wish that more DREPs, you know, would act that way instead of being binary, you know,

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no, I will not vote for this because, you know, we have alternatives or whatever. Instead of doing

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that, you know, you make it into a negotiation, right? You say, well, you know, I like the idea

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in general, but there are these specific things that I want clarity on, or, you know, maybe we

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can negotiate the price or things like that. That's how governance is supposed to work. And

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that's doing a good, being a good steward as a DREP, right? You're considering the best interest

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of the chain and you're saying, okay, well, I'm going to negotiate on behalf of the chain

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as opposed to just being like, no, never buy.

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You know, this is useless.

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We have something else.

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Can you guys pin up something I pinned at the top regarding this, Marine, please?

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It's a funny thing.

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I made a post about it this morning, Phil.

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I was just like, I keep seeing like people saying like,

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we have alternatives.

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Alternatives to what?

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Like, bring it on.

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Like, just tell me exactly what, how are we going to get all the bases covered

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if we don't have block for us?

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because I feel like nobody addresses that.

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They just say, we have alternatives.

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And it's like, alternatives to what?

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Do you even know what's going to be missing?

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And can you like bring it to the conversation, you know?

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So I'm with you.

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I think that what Maureen said is valid.

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I think, you know, valid concerns are, you know, there are plenty of them.

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But yeah, we have to be careful, man,

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because I feel like we're just falling into this, like, I guess what I, you know,

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this perfectionism of like, oh, yeah, no, we're just not going to focus on the proposal itself.

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And I see it in a lot of proposals, actually.

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Like, people just giving all these reasons why they're not going to vote,

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which are completely outside of the scope of what the proposers can actually do.

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They're just, you know, they can't fix any.

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Oh, no, no, no incentives for D-REPS.

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and we shouldn't fund this.

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And it's like, what?

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So we have to be very careful, guys.

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We can find a lot of reasons why we,

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it becomes a bias at the end of the day.

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We're just not being objective

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and we think we are.

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But yeah, thank you, Phil and Maureen

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for bringing your perspective to Maureen.

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I think it's very valid.

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I mean, I think...

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Sorry, go on.

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Yeah, go on, Ben.

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I was going to recognize you.

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You've been recognized.

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You know what?

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I've been waiting for that all week and my wife hasn't.

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And now you have.

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And I'm going to take this recording back to her and ask her to get some pointers from you.

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I don't want to come home.

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You've been recognized, Ben.

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In my opinion, the whole governance, the FUD and the entropy, the energy sucking from all of this.

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but like I just take a step back from it and I feel like look the treasury is getting spent one

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way or the other it's either getting spent because the value is decreasing relatively or it's going

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to get spent um on whatever gets voted on and so I just think we have to have a much more aggressive

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this is personal opinion I'm not wearing the hat of any project by the way we have to get aggressive

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but obviously we need to get pragmatic and we need experts in the room to try and solve some of the

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kind of commercial marketing problems Kodana has got I agree with Phil that the developer experience

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is critical um and I think that because we have all been waiting for so long it's really easy to

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kind of if it's not a scarcity mindset it's it's a risk mitigating mindset right and and that's

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rational I'm not like of course we should be mitigating risks but this game is like you have

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to compete you've got to get out there right like and how we do that is is the most important

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question and uh i think people are very focused on like the the number on the screen getting spent

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i'm not justifying any specific proposal but i want to i want to go out and like conquer and

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see could i do really well and for that we've got to get a war chest and we've got to be able

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to actually use it uh appropriately you know so that's my two cents

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quick correction ben uh we don't use scent here we only use lovelaces two lovelaces

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that's right it wasn't that like light us like rebrand to lovelaces

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i think rebrand from lido maybe yeah

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what that's that doesn't sound good james i don't know that was like something that was

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i don't know they've been working on it we're gonna have to ask light i want to see him next time

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it's uh you know rebranding is always a problem right if you do something and you have to rebrand

251
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like your Roy

252
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rebranding to second five

253
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and then completely shutting it down

254
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well

255
00:17:46,660 --> 00:17:49,000
well rebranding is

256
00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:51,720
tricky, sometimes it's absolutely

257
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necessary, but when it's done

258
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when it's not necessary, it can become

259
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a problem and you can

260
00:17:57,120 --> 00:17:59,600
you know, it can hurt you

261
00:17:59,600 --> 00:18:00,420
more than help you

262
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so yeah, rebrand

263
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be careful

264
00:18:04,240 --> 00:18:07,400
I definitely know

265
00:18:07,400 --> 00:18:09,460
some companies in my country that have

266
00:18:09,460 --> 00:18:16,440
rebranded and that did not go well and there is also like government agencies we had this government

267
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the government provides electricity right so it used to be some name with calm in it

268
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and then they rebranded it to a new and then they brought it to some other name and then back to a

269
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and it's a shit company obviously because electricity always gets cut but we have that

270
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a lot with government agencies i don't know why it's stupid it's stupid it's not about the name

271
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guys just make it work come on ah anyways um i see i see ben put his uh discord for

272
00:19:00,740 --> 00:19:09,380
real fight he's here for business but john's gonna uh join in about 10 minutes i think i dm'd

273
00:19:09,380 --> 00:19:17,540
and said him no um but for anyone that doesn't know i'm not part of io anymore so um i was like

274
00:19:17,540 --> 00:19:23,860
five and a half years at io which is for me personally you know uh the amount that i learned

275
00:19:23,860 --> 00:19:28,600
it was a personal transformation you know so i've of course got gratitude for that journey but

276
00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:35,940
it was crazy coming out of five and a half years where like the that whole time you you've been

277
00:19:35,940 --> 00:19:43,840
really focused on you know playing your role and to do that you have to well you try you try and

278
00:19:43,840 --> 00:19:48,000
round yourself off right to be to be the best cult that you can to be able to work with all

279
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:52,340
the different teams so I kind of went through like a mini death you know like an ego death

280
00:19:52,340 --> 00:19:57,640
where like I wasn't part of IO anymore and I came home I was like oh what am I going to do right

281
00:19:57,640 --> 00:20:05,820
and then I was pitching RealFi about bootstrapping the community with state pool operators and

282
00:20:05,820 --> 00:20:12,680
making the argument that I think it's a really good idea to give the community a stake in RealFi

283
00:20:12,680 --> 00:20:18,480
but to do it through state pool operators and in that sense help especially single pool operators

284
00:20:18,480 --> 00:20:24,500
offer something extra to their delegators right so that you're really helping secure the

285
00:20:24,500 --> 00:20:31,500
decentralization of the network um is one part of it um and you know single pool operators haven't

286
00:20:31,500 --> 00:20:36,960
got a lot of love um recently you know so that's where like this kind of proposal came from i'm

287
00:20:36,960 --> 00:20:41,880
just setting up moving you interrupt me any moment jenny i'm giving you the context i'm giving you

288
00:20:41,880 --> 00:20:46,540
the context of john's going to join the call when he's here i think it'll be great to hear what he's

289
00:20:46,540 --> 00:20:50,100
got but i'm giving you the prior context of having worked five and a half years in

290
00:20:50,100 --> 00:20:57,420
irish kane and kadana foundation before that you know um and i think i'm really excited about real

291
00:20:57,420 --> 00:21:05,980
five um they are trying very hard to be uh boring and compliant and regulatory um uh and follow the

292
00:21:05,980 --> 00:21:11,620
regulations you know um but there is like a lot of alpha there's a lot of value in um real five i'm

293
00:21:11,620 --> 00:21:16,920
excited about that i'm gonna let john articulate uh so that i don't get the fame the framing wrong

294
00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:22,900
but it's a stablecoin infrastructure and RWAs, and it's really exciting.

295
00:21:23,280 --> 00:21:26,960
And so to come back to the point, and you interrupt me at any time,

296
00:21:27,220 --> 00:21:30,860
but so I put this proposal forward to John and the team,

297
00:21:31,160 --> 00:21:33,340
and they've just been like super receptive.

298
00:21:33,740 --> 00:21:36,780
Do you know it was really, really refreshing to be like,

299
00:21:36,860 --> 00:21:39,420
oh, wow, like people really want these ideas,

300
00:21:39,420 --> 00:21:41,340
and they're going to move really quickly on them.

301
00:21:41,340 --> 00:21:48,500
We have like a Miro board workshop with the Stateful operators to help co-create this kind of campaign.

302
00:21:48,760 --> 00:21:51,680
So, you know, it's their community as much as ours.

303
00:21:51,900 --> 00:21:57,420
And one of the ideas is about a Stateful operator page, right, to raise the profiles.

304
00:21:57,660 --> 00:22:04,520
And like the marketing teams on it and turning it around within like 24 hours, I'm on a call with the website designers.

305
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:07,060
So like the pace is just so much quicker.

306
00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:11,160
Anyway, I'll stop there, but I'm just trying to give you a flavor.

307
00:22:11,340 --> 00:22:19,140
team are you like part of the the team i'm part of real part of the real fight team um yeah

308
00:22:19,140 --> 00:22:26,080
awesome like like long term you know i i just basically pitched this like hey like let's

309
00:22:26,080 --> 00:22:31,380
bootstrap the community i've got a really good idea of how we could do it i was inspired by the

310
00:22:31,380 --> 00:22:37,140
ispo model so i just jumped in really i haven't you know people like you're part of the team i'm

311
00:22:37,140 --> 00:22:42,580
part of team discord i'm part of team i've got a real fire email you know um do they want to marry

312
00:22:42,580 --> 00:22:48,320
me and walk me down the aisle i don't know you know so we'll see but um but that's what i've

313
00:22:48,320 --> 00:22:54,400
been doing for like three weeks right and we've gone from zero and discord to like um over 700

314
00:22:54,400 --> 00:23:02,140
now and over 600 verified wallets what they care about right i don't know if anybody nobody probably

315
00:23:02,140 --> 00:23:05,600
who reads my Twitter articles, maybe Phil does, Phil reads my ex-articles.

316
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:11,340
And I talked about numbers being before strategy and you need an axis around which ideas and

317
00:23:11,340 --> 00:23:14,760
suggestions and proposals can kind of orientate, right?

318
00:23:14,760 --> 00:23:21,680
So the real fire, what matters is TVL and staking ratio around 70%.

319
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:24,720
And those are the two numbers that are important.

320
00:23:25,180 --> 00:23:30,500
And the first couple of weeks, like the emphasis with the team is they only want legitimate,

321
00:23:30,500 --> 00:23:37,160
verified activity you know they don't want vanity metrics and so i think there's a really interesting

322
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:44,380
kind of a community launch program that's kind of emerging out of this spo accelerator program

323
00:23:44,380 --> 00:23:50,920
which effectively is like it's on chain and it's verifiable right so we can look at which of the

324
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:59,120
stakeholders are in the program how many of their delegators actually claim points that have accrued

325
00:23:59,120 --> 00:24:05,280
right so that's a verification on chain you can then look at like okay uh how many of the estate

326
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:10,160
pool operators delegators actually complete the quest and the testnet activity and actions right

327
00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:17,920
i think like if they get 10 uh then they get some some swag and like that kind of thing right so

328
00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:22,560
it's really interesting to me this isn't like a vanity metric ambassador program stuff i've

329
00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:28,640
complained about them in the past where it's like you're just you're just rewarding output not real

330
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:33,280
performance but if it's on chain and you can verify it and really it's about the activity

331
00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:38,020
um then i think that's really interesting to be able to build something like that so

332
00:24:38,020 --> 00:24:42,620
i'm not saying it's a product yet but i'm saying it's something that other people may be able to

333
00:24:42,620 --> 00:24:47,860
use if we were to write it up you know i'm waffling so yeah jenny

334
00:24:47,860 --> 00:24:55,280
no i mean this is cool i can't wait to like get into the whole conversation i was totally going

335
00:24:55,280 --> 00:25:03,760
to ask you something very different unrelated but because you're here um and i'm dealing with

336
00:25:03,760 --> 00:25:10,500
all these changes on my twitter space right now that i'm trying to navigate do you remember when

337
00:25:10,500 --> 00:25:18,020
you were hosting like some of the first twitter spaces that ever existed and you were this girl

338
00:25:18,020 --> 00:25:24,000
that was on the when twitter actually had a spaces department you work with this girl and she was

339
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:27,680
like helping and we were like trying to make the whole experience better.

340
00:25:28,540 --> 00:25:29,880
Dude, I remember those days.

341
00:25:30,580 --> 00:25:31,220
It was just so.

342
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:32,080
You're right.

343
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:32,300
Yeah.

344
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:35,200
We were trying to get like, was it, we're trying to get verified.

345
00:25:35,460 --> 00:25:39,220
We're trying to get, and she had, she was part of the verification process,

346
00:25:39,220 --> 00:25:43,460
but then she moved from there to this like pioneering these X spaces.

347
00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:45,720
It was like, do you remember Clubhouse?

348
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:49,640
Do you remember Clubhouse was a big thing?

349
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,060
You know, this kind of audio conversation.

350
00:25:52,060 --> 00:25:57,740
and now it's become part and parcel i mean like the whole world's changing that's like

351
00:25:57,740 --> 00:26:02,720
what i think everyone has to kind of get right i remember those times and you know there's like a

352
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:08,720
nostalgia there's like a currency right like you almost want to get back into like building something

353
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:14,320
that's exciting can we build cool shit can we like stop arguing can we get like really excited about

354
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:21,400
the the tech and the use case um i'm just probably not for this i'm riding this it's a really big

355
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:27,760
rabbit hole but i'm basically writing a five-part sub-sex series maybe it's an e-zine or something

356
00:26:27,760 --> 00:26:33,120
i don't know but it's about how the intelligence revolution is going to be decentralized and oh

357
00:26:33,120 --> 00:26:38,500
john o'connor is here so should we invite john up hey john see if we can invite him the speaker

358
00:26:38,500 --> 00:26:45,780
but uh while we're over john to come up the point is that we need to have like a vision and

359
00:26:45,780 --> 00:26:51,380
understand where we're going with the with the ecosystem and if you look at things like eigenlayer

360
00:26:51,380 --> 00:26:57,940
or near they're very good at pivoting um the narrative on what they're for and i think that's

361
00:26:57,940 --> 00:27:02,500
something that kadana could really benefit from uh john if you can hear me you need to request to

362
00:27:02,500 --> 00:27:08,100
be speaker or jenny yeah i don't have a co-host and i think that marines haven't issued something

363
00:27:08,100 --> 00:27:16,980
then to me i that's all twitter space changed for me today so that's weird last time um yes

364
00:27:16,980 --> 00:27:24,020
There was a conversation about something else and I was talked to the entire space about in Cardano

365
00:27:24,020 --> 00:27:31,940
over coffee about real fi and how excited I was for it. For the defy opportunity that it presents,

366
00:27:32,580 --> 00:27:38,980
especially to a lot of people that don't care about or engage with the sort of day trading

367
00:27:38,980 --> 00:27:45,100
or meme coin or degenerate gambling type DeFi activity.

368
00:27:46,520 --> 00:27:50,740
Like me, and I got excited, Phil, but then I realized I'm in the U.S.,

369
00:27:50,740 --> 00:27:54,500
so I need to ask those questions too and understand what that means

370
00:27:54,500 --> 00:27:57,700
to me in the future as well.

371
00:27:58,300 --> 00:28:05,580
Yes, so one of the big things is U.S., you won't be able to mint directly.

372
00:28:05,580 --> 00:28:31,000
Now, this is something that's relatively common. It's the same with Athena, for instance. But it doesn't impact secondary markets. And so, you know, it's sort of similar to USDC in that you can't mint USDC with Circle unless you are a KYC private client of Circle.

373
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:33,000
and you can't redeem it with Circle.

374
00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:35,220
But you can get it on Coinbase

375
00:28:35,220 --> 00:28:36,820
or you can get it on a DEX.

376
00:28:37,900 --> 00:28:39,560
And so as far as...

377
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:40,340
I thought only that part.

378
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:42,380
For some reason, I thought it was the app itself

379
00:28:42,380 --> 00:28:43,280
that I couldn't use.

380
00:28:43,960 --> 00:28:44,300
Yeah.

381
00:28:44,300 --> 00:28:46,420
Yeah, so for instance,

382
00:28:46,540 --> 00:28:49,220
you would be able to go on SundaySwap or MinSwap

383
00:28:49,220 --> 00:28:50,300
and buy USDR.

384
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:56,320
And then you should be able to stake it in a vault.

385
00:28:56,920 --> 00:28:59,580
Although that I'm not certain about.

386
00:28:59,580 --> 00:29:05,120
one of the things, for instance, like GED, GED had the same restriction.

387
00:29:05,740 --> 00:29:10,300
GED, you cannot use the GED app from the U.S.

388
00:29:11,020 --> 00:29:17,360
But the Artifacts Labs team published an application called OpenGED,

389
00:29:17,700 --> 00:29:20,840
which just interacts with the smart contracts directly.

390
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:23,580
And you can use this application anywhere.

391
00:29:25,100 --> 00:29:28,680
And you have similar websites for Athena and so forth.

392
00:29:29,580 --> 00:29:32,580
So workarounds.

393
00:29:32,580 --> 00:29:34,580
I like it.

394
00:29:34,580 --> 00:29:36,580
I see John is finally here.

395
00:29:36,580 --> 00:29:38,580
Yeah, sorry guys.

396
00:29:38,580 --> 00:29:41,580
You were correct in saying that Spacer still has some problems.

397
00:29:41,580 --> 00:29:46,580
I was joining and I was just hearing like a DJ loop of Ben talking.

398
00:29:46,580 --> 00:29:50,580
It kept saying, John O'Connor has joined, John O'Connor has joined.

399
00:29:50,580 --> 00:29:52,580
But thank you very much for having me everyone.

400
00:29:52,580 --> 00:29:53,580
And also thank you Phil.

401
00:29:53,580 --> 00:29:55,580
Yeah, that is completely correct.

402
00:29:55,580 --> 00:29:59,580
Ultimately, we have to face off to institutions.

403
00:29:59,580 --> 00:30:01,580
We have to KYC those institutions.

404
00:30:01,580 --> 00:30:07,580
And that sort of prohibits us from working directly with US counterparties.

405
00:30:07,580 --> 00:30:08,580
But Phil's completely right.

406
00:30:08,580 --> 00:30:11,580
It's the same setup as Circle or Athena.

407
00:30:13,580 --> 00:30:16,580
So I just have one question I need to get out of the way.

408
00:30:17,580 --> 00:30:19,580
Is Cameroon in or out?

409
00:30:20,580 --> 00:30:22,580
Cameroon's in, actually.

410
00:30:22,580 --> 00:30:26,600
that's funny

411
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:39,440
so i i feel like they uh so and without meaning anything bad it's uh you have you guys have to

412
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:45,380
stay compliant right um it's like instead of banking the unbanked

413
00:30:45,380 --> 00:30:52,400
uh we are on banking the bank if u.s is not involved it's a lot of people right

414
00:30:52,400 --> 00:31:01,540
Yeah, look, when you're dealing with real world assets, you have to have fund structures,

415
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:06,820
you need to have regulatory regimes, you need to have all of these things. So when it comes

416
00:31:06,820 --> 00:31:12,660
towards us holding assets, we have to be compliant. And we have our Cayman fund structure

417
00:31:12,660 --> 00:31:18,260
and our Cayman foundation. We have obligations and responsibilities that go with that.

418
00:31:18,260 --> 00:31:38,460
On the other side of it, you have regulation happening in the US, the Clarity Bill, Genius Act, and similar ones in Europe over Mika, etc., which also make it harder for people to go and have access to products like this.

419
00:31:38,460 --> 00:31:42,220
So ultimately, we have to sit where we have to sit.

420
00:31:42,220 --> 00:31:49,900
But, you know, there is a large portion of the world who can interact directly with us,

421
00:31:49,900 --> 00:31:52,100
directly through our DAPT.

422
00:31:52,100 --> 00:32:01,300
And as Phil said, crypto has a certain structure and there's ways in which DEXs ultimately

423
00:32:01,300 --> 00:32:02,300
operate.

424
00:32:02,300 --> 00:32:07,240
So anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that we have to do what we have to do, but

425
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:09,540
we still believe that our product will be useful to a lot of people.

426
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:14,360
Jenny with the hand up.

427
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:17,340
Yes, I just wanted to say since it's already like 10

428
00:32:17,340 --> 00:32:19,100
and we're getting started with the interview,

429
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:23,100
there's like 40 some people in the room and only 10 retweets.

430
00:32:23,220 --> 00:32:26,500
So if you can please check the bubble at the bottom, right?

431
00:32:26,940 --> 00:32:30,860
You should find a little share button, something.

432
00:32:31,020 --> 00:32:32,700
I don't know exactly how it looks on your end,

433
00:32:32,900 --> 00:32:36,680
but sharing this space makes this space available to more people.

434
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:38,960
and it's one way you can support the show

435
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:40,900
it's free and it's accessible

436
00:32:40,900 --> 00:32:43,000
it's right there and we can get more people in here

437
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:44,560
to participate in the conversation

438
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:47,060
so yeah thank you

439
00:32:47,060 --> 00:32:48,460
I appreciate it

440
00:32:48,460 --> 00:32:57,020
Chad would you like

441
00:32:57,020 --> 00:32:57,940
to do a mid-roll?

442
00:32:58,000 --> 00:32:59,140
Mid-roll is for the middle

443
00:32:59,140 --> 00:33:04,840
no I want it now

444
00:33:04,840 --> 00:33:06,060
Jenny it's my show

445
00:33:06,060 --> 00:33:14,440
thank you for tuning in to cardano over coffee everybody this is your decentralized morning show

446
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:21,640
coming to you live every monday through friday at 9 30 eastern standard time and we like to talk

447
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:27,940
about what's being built on the blockchain so if you have a business that's being built on cardano

448
00:33:27,940 --> 00:33:34,540
midnight what have you click the cup go to our calendar link and sign up for a spot and you can

449
00:33:34,540 --> 00:33:37,040
come on the show and talk about your business.

450
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:44,500
You can also be a person that offers questions as a listener.

451
00:33:45,020 --> 00:33:50,120
Feel free to request and come up if you have questions for our guests at any time or drop

452
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:51,980
them in the comments bubble at the bottom.

453
00:33:52,900 --> 00:33:58,740
We like to remind our listeners to stake to a stake pool, delegate to a DREP, and please

454
00:33:58,740 --> 00:34:01,160
do not keep your funds on central exchanges.

455
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:05,040
Once again, thank you for tuning in

456
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:07,400
And we're going to get into it with the real fight team

457
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:11,000
That was fantastic radio voice

458
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:11,800
Can I just say

459
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:13,480
I mean, that's really special

460
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:15,180
I love that, thank you

461
00:34:15,180 --> 00:34:18,000
It sounded like you were on an airplane

462
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:19,440
I don't know, like you were like

463
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:20,900
Fasten your seatbelts

464
00:34:20,900 --> 00:34:22,600
Thank you

465
00:34:22,600 --> 00:34:25,820
And when you go to the toilet

466
00:34:25,820 --> 00:34:27,520
Flush the toilet, guys

467
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:28,520
Don't be nasty

468
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:31,400
Do they say that to you guys there, Jenny?

469
00:34:33,180 --> 00:34:33,700
No.

470
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:36,980
No, they don't.

471
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:39,980
I would say something like that.

472
00:34:39,980 --> 00:34:43,460
Because of the whole central exchange thing.

473
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:47,120
And so we don't draw it out any longer than it has to be.

474
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:52,440
If I would talk on the plane, I would make sure to mention that.

475
00:34:52,580 --> 00:34:55,500
They don't mention it often enough.

476
00:34:55,500 --> 00:34:57,020
Okay, so my hand stayed up.

477
00:34:57,020 --> 00:34:58,320
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to.

478
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:02,560
Now I realize my new app makes me undo my hand up.

479
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:04,820
So, all right, let's get in with the guest.

480
00:35:05,380 --> 00:35:05,900
Thank you.

481
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:07,060
Yes, let's get in.

482
00:35:07,420 --> 00:35:08,280
Banter is over.

483
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:13,900
So I did welcome to you guys.

484
00:35:14,020 --> 00:35:16,000
I see someone else joined.

485
00:35:16,380 --> 00:35:19,200
I'm guessing it's Ryan is part of the team.

486
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:20,700
John, is he?

487
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:24,160
Ryan is not part of the team.

488
00:35:24,860 --> 00:35:25,800
Not yet, at least, Ryan.

489
00:35:27,020 --> 00:35:36,380
okay okay just making sure so ben is in the list now okay he's run away and left you here alone

490
00:35:36,380 --> 00:35:46,660
it's just us now uh so i looked at your website and i think the first thing that caught my attention

491
00:35:46,660 --> 00:35:49,820
was that you guys are,

492
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:55,200
your USDR is in direct,

493
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:57,380
like you're anchored in direct lending,

494
00:35:57,660 --> 00:36:00,320
but you're stabilized by treasuries.

495
00:36:01,700 --> 00:36:03,240
So I don't know.

496
00:36:03,900 --> 00:36:04,960
I want to understand,

497
00:36:05,100 --> 00:36:06,660
can you break down for me,

498
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:09,560
like what percentage of your reserves

499
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:11,860
is direct lending into re-economies?

500
00:36:12,240 --> 00:36:15,120
Can we do a breakdown of the product first

501
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:18,020
before we dive into the USDR, Maureen?

502
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:19,280
Sorry, my bad.

503
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:20,880
Sure.

504
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:21,580
Yeah.

505
00:36:21,580 --> 00:36:25,020
So let me start, I suppose, by talking about what the product is.

506
00:36:25,240 --> 00:36:25,720
You're right.

507
00:36:25,820 --> 00:36:26,700
It's a good place to start.

508
00:36:27,180 --> 00:36:32,280
So ultimately, RealFi has a number of different tokens.

509
00:36:32,820 --> 00:36:36,500
The first token is USDR, which is a stable coin,

510
00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:41,860
which is backed by as liquid assets as you'll see in the portfolio.

511
00:36:41,860 --> 00:36:54,180
So typically, this is Treasury bills as well as CLO ETFs, which are deeply traded ETFs, which are very easy to liquidate within a short period of time.

512
00:36:54,260 --> 00:36:57,100
So this is really the liquid portion of the book.

513
00:36:57,460 --> 00:37:02,940
And this is important because there is no lock up right on a stable coin dollar, right?

514
00:37:03,300 --> 00:37:07,880
So if people want to redeem back to USDC, we have to be able to honor that.

515
00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:11,880
And as a result, we need to make sure we've got very, very liquid assets against that.

516
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:15,500
And then we have our second product, which is staked USDR.

517
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:24,940
If you've got USDR through your Lace app or through our DAP, you can click the stake button, and then you get given SUSDR.

518
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:29,180
Alternatively, on a DEX, you could buy SUSDR directly.

519
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:31,460
You don't need to go through the staking model.

520
00:37:32,140 --> 00:37:36,960
So staked USDR similarly also has a number of liquid assets.

521
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:46,540
These are once again collateralized loan obligations, ETFs, but then you also have some of the direct lending, which is the work that we've been doing for the last few years.

522
00:37:46,980 --> 00:37:50,800
At the moment, this is predominantly emerging market direct lending.

523
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,580
This is lending towards fintechs that do impactful lending.

524
00:37:55,180 --> 00:37:58,200
Typically, this is working capital finance for small businesses.

525
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:05,500
it's mostly companies that we've lent to before, which have a really good amount of equity in the

526
00:38:05,500 --> 00:38:11,740
business that perform very well across time. And as I say, are also driving essentially growth,

527
00:38:12,240 --> 00:38:18,340
job opportunities, et cetera, in a lot of markets. So that's kind of how you should think about the

528
00:38:18,340 --> 00:38:27,080
product. USDR, highly liquid asset, normal stablecoin. SUSDR, still important to have a good

529
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:32,780
amount of liquidity in there, but also having some of this direct lending, which in our

530
00:38:32,780 --> 00:38:38,520
view, you know, is impactful, drives very strong returns, and ultimately makes the product

531
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:43,380
quite exciting. The final token we have is RFG, which is our governance token, which

532
00:38:43,380 --> 00:38:50,740
will be issued later on in the year, probably closer towards December, which also acts as

533
00:38:50,740 --> 00:38:56,900
an incentive to do various things. So we can offer people RFG in order to be able to hold

534
00:38:56,900 --> 00:39:04,580
usdr to be able to create liquidity around pairs and it's also something which i think you know

535
00:39:04,580 --> 00:39:11,220
spos can we're giving away to spos in in order to do a variety of things and also offering us

536
00:39:11,220 --> 00:39:23,700
incentives you know for the testnet etc thank you very much that was very well explained uh

537
00:39:23,700 --> 00:39:27,340
Jenny, did you have a question?

538
00:39:27,620 --> 00:39:28,360
Is my hand up?

539
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:29,380
No, sorry.

540
00:39:29,620 --> 00:39:29,800
No.

541
00:39:31,460 --> 00:39:31,820
Okay.

542
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:39,760
So I wanted to, so you said that it's mostly borrowers you've learned to before

543
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:44,600
who have like strong equity and good track records.

544
00:39:46,060 --> 00:39:50,240
So what I have, okay, two things.

545
00:39:50,240 --> 00:39:58,100
what is the historical default actually looking like?

546
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:02,120
And who is verifying all of those?

547
00:40:02,500 --> 00:40:04,460
Is it you or is there someone else?

548
00:40:04,460 --> 00:40:07,200
And the second thing I'm curious is that

549
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:13,520
when you talk about past performance across a few years,

550
00:40:13,740 --> 00:40:17,460
does it mean that you have like a...

551
00:40:17,460 --> 00:40:27,200
a, how do I phrase this? Let's say you have like a real emerging market credit shock,

552
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:34,560
right? Or maybe like a currency crisis. How does that look like? Do you understand what I'm asking?

553
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:39,320
I absolutely do. These are great questions. These are the kind of questions which I think

554
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:45,680
you get asked in diligence. So let's, I suppose, talk about what happens when things go wrong.

555
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:48,880
So this is what you typically call a lost waterfall, right?

556
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:53,320
So who loses money first and who loses money last?

557
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:54,300
And how does that work?

558
00:40:55,000 --> 00:41:04,120
So the order at which these things would happen would be starting off with a first lost tranche.

559
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:09,460
So this is capital that we're raising at the moment and trying to close out at the moment,

560
00:41:09,460 --> 00:41:13,540
which would basically mean that before anyone else loses anything,

561
00:41:13,540 --> 00:41:19,460
this part of the portfolio, this particular group of people would lose money first. And this

562
00:41:19,460 --> 00:41:26,140
ultimately acts as cover to everyone else, anyone holding SUSDR and USDR. So we haven't quite closed

563
00:41:26,140 --> 00:41:30,860
this, but I'm hoping that we'll be able to talk about it soon. But ultimately, this will give a

564
00:41:30,860 --> 00:41:36,900
lot of confidence to people that they can participate and they have a good amount of

565
00:41:36,900 --> 00:41:42,000
coverage in case anything goes wrong. After that, you have the protocol buffer. So the protocol

566
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:48,660
itself will build up a stability fund ultimately from you know performance of the protocol which

567
00:41:48,660 --> 00:41:53,800
basically gets filled up and acts as a small insurance pot in case things go wrong so this

568
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:59,880
would be the second place in which losses would then go towards and then thirdly what you'd have

569
00:41:59,880 --> 00:42:07,700
is people who are stakes as usdr holders if you had um you know big losses then it would be these

570
00:42:07,700 --> 00:42:14,980
people who would be hit next and then finally the normal usdr holders so that's the order in which

571
00:42:14,980 --> 00:42:21,060
things go wrong um one of the things that's really important to us is transparency so uh you'll be

572
00:42:21,060 --> 00:42:27,060
able to see all of the assets on the transparency portal it should be very easy for people to

573
00:42:27,060 --> 00:42:34,420
independently model out the risks of this uh we think it's a you know a really nice risk adjusted

574
00:42:34,420 --> 00:42:39,860
return. But this isn't something for, you know, just us to be able to go and say, other people

575
00:42:39,860 --> 00:42:45,120
will be able to go and verify this. And then when it comes towards the verification, how do you know

576
00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:50,060
we actually hold the assets? Well, a large amount of the assets we're holding are actually tokenized,

577
00:42:50,140 --> 00:42:56,840
tokenized T-bills, and then tokenized CLO ETFs. The ones which aren't on-chain, the more direct

578
00:42:56,840 --> 00:43:03,560
lending stuff that we're doing, the way in which you know that's real is by the fund auditor. So

579
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:09,080
So we have a fund auditor who looks at all of our Cayman books, and they'll publish at

580
00:43:09,080 --> 00:43:11,640
the end of each month what the NAV is.

581
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:14,500
So this is what the net asset value is of our assets.

582
00:43:14,500 --> 00:43:17,120
And this is basically a regulated function.

583
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:21,420
These are people who do this for thousands and hundreds of thousands of other funds.

584
00:43:21,420 --> 00:43:25,740
And they'll be able to say each month that this is what that fund is holding, and this

585
00:43:25,740 --> 00:43:27,440
is the value of it.

586
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:32,080
In addition to that, we have actual auditors, financial auditors at the end of each year

587
00:43:32,080 --> 00:43:37,300
who will go and check absolutely everything and then go and publish an audit report.

588
00:43:37,300 --> 00:43:42,800
So we have multiple different levels of controls, of transparency, of audit,

589
00:43:43,220 --> 00:43:47,060
but we'll push all of that information into our transparency portal

590
00:43:47,060 --> 00:43:48,980
for everyone to be able to go and look at it.

591
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:54,060
Oh, that's reassuring.

592
00:43:55,240 --> 00:43:58,900
So if I'm...

593
00:43:58,900 --> 00:44:01,480
I keep seeing Jenny's hand up.

594
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:03,280
I don't know if anyone sees it.

595
00:44:03,620 --> 00:44:06,600
I just raised my hand, but just go with your question,

596
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:08,140
and I'll jump in there when you're ready.

597
00:44:09,600 --> 00:44:12,760
I saw it when we started talking earlier, and then you said,

598
00:44:12,940 --> 00:44:14,520
no, you don't have your hand up.

599
00:44:14,840 --> 00:44:15,480
It's weird.

600
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:19,600
Okay, so what was I asking?

601
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:20,540
Uh-huh.

602
00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:26,360
So you said monthly valuations from, like, an outside auditor,

603
00:44:27,100 --> 00:44:28,920
and you have, like, a full annual audit.

604
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:33,980
I think that's a very, that's good, I think.

605
00:44:34,620 --> 00:44:37,920
So the other question I have is that,

606
00:44:38,240 --> 00:44:42,320
does it also show like the default rates?

607
00:44:43,380 --> 00:44:47,080
Like maybe, and also like how many borrowers are paying back,

608
00:44:47,180 --> 00:44:49,480
like the ones that are falling behind.

609
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:52,680
And like, if you get monthly reports,

610
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:56,900
are they public for everyone or just for the token homes?

611
00:44:56,900 --> 00:45:16,740
No, I think we're going to make it public to everyone, right? I don't think there's really any need to sort of gatekeep this. I think the thing you have to remember is that the direct lending is actually a contract between our fund and a fintech.

612
00:45:16,740 --> 00:45:24,600
that fintech is then doing additional loans but the good thing about this is that you know even

613
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:31,100
if let's say uh some more loans default than have historically happened to that fintech the fintech

614
00:45:31,100 --> 00:45:37,720
itself has a balance sheet it also has equity so our job isn't to just look at the underlying

615
00:45:37,720 --> 00:45:43,200
loans and performance it's also to underwrite that fintech because they're the ones who are

616
00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:44,400
on the hook to repay.

617
00:45:45,020 --> 00:45:47,840
And that's great because it's another line of defense

618
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:50,360
between the people who are participating in RealFi

619
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:52,900
and ultimately what's going on

620
00:45:52,900 --> 00:45:54,820
with those individual borrowers.

621
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:58,180
So even if, let's say, they had a bad quarter

622
00:45:58,180 --> 00:46:00,080
or even a bad year,

623
00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:04,720
by having enough equity in existence for these fintechs,

624
00:46:04,720 --> 00:46:06,340
that also gives us protection

625
00:46:06,340 --> 00:46:08,800
because it means that we still get paid back

626
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:09,640
no matter what,

627
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:13,580
or at least, you know, within a large number of circumstances.

628
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:17,500
So that's really our job to make sure that when we're underwriting these fintechs,

629
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:23,680
that even if the credit book is amazing and the loans they're doing are super, super, super performing,

630
00:46:23,980 --> 00:46:30,500
very low defaults, we're still not going to lend to them unless they as a business are in a solid enough position

631
00:46:30,500 --> 00:46:33,620
with enough equity, with enough everything, right?

632
00:46:33,620 --> 00:46:43,280
So it's even if you have the historical default rate, by the way, was 2% over the book, over all the loans that we've done historically.

633
00:46:43,720 --> 00:46:51,400
I think we achieved 16, 17% return across the years that we've been doing this and very, very, very low defaults on the book.

634
00:46:51,520 --> 00:47:01,860
But even if that increased, you know, we have to make sure that our underwriting is good enough that that's not going to impact on people getting on us getting our money back.

635
00:47:01,860 --> 00:47:06,260
And as I say, the way in which that happens is by making sure you're lending to fintechs

636
00:47:06,260 --> 00:47:10,120
who have a very strong equity position in that business already.

637
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:16,740
So yeah, the real underlying part on the individual loans, we're not going to surface that because

638
00:47:16,740 --> 00:47:18,900
frankly it's too much detail.

639
00:47:18,900 --> 00:47:21,620
We do ourselves track that.

640
00:47:21,620 --> 00:47:25,660
But yes, an increase in the default rate does not necessarily mean that you're going to

641
00:47:25,660 --> 00:47:30,700
have any trouble when it comes towards RealFi's assets or RealFi's portfolio.

642
00:47:31,860 --> 00:47:40,100
Thank you for that. Jenny, you can go now.

643
00:47:40,100 --> 00:47:43,580
Thank you. So let me just bring my hand down before I forget.

644
00:47:44,800 --> 00:47:51,340
So, okay. In an attempt to kind of make this easier to follow,

645
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:53,340
because that's what we're trying to do here in Cordon or Coffee,

646
00:47:53,460 --> 00:47:57,100
trying to make sure that, you know, we reach more people.

647
00:47:57,880 --> 00:48:01,140
And when you have new products and complex products like this,

648
00:48:01,140 --> 00:48:02,900
that has so many new concepts.

649
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:07,680
Let me just break it down a few little questions.

650
00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:13,060
So can you walk us through $1 from the beginning to the end

651
00:48:13,060 --> 00:48:16,520
when it enters RealFi, becomes USDR, gets staked,

652
00:48:16,640 --> 00:48:19,580
reaches real-world asset, produces income,

653
00:48:20,020 --> 00:48:23,340
and eventually returns to the user?

654
00:48:23,580 --> 00:48:28,220
Can you help us kind of like understand how that process goes?

655
00:48:29,140 --> 00:48:30,340
Yeah, that's a great idea.

656
00:48:30,340 --> 00:48:35,340
And I'm going to apologize to anyone that I lost there in those explanations.

657
00:48:35,940 --> 00:48:36,740
It's always like that.

658
00:48:36,860 --> 00:48:37,480
We're in tech.

659
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:39,120
Yeah.

660
00:48:39,340 --> 00:48:43,640
You know, when people start asking me about, you know, how do you underwrite credit and

661
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:47,340
et cetera, I think, you know, you're kind of going to answer seriously about it.

662
00:48:47,560 --> 00:48:50,580
But I also appreciate maybe we've jumped too far too quickly.

663
00:48:50,700 --> 00:48:52,220
This is a great way to get into it.

664
00:48:52,580 --> 00:48:56,040
So someone gives us a USDC, right?

665
00:48:56,140 --> 00:48:57,740
Well, let's say 100 USDC.

666
00:48:57,740 --> 00:49:05,960
we have our minting contract on cardano which receives that 100 usdc and then mint 100 usdr

667
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:11,880
against that which then goes back to that institution uh who went and minted it now

668
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:19,660
we have in realfi 100 usdc now on our balance sheet so what we do is we go and buy and this is

669
00:49:19,660 --> 00:49:25,720
approximately right because as i say it depends on the ratio of how many people are holding usdr

670
00:49:25,720 --> 00:49:28,940
to how many people are holding SUSDR,

671
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:31,180
which really determines our portfolio composition.

672
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:32,720
But for the purposes of this,

673
00:49:32,860 --> 00:49:35,400
let's just say that we immediately take that $100

674
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:41,820
and we buy $20 worth of Ondo, right?

675
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:43,660
A tokenized T-bill provider.

676
00:49:44,180 --> 00:49:49,600
Then we'll go and buy maybe $50 worth

677
00:49:49,600 --> 00:49:53,140
of Janus Hansen CLO ETFs.

678
00:49:53,180 --> 00:49:55,620
These are tokenized CLO ETFs.

679
00:49:55,720 --> 00:50:04,420
And then with the remaining 30, let's say, I can't remember what I said before, but let's say it's going to be around $30 of USDC.

680
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:14,520
We'll actually off-ramp that and go and lend that out directly to these fintechs that we've been talking about before.

681
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:17,240
So they then go and get those $30.

682
00:50:17,720 --> 00:50:23,520
And now we have a credit agreement, right, or a loan contract between us and those fintech lenders.

683
00:50:23,520 --> 00:50:27,360
Those fintech lenders will go and lend this out into the real economy.

684
00:50:27,860 --> 00:50:32,400
As that principal gets repaid, and as that interest gets repaid,

685
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:34,920
it goes back into the foundation.

686
00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:38,880
This is now dollars, essentially, that we have.

687
00:50:40,020 --> 00:50:47,860
And we go and mint more USDR against that increase in NAV that we have.

688
00:50:47,860 --> 00:50:58,980
And then essentially what we're doing is we're returning that value back into the pockets of those people who are holding staked USDR.

689
00:50:59,480 --> 00:51:04,220
So just to run through this again, just to be crystal clear, $100 come in of USCC.

690
00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:07,300
We meant $100 of USDR.

691
00:51:07,980 --> 00:51:11,000
This person then stakes their USDR.

692
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:17,880
So they now have staked USDR, which means that they have a claim against the assets which we are going and purchasing.

693
00:51:18,340 --> 00:51:30,560
And when we talked about those assets, that was $20 worth of tokenized T-bills, maybe $50 worth of tokenized CLO ETFs, and the remainder being the direct lending that we're doing to the fintechs.

694
00:51:30,940 --> 00:51:32,080
So hopefully that makes sense.

695
00:51:32,380 --> 00:51:32,800
It does.

696
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:37,120
So when you say staked, let's just kind of like talk about that part.

697
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:41,840
Are we talking about stake as we are used to here in Cardano,

698
00:51:42,020 --> 00:51:46,080
stake into a stake pool, stake it to, what exactly does that mean?

699
00:51:46,220 --> 00:51:50,280
And does that tie it into the program that you have now

700
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:52,100
going on with stake pool operators?

701
00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:58,160
Yeah, so that's a really, really good question.

702
00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:01,160
So it's not actually the same thing, right?

703
00:52:01,180 --> 00:52:03,580
Because typically when we're talking about staking,

704
00:52:03,580 --> 00:52:06,040
we're really referring to the fact, right?

705
00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:13,420
like in Cardano, that it's some form of security function for the protocol, right? That you are

706
00:52:13,420 --> 00:52:19,380
putting your resources, be it ADA or whatever, for any other network. And through this sort of

707
00:52:19,380 --> 00:52:23,180
staking mechanism, you're somehow basically providing the security for the network of the

708
00:52:23,180 --> 00:52:27,980
whole. That's not really what's happening here. What's really happening is you're locking up

709
00:52:27,980 --> 00:52:34,820
your USDR. And that money then is going into getting a bunch of different assets, right?

710
00:52:34,820 --> 00:52:39,000
And then when you unstake, there's a one-week cool-down period.

711
00:52:39,260 --> 00:52:43,680
What that one week's really doing is making sure we can go and move around some money

712
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:47,080
to make sure we've got more liquidity in case you want to exit the system.

713
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:53,220
So you stake, you get your SUSDR, which is a fungible token that you can go and do cool

714
00:52:53,220 --> 00:52:54,240
stuff in DeFi with.

715
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:57,640
Ultimately, you're getting exposure to this portfolio of assets.

716
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:02,660
And when you unstake, one week later, you're going back into USDR.

717
00:53:02,660 --> 00:53:06,800
and we're using that time to change the assets that we're holding

718
00:53:06,800 --> 00:53:08,540
in order to make sure they're more liquid.

719
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:11,920
Awesome. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that for people.

720
00:53:12,140 --> 00:53:17,440
And we can get into the stake pool operation situation

721
00:53:17,440 --> 00:53:18,680
that you guys are going on right now.

722
00:53:18,740 --> 00:53:22,740
You have a program, but I do see KB with the hand up

723
00:53:22,740 --> 00:53:26,120
and I don't want to hoard the mic, so I'll come back to you.

724
00:53:28,380 --> 00:53:29,100
Hi, KB.

725
00:53:29,420 --> 00:53:30,300
Hey, guys.

726
00:53:30,300 --> 00:53:43,380
Hey, I've got a question about like the, I understand the working capital issue, like especially across Africa. So I live in Zambia and run a impact focused honey business here.

727
00:53:43,380 --> 00:53:51,840
um what so i understand you'll lend to fintechs or third parties that then lend on to businesses

728
00:53:51,840 --> 00:54:01,180
like mine um what is the incentive for those fintechs to reduce their rates that they're

729
00:54:01,180 --> 00:54:10,400
lending at um is there like a mandate from real fi for them to lend at certain rates um just so

730
00:54:10,400 --> 00:54:15,840
that it's, you know, one of the challenges is that interest rates are very high across Africa

731
00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:22,280
because the risk can be high in, you know, the views of traditional finance. But yeah,

732
00:54:22,280 --> 00:54:27,320
that's really my question is really about how do we reduce those rates for working capital and

733
00:54:27,320 --> 00:54:34,320
other types of lending that go through the fintechs? Yeah, it's a really good question. So

734
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:41,440
I think what I'll start off by saying is that we try to only work with fintechs where

735
00:54:41,440 --> 00:54:48,040
we're comfortable with what they're doing, right? So don't get me wrong, there are some

736
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:55,220
really great financial opportunities that you sometimes see in this space in terms of fintechs

737
00:54:55,220 --> 00:55:01,140
that are really, really operating very, very profitably, but aren't really doing the kind

738
00:55:01,140 --> 00:55:08,320
of lending that we like or believe in. So we basically just pass on pass on those right.

739
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:13,160
Another way to put it is that sometimes the highest risk lending if you've got a very

740
00:55:13,160 --> 00:55:20,160
well set up fintech can be very lucrative. But it basically into the you know exploitative

741
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:26,160
lending areas also not interesting for us. So we try to work and we spend a lot of time

742
00:55:26,160 --> 00:55:31,920
looking for and finding fintechs that that sit in the middle ground right they're doing lending that

743
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:38,640
we believe creates economic value that isn't creating over indebtedness ideally not doing

744
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:44,400
any kind of lending which is basically just supporting you know consumer indebtedness

745
00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:49,840
you know lending to people who are just taking on more debt right so yeah we try to stay away

746
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:56,020
from that kind of stuff. Then when it comes towards the actual rates, ultimately we don't

747
00:55:56,020 --> 00:56:01,300
have control of the rates and that's a good thing, right? Our job isn't to go and tell

748
00:56:01,300 --> 00:56:07,300
the fintechs that if you take our money, you have to go and do things this way. What we'd

749
00:56:07,300 --> 00:56:12,600
much rather do is just find the fintechs that align with what we're trying to do and work

750
00:56:12,600 --> 00:56:19,440
with them. I think things get really messy once you have edicts coming from capital providers

751
00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:21,700
on how the actual business can run

752
00:56:21,700 --> 00:56:23,940
because that's when things start going wrong.

753
00:56:24,340 --> 00:56:26,300
So it's a bit of a cop-out answer.

754
00:56:26,500 --> 00:56:29,880
We don't tell FinTechs exactly how they should be doing things,

755
00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:33,460
but we do try to find ones that we believe,

756
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:38,140
yeah, we believe kind of match with what we're trying to achieve.

757
00:56:38,780 --> 00:56:41,780
Maybe as a more positive spin on what you're saying,

758
00:56:41,780 --> 00:56:45,660
if we can grow RealFi to a sufficient size and scale,

759
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:49,420
then ultimately more capital will drive down rates.

760
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:54,180
you know you're based in Zambia so you'll probably understand this but you know almost all of the

761
00:56:54,180 --> 00:56:59,980
finance in this space is coming from DFIs right large development financial institutions that

762
00:56:59,980 --> 00:57:05,860
basically are the first capital into all of this kind of lending stuff it's not really being done

763
00:57:05,860 --> 00:57:14,720
from a private sector yeah from a private sector lens our hope is with RealFi that we can crowd

764
00:57:14,720 --> 00:57:21,740
capital into this market without having to rely on the usual TFI names that are normally

765
00:57:21,740 --> 00:57:27,500
involved in this space. And if we grow large enough, I have no doubt that within the specific

766
00:57:27,500 --> 00:57:32,020
places which we're providing capital, that rates will start to come down because there'll be more

767
00:57:32,020 --> 00:57:36,000
capital available, which is incredibly scarce at the moment, as I'm sure you're aware.

768
00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:44,500
Perfect. Yeah, I think moving it as a market is way better than mandating rates. So cool.

769
00:57:44,720 --> 00:57:51,920
So, John, I have another question.

770
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:54,440
Thanks for the question, KB.

771
00:57:54,560 --> 00:57:56,080
That was a great question.

772
00:57:57,000 --> 00:58:02,220
My other question is also around, you know, operating here in Africa.

773
00:58:04,340 --> 00:58:07,680
You said that Cameroon is in, which is nice.

774
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:13,420
But now my question is, how does a Cameroonian get USTR?

775
00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:16,180
Like, do I need to have crypto?

776
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:21,040
Yeah, I think that the, you know, remember, look, this is a global product, right?

777
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:26,660
So the way in which you get USDR from an actual technical standpoint, right,

778
00:58:26,660 --> 00:58:30,960
means that we need to be given USDC or USDT or another stable.

779
00:58:31,680 --> 00:58:37,840
Then, you know, the way in which retail, permitted retail gets access to it

780
00:58:37,840 --> 00:58:40,040
is through a DEX or through a SEX.

781
00:58:40,520 --> 00:58:43,060
So from a how do people get into it,

782
00:58:43,060 --> 00:58:48,600
there needs to be some onboarding mechanism for anyone to be able to go from their local currency

783
00:58:48,600 --> 00:58:54,560
into crypto. And, you know, if you're talking about Africa and literally every African country

784
00:58:54,560 --> 00:58:59,660
now, you have a variety of local exchanges and ways to be able to go from your local currency

785
00:58:59,660 --> 00:59:04,400
into crypto. But that's the starting point. Of course, you can see a world, right, where you

786
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:10,620
wrap all of this experience together, where you've got like an app where you can immediately onboard

787
00:59:10,620 --> 00:59:15,980
from mobile money directly into the app and then it just swaps directly into usdr that could be

788
00:59:15,980 --> 00:59:21,900
bundled together um but the sort of technical process of this is through crypto right um

789
00:59:21,900 --> 00:59:28,140
ultimately we're issuing a crypto token and we need to accept another crypto token um in order

790
00:59:28,140 --> 00:59:38,460
for this to work yeah the reason i asked is because um it's it's not very straightforward

791
00:59:38,460 --> 00:59:47,000
to get crypto here you know uh banks are difficult you you have your mobile money wallet but it's like

792
00:59:47,000 --> 00:59:55,660
if you could go on an exchange you could try and on binance there is um they have p2p which

793
00:59:55,660 --> 01:00:01,880
sometimes you can get someone who wants to sell their bitcoin and maybe they let you pay them

794
01:00:01,880 --> 01:00:09,940
through the mobile wallet or maybe you don't find them so it's a yeah that's why buying crypto here

795
01:00:09,940 --> 01:00:18,960
most often you know a guy who has crypto and he just sells on whatsapp so um i think it would be

796
01:00:18,960 --> 01:00:24,940
something interesting for you guys to think about yeah i mean don't get me wrong that sounds

797
01:00:24,940 --> 01:00:34,160
incredibly valuable is to be able to work on that space. Let's stick it in the future product kind

798
01:00:34,160 --> 01:00:39,320
of category. And like, I'm sure you're right. And the way I saw mostly this happening in KPR

799
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:45,840
was the P2P market, right, was very active. But I also know there's periods where there wasn't a

800
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:51,440
lot available there, not a lot of inventory. So yeah, anyway, we're gonna start where we're

801
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:57,080
starting, launching the main net, trying to build some demand for RealFi. But we are interested in

802
01:00:57,080 --> 01:01:01,740
kind of extension projects to make things more usable for people in specific countries.

803
01:01:04,560 --> 01:01:11,360
Just to add to that, the minute we've got a workshop open where we're co-creating a campaign

804
01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:16,640
with SPOs to help them attract delegation and ultimately ensure Cardano's network is

805
01:01:16,640 --> 01:01:22,260
decentralized that's why RealFi is supporting Kodano SPOs but John you know I've been talking

806
01:01:22,260 --> 01:01:28,020
to Clay about later on there being innovation workshops where you know we can bring people in

807
01:01:28,020 --> 01:01:33,980
with ideas like this and so it doesn't just have to be RealFi as a product it can be RealFi as a

808
01:01:33,980 --> 01:01:39,600
platform that people could build on to increase utility and TVL so it's definitely in the pipes

809
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:44,780
and if you come into Discord I'll be able to invite you personally to that workshop

810
01:01:44,780 --> 01:01:46,040
when it goes low.

811
01:01:48,580 --> 01:01:49,540
Thank you, Ben.

812
01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:51,280
Yeah, I mean, I'm not asking,

813
01:01:51,480 --> 01:01:52,960
I'm not greedy, you know.

814
01:01:53,520 --> 01:01:57,240
I'm just, I'm not asking it to be available right now,

815
01:01:57,440 --> 01:01:58,900
but I definitely,

816
01:01:59,700 --> 01:02:03,140
it's something I'm really interested in,

817
01:02:03,300 --> 01:02:06,700
you know, because when we always talk about

818
01:02:06,700 --> 01:02:08,920
banking the unbanked,

819
01:02:08,920 --> 01:02:11,420
it's usually talks around,

820
01:02:12,060 --> 01:02:13,480
oh, you can do this with your crypto,

821
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:18,440
You can get this here, but then how do you get it?

822
01:02:19,540 --> 01:02:26,700
It's how the whole process of getting that token or that crypto is where the banking happens.

823
01:02:27,260 --> 01:02:32,760
So I just wanted to know, you guys are thinking about, you know, along those lines.

824
01:02:33,300 --> 01:02:34,960
I see Jenny has her hand up.

825
01:02:35,540 --> 01:02:40,960
No, funny because I was actually going to talk about the bank and the bank part because, you know,

826
01:02:40,960 --> 01:02:42,760
And I mentioned this before.

827
01:02:42,980 --> 01:02:51,460
A lot of us like remember fondly as we talked about Ben, like take me back to those days of nostalgic memories.

828
01:02:52,240 --> 01:02:56,860
When Charles used to do his videos and he will end them with Akiva, right?

829
01:02:56,920 --> 01:03:02,140
Like he would like go and fund somebody and he's like, oh, I can't wait for us to have something like this.

830
01:03:02,140 --> 01:03:10,780
in Cardano where we can you know do lending um to people without you know financial um identity

831
01:03:10,780 --> 01:03:16,640
and all this stuff right so it used to be kind of like one of the big things that I will get excited

832
01:03:16,640 --> 01:03:21,840
about so every time I saw Charles in person I will ask him and lately every time I see him it's like

833
01:03:21,840 --> 01:03:29,020
oh real fi's coming real fi's coming you know it's like okay so real fi's here and it's like

834
01:03:29,020 --> 01:03:35,520
I'm looking into this and it looks amazing, but I, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost feels

835
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:40,440
like there's kind of like going to be a couple, like two phases to this for that to actually

836
01:03:40,440 --> 01:03:45,080
happen, right? For the bank and the unbacked, like, I feel like first we have to attract capital from

837
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:50,980
people who already have it. And then we'll be able to move into the phase two, which is deploying

838
01:03:50,980 --> 01:03:55,860
the capital through lending and creating partners and then creating, you know, on and off ramps and

839
01:03:55,860 --> 01:04:02,600
things like that as you know to kind of grow that network well is that is that kind of like um

840
01:04:02,600 --> 01:04:09,920
assumption uh does it make sense yeah look the way i like is this right so i would say that our

841
01:04:09,920 --> 01:04:17,520
product currently um supports the growth of let's say the underbanked maybe not unbanked right

842
01:04:17,520 --> 01:04:25,680
predominantly the lending that we're doing is supporting successful you know great underbanked

843
01:04:25,680 --> 01:04:30,240
businesses and providing capital to them, right? And that's the kind of starting point here.

844
01:04:30,600 --> 01:04:37,140
As I say, it's lending with partners that we've been lending to historically, that perform well,

845
01:04:37,300 --> 01:04:43,760
that, you know, are impactful. But that's the kind of category where we can do both of our jobs,

846
01:04:43,760 --> 01:04:49,400
which is one, doing something impactful and interesting. But two, operating in a financially

847
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:54,700
prudent manner, right? And making sure that the portfolio that we're building is robust,

848
01:04:54,700 --> 01:05:00,840
is strong and also delivers the right yield. So that's kind of how my spin on this, right?

849
01:05:00,980 --> 01:05:06,680
That we're starting with the underbank segment here. Because at the end of the day, if we're

850
01:05:06,680 --> 01:05:11,800
trying to crowd people into using USCR, we also need to make sure that this portfolio is super

851
01:05:11,800 --> 01:05:16,760
strong. And that's also the reason why, you know, all of these CLO ETFs that we have, these are all

852
01:05:16,760 --> 01:05:22,360
investment grade, they're all AAA, we've got all of this UST bills in this, because from a portfolio

853
01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:28,360
approach, you can't just have, you know, 100% emerging markets, right? That's not going to make

854
01:05:28,360 --> 01:05:34,160
sense. So we believe we've sort of trod, you know, done the interesting middle here, where we built

855
01:05:34,160 --> 01:05:39,680
a really robust portfolio that has all the liquidity we need to be able to handle redemptions

856
01:05:39,680 --> 01:05:46,740
and make sure we can maintain our peg, whilst also basically sharing the economics that happen

857
01:05:46,740 --> 01:05:52,240
with stable coins back to people, which is kind of the opposite of the tether and circle

858
01:05:52,240 --> 01:05:53,240
model, right?

859
01:05:53,240 --> 01:05:55,460
Well, that's all held by the issuer.

860
01:05:55,460 --> 01:05:59,920
And you know, by treading this middle path, we think we do a good enough job in every

861
01:05:59,920 --> 01:06:03,120
area to build a really interesting product.

862
01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:08,220
But is it direct lending to a specific business in emerging markets that you can go and look

863
01:06:08,220 --> 01:06:15,180
at like, no, this is a portfolio approach that lets people get, we believe, a really,

864
01:06:15,180 --> 01:06:20,940
great stablecoin product, which we can sort of stand behind and be proud of, whilst also

865
01:06:20,940 --> 01:06:24,260
driving, we think, impactful outcomes across the world.

866
01:06:24,540 --> 01:06:30,980
Yeah, I think that how Phil puts it, he brought up a good point. It looks like you guys are

867
01:06:30,980 --> 01:06:39,600
capturing users that don't really fit in in the current environment. For example, me.

868
01:06:39,600 --> 01:06:47,000
I'm not a degen. I would like to participate, but I don't do this kind of stuff. I'm a long-term kind of investor, right?

869
01:06:47,220 --> 01:06:47,440
Exactly.

870
01:06:47,440 --> 01:07:01,440
So I would love to be able to participate in what I do in a regular finance world, but in crypto. But right now, there's just not really anything like it, right? So this is really exciting for somebody like me.

871
01:07:01,440 --> 01:07:06,360
because I think that if I get empowered in this ecosystem,

872
01:07:06,360 --> 01:07:09,100
I'm here for reasons that are bigger than myself,

873
01:07:09,500 --> 01:07:13,400
then I could actually, it will trickle down, right?

874
01:07:13,740 --> 01:07:18,540
That if I can earn, you know, interest and all this stuff,

875
01:07:18,580 --> 01:07:21,600
then I could put that money to invest in the ecosystem,

876
01:07:21,600 --> 01:07:24,980
which right now it's like all the money that I spend in this ecosystem,

877
01:07:24,980 --> 01:07:27,260
it's just like I'm not getting anything in return.

878
01:07:27,500 --> 01:07:30,440
So you get depleted if you keep like funding things,

879
01:07:30,440 --> 01:07:32,200
if you don't get any kind of return.

880
01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:34,800
So I think this is really exciting in that sense.

881
01:07:35,300 --> 01:07:37,500
So I just, yeah.

882
01:07:37,660 --> 01:07:38,640
So thanks for that.

883
01:07:39,060 --> 01:07:41,400
But I wanted to, because I know there's like so much,

884
01:07:41,440 --> 01:07:43,840
and this is why Ben, I told you that we needed to get the whole hour.

885
01:07:44,520 --> 01:07:46,340
You guys, so much going on.

886
01:07:47,340 --> 01:07:48,440
Because there's a proposal,

887
01:07:48,660 --> 01:07:51,440
and then you have this incentive program with SPOs,

888
01:07:51,540 --> 01:07:53,120
and I want to understand it.

889
01:07:53,380 --> 01:07:55,240
Can you guys talk a little bit about that?

890
01:07:55,240 --> 01:07:57,680
I know that you guys have some governance,

891
01:07:57,680 --> 01:08:02,020
but in the future, nothing concrete at the time.

892
01:08:02,560 --> 01:08:05,060
Can you tell us a little bit about this SPO program,

893
01:08:05,060 --> 01:08:10,840
that incentivized staying in the accelerator program?

894
01:08:11,280 --> 01:08:16,500
Jenny, can Kit ask his question before we get into that?

895
01:08:18,720 --> 01:08:19,400
Sure.

896
01:08:20,460 --> 01:08:22,900
His hazard one, but yeah, okay.

897
01:08:23,980 --> 01:08:24,540
Good evening.

898
01:08:24,960 --> 01:08:25,560
Jim.

899
01:08:25,660 --> 01:08:26,160
Good morning.

900
01:08:26,360 --> 01:08:26,540
Sorry.

901
01:08:26,860 --> 01:08:27,260
Evening here.

902
01:08:27,260 --> 01:08:34,960
jim i'm hi ben i i started researching about real fire when you when you mentioned it like

903
01:08:34,960 --> 01:08:40,080
so last day so i just want to ask a question because i went through the you know websites

904
01:08:40,080 --> 01:08:46,600
what are the plans for like maureen said the actual underbanked people like if you look at

905
01:08:46,600 --> 01:08:52,820
crypto now like the way crypto is and blockchain is i mean for the average person it's still

906
01:08:52,820 --> 01:08:59,760
relatively complex for them to get to you know i was looking at uh what it was saying something

907
01:08:59,760 --> 01:09:05,360
like you're going to be sticking you can easily stick your ada stick your usdr and i feel like

908
01:09:05,360 --> 01:09:13,020
then is real fire not the project for like a product for like people that are already in the

909
01:09:13,020 --> 01:09:20,500
ecosystem like they're already in cardano ecosystem or they're already in crypto then what about

910
01:09:20,500 --> 01:09:25,220
trying to actually you know get people that are outside of the bubble i don't know if

911
01:09:25,220 --> 01:09:32,020
you understand what i mean but i don't know if yeah if you'd like you remember you because we

912
01:09:32,020 --> 01:09:38,340
talked about it like the tweet that's pinned to my profile about ultimately an ecosystem what is

913
01:09:38,340 --> 01:09:43,200
the game that you're playing and the game is growth and how do you define growth and growth

914
01:09:43,200 --> 01:09:50,160
is capital productivity that to me is like why real fire was so interesting and you know i'll

915
01:09:50,160 --> 01:09:56,880
be honest you know after i finished my tour duty with io i dm john and was like let me come and

916
01:09:56,880 --> 01:10:02,800
bootstrap the community for realfi um because i wanted to see kadano and stake pool operators

917
01:10:02,800 --> 01:10:09,100
especially uh get a stake into the rfg token which is the governance token um and that's where

918
01:10:09,100 --> 01:10:13,500
it's coming from and john i'm off the reservation here but like when you've explained the model

919
01:10:13,500 --> 01:10:20,360
this is with my personal questions i'm taking any kind of association with real fly away right

920
01:10:20,360 --> 01:10:26,320
but i've listened to a podcast and he was talking about a totally unrelated topic which is uh

921
01:10:26,320 --> 01:10:31,040
franchises but the interesting thing is he was saying this about an owner operator model where

922
01:10:31,040 --> 01:10:37,360
somebody is going to take care and provide a much greater service if they own you know that

923
01:10:37,360 --> 01:10:42,860
satellite or that franchise is that a little bit like the way that you're describing the

924
01:10:42,860 --> 01:10:49,200
credit and stuff being managed where like an owner operator is kind of managing those different

925
01:10:49,200 --> 01:10:56,100
credits and that money and then you're behind that backing it as part of the system or is this

926
01:10:56,100 --> 01:11:01,820
the stupidest analogy you've ever heard? No, look, okay, so let's talk about the two sides

927
01:11:01,820 --> 01:11:06,300
of this particular market, right? On the one side, what we need is capital. We need to be able to get

928
01:11:06,300 --> 01:11:12,000
capital in. On the other side, we need places to be able to go and deploy that capital. The basic

929
01:11:12,000 --> 01:11:16,920
thesis for real fight is that currently in crypto, there's often a lot of capital, but

930
01:11:16,920 --> 01:11:23,120
places for that capital to go are often based on inflationary economics, pondonomics, emissions,

931
01:11:23,120 --> 01:11:28,960
it's not real, right? And it disappears very quickly once BTC starts falling. So real first

932
01:11:28,960 --> 01:11:34,080
thesis is there are places in which we can go and put that capital, which will have a

933
01:11:34,080 --> 01:11:40,300
steadier kind of return profile, maybe even lower risk, depending on what the assets are,

934
01:11:40,300 --> 01:11:44,980
ultimately more predictable is kind of what we're trying to achieve with our assets.

935
01:11:45,460 --> 01:11:49,780
But then there's like a second part to this, right, which is forget about returns, etc.

936
01:11:50,020 --> 01:11:52,740
We also believe that capital can do good in the world.

937
01:11:52,940 --> 01:11:58,260
And ultimately, it makes more sense for that capital to be going into places that are productive

938
01:11:58,260 --> 01:12:03,100
than what currently happens with, let's say, most stable coins, where it's just holding

939
01:12:03,100 --> 01:12:03,760
US T-bills.

940
01:12:03,960 --> 01:12:07,160
It's just reducing the cost of US government borrowing, right?

941
01:12:07,180 --> 01:12:08,160
And that's kind of our thesis.

942
01:12:08,340 --> 01:12:09,680
Let's make capital work.

943
01:12:09,680 --> 01:12:10,700
Let's make it be productive.

944
01:12:11,200 --> 01:12:13,960
So then the question is, how do we go and deploy that capital?

945
01:12:14,820 --> 01:12:17,620
And, you know, there is the kind of Kiva-like model

946
01:12:17,620 --> 01:12:21,220
where you're really going to the completely unbanked, right?

947
01:12:22,140 --> 01:12:25,100
But that's really hard because you can't do that at scale.

948
01:12:25,220 --> 01:12:26,360
It needs to happen individually.

949
01:12:26,840 --> 01:12:28,260
And let's not forget that, you know,

950
01:12:28,440 --> 01:12:30,700
Kiva ultimately is a charity, right?

951
01:12:30,760 --> 01:12:34,340
And it's not a ginormous, multi-billion dollar

952
01:12:34,340 --> 01:12:36,240
kind of huge scalable fund.

953
01:12:36,800 --> 01:12:39,240
It's done more on the premise that, you know,

954
01:12:39,240 --> 01:12:41,340
the return may or may not happen,

955
01:12:41,700 --> 01:12:43,260
but ultimately you're doing good,

956
01:12:43,360 --> 01:12:45,200
which is an amazingly noble aid, right?

957
01:12:45,400 --> 01:12:46,880
But when we're trying to think about

958
01:12:46,880 --> 01:12:48,360
how do we do things scalably,

959
01:12:48,740 --> 01:12:51,100
it has to work through local providers

960
01:12:51,100 --> 01:12:54,220
and local fintechs who have equity on their balance sheet,

961
01:12:54,340 --> 01:12:56,660
who can afford to provide some defense

962
01:12:56,660 --> 01:12:59,220
to the people who are providing capital on the other side.

963
01:12:59,640 --> 01:13:01,080
And then to your point, Ben,

964
01:13:01,220 --> 01:13:04,680
over like owner-operator, franchisor,

965
01:13:05,140 --> 01:13:06,880
yeah, I mean, these fintechs,

966
01:13:06,880 --> 01:13:08,060
they're running a business

967
01:13:08,060 --> 01:13:13,440
and are highly motivated to make sure that, you know, ultimately the lending activity they do

968
01:13:13,440 --> 01:13:19,780
is working and is great, right? And also that they have the regulatory licenses in those countries

969
01:13:19,780 --> 01:13:25,000
to operate all of this kind of stuff. So my kind of final point on why these people are so important

970
01:13:25,000 --> 01:13:32,060
is actually to give you the example of Goldfinch, right? So Goldfinch recently kind of blew up.

971
01:13:32,360 --> 01:13:36,760
And a large amount of the reason why that happened, I think, is a lot of the underwriting,

972
01:13:36,760 --> 01:13:40,920
which was being done to be able to decide whether this was a good place to lend to,

973
01:13:41,260 --> 01:13:44,580
was basically being done by like ordinary people, right?

974
01:13:44,620 --> 01:13:49,240
They built a model to incentivize ordinary people to go and underwrite opportunities.

975
01:13:49,800 --> 01:13:53,600
And they were doing that on the basis of like, you know, getting some gold fringe tokens.

976
01:13:54,520 --> 01:13:58,920
I mean, like, you wouldn't put your money, I don't think you put your money into a fund

977
01:13:58,920 --> 01:14:03,700
that's being like managed and underwritten by essentially a volunteer, right?

978
01:14:03,700 --> 01:14:06,580
That's not really how things typically happen.

979
01:14:06,760 --> 01:14:25,320
So I think that, you know, the model we have, I think, takes some of the strengths that we see in traditional TradFi, opens up new opportunities to drive impact with capital, and hopefully also brings something new to people in crypto, right, which is a productive, stable coin that's also doing good in the world.

980
01:14:25,960 --> 01:14:30,840
Sorry, it's a long-winded answer about, you know, we were talking about a few different areas of the problem.

981
01:14:31,100 --> 01:14:33,320
I hope that kind of sets out how we see things.

982
01:14:33,320 --> 01:14:42,740
just in addition john i think you know there's a real high laser focus in the team to focus on

983
01:14:42,740 --> 01:14:48,540
getting stuff done and for it to work but in the future a governance token means there'll be

984
01:14:48,540 --> 01:14:54,020
proposals when people can vote on things and and um you know this can evolve right this is just the

985
01:14:54,020 --> 01:14:58,340
starting point am i right absolutely

986
01:14:58,340 --> 01:15:07,300
So what I'm really excited about, or maybe because I've got a bit of PTSD from five and

987
01:15:07,300 --> 01:15:13,220
a half, seven years in Cardano, if you include Cardano Foundation, it's just really fun to

988
01:15:13,220 --> 01:15:18,340
be building cool shit and back in a community at the very beginning where you can have an

989
01:15:18,340 --> 01:15:20,300
outsized impact.

990
01:15:20,300 --> 01:15:26,020
And if you're listening to this X-Base and John is so eloquent and explains it well,

991
01:15:26,020 --> 01:15:31,260
and you want to get involved in RealFi, you know, the Discord link is in the chat.

992
01:15:31,920 --> 01:15:32,700
What do you call it, Jenny?

993
01:15:32,880 --> 01:15:35,580
That applies to this link.

994
01:15:35,700 --> 01:15:37,360
It's so easy to get into the Discord.

995
01:15:37,840 --> 01:15:44,280
You know, there's easy ways to earn the points that will get converted for RFG tokens at the end of the season.

996
01:15:44,960 --> 01:15:50,800
And if you're delegating to a stakeholder operator that's on the RealFi SPO accelerator program,

997
01:15:51,180 --> 01:15:55,080
you're going to be able to earn points passively just by delegating to them.

998
01:15:55,080 --> 01:15:58,420
And the marketing team, John, moved so quickly.

999
01:15:58,560 --> 01:15:59,380
There was this workshop.

1000
01:15:59,500 --> 01:16:01,160
I mentioned it at the beginning of the call.

1001
01:16:01,700 --> 01:16:03,700
We're doing this workshop with SBOs.

1002
01:16:03,780 --> 01:16:05,900
One of the things they wanted was a raised profile.

1003
01:16:06,640 --> 01:16:12,500
Within 24 hours, you know, Rob was on a call with me getting website designers to mock it up.

1004
01:16:12,600 --> 01:16:14,540
So just the work rate is astonishing.

1005
01:16:14,960 --> 01:16:18,620
And the team is a joy to work with.

1006
01:16:18,640 --> 01:16:19,700
And they're really deceptive.

1007
01:16:19,760 --> 01:16:21,300
And that's the vibe in the community.

1008
01:16:21,300 --> 01:16:23,040
If you come in, you are going to be heard.

1009
01:16:23,200 --> 01:16:25,060
And you can get involved.

1010
01:16:25,080 --> 01:16:32,340
the points are the ones i'm sorry maureen the points those are the points that get converted

1011
01:16:32,340 --> 01:16:39,020
into like that is that the governance token right yeah this is a governance token so it's going to

1012
01:16:39,020 --> 01:16:44,480
mean you have a really meaningful say you know i don't want to suggest what proposals one might

1013
01:16:44,480 --> 01:16:50,320
propose but but all i'm trying to say is this is going for the minute we're at ground zero right

1014
01:16:50,320 --> 01:16:56,240
We've all got our origins in Cardano, but what other ecosystems are we going to, John?

1015
01:16:58,100 --> 01:17:01,440
Yeah, Ethan, that is happening very quickly.

1016
01:17:01,940 --> 01:17:04,520
Maybe this is actually an interesting point to talk about a little bit.

1017
01:17:05,060 --> 01:17:09,220
One of the things that we always talk about in Cardano is how do we grow TVL?

1018
01:17:09,840 --> 01:17:11,400
How do we grow the usage of DeFi?

1019
01:17:11,900 --> 01:17:14,140
Well, it's kind of the chicken and the egg problem, right?

1020
01:17:14,180 --> 01:17:16,020
You don't have the liquidity available in Cardano,

1021
01:17:16,020 --> 01:17:21,220
So new DeFi projects never really get what they need to exist.

1022
01:17:21,620 --> 01:17:24,880
But without DeFi projects, why would there ever be any liquidity on Cardano?

1023
01:17:25,440 --> 01:17:30,440
So we think we've got a sort of interesting setup here where, you know, we have our native

1024
01:17:30,440 --> 01:17:31,420
contracts on Cardano.

1025
01:17:31,760 --> 01:17:33,480
Canonical accounting happens on Cardano.

1026
01:17:33,840 --> 01:17:37,480
But we're also putting native contracts onto ETH mainnet.

1027
01:17:38,020 --> 01:17:42,680
So what this means is that, you know, you can have your Metamask wallet on ETH and you

1028
01:17:42,680 --> 01:17:46,880
can go and, you know, come to the DAB and have a really great experience, right? Your

1029
01:17:46,880 --> 01:17:51,700
Meta Musk wallet connects, same as if you're in Cardano, right? You can connect your internal

1030
01:17:51,700 --> 01:17:55,940
wallet or your LIS wallet directly to the DAB. But it also means that, you know, any

1031
01:17:55,940 --> 01:18:00,820
volume that we see coming from ETH mainnet, where there's already tons of liquidity and

1032
01:18:00,820 --> 01:18:05,760
demand for products like this, ultimately is going to grow TVL on Cardano, right? Because

1033
01:18:05,760 --> 01:18:11,180
this is where ultimately the assets sit and where the accounting happens. So we believe

1034
01:18:11,180 --> 01:18:16,300
that this is also potentially a way to drive hundreds of millions of dollars of TVL for

1035
01:18:16,300 --> 01:18:21,000
Cardano by actually building an experience and a product that people want, both on Cardano

1036
01:18:21,000 --> 01:18:22,420
and also in ETH.

1037
01:18:23,240 --> 01:18:27,220
And who knows, maybe other ecosystems as well, you know, like Solana, etc.

1038
01:18:28,500 --> 01:18:33,340
But this is how you're aggregating the liquidity at the end is through the assets there being,

1039
01:18:34,180 --> 01:18:36,520
the accounting happening in Cardano, right?

1040
01:18:37,160 --> 01:18:39,740
Yeah, accounting is happening on Cardano, so TVL will sit here.

1041
01:18:41,180 --> 01:18:54,020
Yeah, we wanted to get into the stake pools angle.

1042
01:18:57,200 --> 01:18:58,600
You guys still up for it?

1043
01:18:58,620 --> 01:19:00,760
Yeah, you want me to explain how it's working?

1044
01:19:02,540 --> 01:19:03,260
Yeah, yeah.

1045
01:19:03,260 --> 01:19:07,360
Yeah, so people know what to look forward to and participate and whatnot.

1046
01:19:07,760 --> 01:19:09,560
I know that you already selected the pools.

1047
01:19:09,560 --> 01:19:14,360
I don't know if you're still in the process of doing that, but just for the users.

1048
01:19:15,400 --> 01:19:21,680
So we had 102 stakeholders register, and they were overwhelming.

1049
01:19:21,920 --> 01:19:25,700
It's like 97, 98% single stakeholders.

1050
01:19:26,720 --> 01:19:31,480
They're in Discord, and we're building up the campaign now.

1051
01:19:31,600 --> 01:19:37,540
But basically what it looks like is if you stake to one of the stakeholders in the RealFi Exelerator program,

1052
01:19:37,540 --> 01:19:45,160
You're going to earn 100 points a day passively on top of the points that you can earn inside Discord participating in the testnet.

1053
01:19:45,780 --> 01:19:50,820
And this is the important thing is that it's a legitimate activity that we're looking for.

1054
01:19:50,900 --> 01:19:52,100
It's not vanity metrics.

1055
01:19:52,360 --> 01:19:58,340
So this is why a lot of it is going to be on chain for a benefit of it is that you delegate into a pool.

1056
01:19:58,520 --> 01:20:02,480
When you come to claim your points, we'll be able to verify that you delegate to the pool.

1057
01:20:02,520 --> 01:20:04,900
And that's how you're going to get them attributed to you.

1058
01:20:04,900 --> 01:20:10,780
So for the stake pool operator, what that means is stake is sticky.

1059
01:20:11,120 --> 01:20:12,360
It's difficult to attract it.

1060
01:20:12,660 --> 01:20:15,960
A stake pool operator, by definition, has to attract stake.

1061
01:20:16,120 --> 01:20:19,200
They have to wear a marketing hat, which is obviously different to proof of work.

1062
01:20:20,060 --> 01:20:26,520
And because stake's sticky, it's hard to differentiate your pool in a compelling way to attract stake.

1063
01:20:26,760 --> 01:20:30,040
Now, a couple of things have happened in the past three to four weeks.

1064
01:20:30,040 --> 01:20:38,920
right there is the second fire you're already emergo hacks okay so it's timely in the sense

1065
01:20:38,920 --> 01:20:44,240
there's a lot of active discussion about where delegation should go so if state pool operators

1066
01:20:44,240 --> 01:20:49,000
in our program there is a fear of loss i think that they can speak to where they can say it's

1067
01:20:49,000 --> 01:20:55,260
important that you secure aid and these are the best practices and educate people on that but

1068
01:20:55,260 --> 01:21:00,120
they're also able to offer hope of gain in a sense of the RFG

1069
01:21:00,120 --> 01:21:03,600
token and having a say in governance within real fight.

1070
01:21:04,080 --> 01:21:06,040
And it's going to go multi-chain, it's going to be

1071
01:21:06,040 --> 01:21:08,760
meaningful, you know. So the state pool operator is able to

1072
01:21:08,760 --> 01:21:12,320
say, if you delegate to my pool, and I'm going to be able to

1073
01:21:12,320 --> 01:21:16,420
give you this RFG token through the points mechanism. So for the

1074
01:21:16,420 --> 01:21:18,560
state pool operator, you can get to differentiate your state pool

1075
01:21:18,560 --> 01:21:22,700
from other pools that are not able to do that, right. So that's

1076
01:21:22,700 --> 01:21:24,180
the value for the state pool operator.

1077
01:21:24,180 --> 01:21:28,580
For the delegator, it's to get even more points and even more AFG tokens,

1078
01:21:28,580 --> 01:21:30,700
and it's to get into the community.

1079
01:21:30,700 --> 01:21:33,860
When you think about why are we doing this for the state pool operators,

1080
01:21:33,860 --> 01:21:36,040
it's because we want to see Kodano's network

1081
01:21:36,040 --> 01:21:39,360
remain and become even more decentralized.

1082
01:21:39,360 --> 01:21:41,860
There's a gives and gets here as well.

1083
01:21:41,860 --> 01:21:45,460
The argument is that I think state pool operators are

1084
01:21:45,460 --> 01:21:50,200
some of the most competent technical influences and KOLs in Kodano,

1085
01:21:50,200 --> 01:21:56,380
and that these operators are going to be great ambassadors themselves in real-wise communities.

1086
01:21:57,280 --> 01:22:00,400
We're going to be able to select because we had 102 registered.

1087
01:22:00,560 --> 01:22:02,380
I think there's 90 SPOs in Discord,

1088
01:22:03,240 --> 01:22:07,240
over 700 community members in Discord at the minute after a couple of weeks,

1089
01:22:07,360 --> 01:22:10,440
and over 600 verified wallets in the testnet.

1090
01:22:11,240 --> 01:22:14,080
But there's a couple of mechanisms that I'll just touch on,

1091
01:22:14,240 --> 01:22:17,420
which is that the delegator is delegating to state poor.

1092
01:22:17,500 --> 01:22:18,240
They're earning passively.

1093
01:22:18,240 --> 01:22:26,240
additionally each state pool operator the first 10 delegators that complete the sort of actions

1094
01:22:26,240 --> 01:22:32,220
in the quest on testnet are going to get 10 usdr which i'll send to them and then if a state pool

1095
01:22:32,220 --> 01:22:37,000
operator has 10 delegators that are first past the place that's how the 10 will work

1096
01:22:37,000 --> 01:22:44,320
if a state pool operator gets 10 delegators to complete all of those quests i'll send them

1097
01:22:44,320 --> 01:22:50,500
$100 and a real fiery hoodie and some swag and we'll give them a cool disco roll. So why does

1098
01:22:50,500 --> 01:22:55,160
that matter? Because when we get to mainnet, I want to be able to show John and the marketing

1099
01:22:55,160 --> 01:23:00,480
team wants to be able to look at which of the stakeport operators really participated and drove

1100
01:23:00,480 --> 01:23:07,600
performance in a real way. And I think 10 delegators completing those actions is reasonably

1101
01:23:07,600 --> 01:23:12,400
low bound, but it does show you that people have come up and turned up. So I think that positions

1102
01:23:12,400 --> 01:23:17,280
as well for mainnet. Does that make sense? Or should I have dwelled a little bit more on any

1103
01:23:17,280 --> 01:23:17,920
of those points?

1104
01:23:21,200 --> 01:23:28,160
So it's like it gives you a signal too on how things are moving, right?

1105
01:23:28,960 --> 01:23:36,240
Exactly, right? So somebody I did, someone I've known for a while in my DM saying, well, you know,

1106
01:23:36,240 --> 01:23:39,840
RealFly is going to get something out of this too. I'm like, of course, let's give some guests. We

1107
01:23:39,840 --> 01:23:46,320
We want to have a community that's made up of people that have been in the trenches, have built their own communities and are committed.

1108
01:23:46,600 --> 01:23:50,960
And I think the best way to source that initial cohort is from state pool operators.

1109
01:23:51,320 --> 01:23:58,540
There are lots of other ideas I've got and probably too many around how we can engage NFT communities and how we can engage the chains.

1110
01:23:58,540 --> 01:24:07,260
But at the minute, I think state pool operators is where to start, you know, because that's where I started in Cardano originally, you know, with ITN.

1111
01:24:07,260 --> 01:24:10,200
And then there was like a, I was just after the ITN actually.

1112
01:24:10,420 --> 01:24:11,680
It was 170.

1113
01:24:12,120 --> 01:24:13,160
Bring it back to basics.

1114
01:24:13,720 --> 01:24:16,340
Can give some luck to the house.

1115
01:24:17,260 --> 01:24:17,540
For sure.

1116
01:24:17,540 --> 01:24:18,600
This is what I was saying to John.

1117
01:24:18,720 --> 01:24:20,400
Like, let me get back to where I was.

1118
01:24:20,460 --> 01:24:22,480
Let's get back to when it was fun, you know?

1119
01:24:22,540 --> 01:24:25,280
And if Midnight's offering rational privacy, right,

1120
01:24:25,320 --> 01:24:27,740
then I think we're offering some rational hope, right?

1121
01:24:27,820 --> 01:24:30,540
This is an opportunity to get back into it.

1122
01:24:30,540 --> 01:24:33,260
So, yeah, I think State Portopo is really interesting.

1123
01:24:33,260 --> 01:24:37,340
and they have a really great mix of different skill sets and assets.

1124
01:24:37,820 --> 01:24:42,100
And the workshop that we would run, and we are running now with SBOs,

1125
01:24:42,560 --> 01:24:44,640
it's about asset-based community development.

1126
01:24:44,860 --> 01:24:47,940
So what's nice is, you know, if you've been on X for too long,

1127
01:24:48,060 --> 01:24:51,340
it just feels like everybody's looking at what the problems are

1128
01:24:51,340 --> 01:24:52,040
and it's been negative.

1129
01:24:52,620 --> 01:24:54,980
But asset-based community development is about saying,

1130
01:24:55,060 --> 01:24:57,740
look, let's all start off looking at what our strengths are

1131
01:24:57,740 --> 01:24:59,000
and what we're good at.

1132
01:24:59,320 --> 01:25:00,600
So you're looking inwards first.

1133
01:25:00,600 --> 01:25:04,980
and then you're talking about like well what are assets have we got can you actually move into play

1134
01:25:04,980 --> 01:25:10,940
here do mutual benefit and to promote these pools and then you can look at okay right so what should

1135
01:25:10,940 --> 01:25:17,460
we prioritize and you know what work is there and how might we claim that work and i'm kind of going

1136
01:25:17,460 --> 01:25:21,060
into a bit too much detail but some of that workshop is looking at like what are the centralized

1137
01:25:21,060 --> 01:25:27,800
marketing buckets ideas we've got so that would be things we all can do for spos um then distributed

1138
01:25:27,800 --> 01:25:32,980
marketing is things we could give them to help them go out and talk about real five and everyone

1139
01:25:32,980 --> 01:25:38,100
that's been in cadena for a long time knows what it's like um in a community the community is

1140
01:25:38,100 --> 01:25:43,780
inherently self-organized you know this isn't an audience that we're just sending messages to

1141
01:25:43,780 --> 01:25:48,320
this is a community we want to self-organize around problems if they believe in the vision

1142
01:25:48,320 --> 01:25:53,980
if they think that john's um product is really interesting if they can see the value of real

1143
01:25:53,980 --> 01:25:59,720
being a platform and to me I think Karana needs a lighthouse of it you know and when my

1144
01:25:59,720 --> 01:26:04,820
tour of duty with IO finished I was looking around like what was the most interesting project I could

1145
01:26:04,820 --> 01:26:09,100
work on and real fire is it so I'm really you know grateful for the opportunity

1146
01:26:09,100 --> 01:26:19,480
thanks Ben I think it's an interesting program and as someone who owned the stake pool I can

1147
01:26:19,480 --> 01:26:28,680
definitely testify that it's difficult to attract stake and it's definitely interesting. I guess

1148
01:26:28,680 --> 01:26:36,920
the whole program would depend though on what the points are worth, right? So if I accrue a bunch of

1149
01:26:36,920 --> 01:26:44,760
points and it's worth less, at the end of the day I am not doing anything with it. So I guess

1150
01:26:44,760 --> 01:26:51,100
The challenge I had is that token allocation and certain decisions are still in flight.

1151
01:26:52,260 --> 01:27:00,020
So talking to Clay, he's the head of product, the point of the point system is to allow us to start working and doing stuff.

1152
01:27:00,200 --> 01:27:07,060
And we can then, the points can be converted to the RFG tokens once the allocation stuff has been signed off.

1153
01:27:07,060 --> 01:27:11,160
If you think about campaigns and seasons,

1154
01:27:11,160 --> 01:27:16,620
it means that you can allocate whatever the allocation is finally,

1155
01:27:16,620 --> 01:27:19,940
the points will still be relative to it, if that makes sense.

1156
01:27:19,940 --> 01:27:23,620
Rather than trying to promise something,

1157
01:27:23,620 --> 01:27:26,140
we can say, work out what the allocation is,

1158
01:27:26,140 --> 01:27:30,840
and then we know that the campaign is going to have this percentage of it.

1159
01:27:31,400 --> 01:27:36,000
But I think the RFG token anyway has to get launched.

1160
01:27:36,000 --> 01:27:41,020
Whether something has value or doesn't have value, who knows, until it hits the market.

1161
01:27:44,860 --> 01:27:45,680
That's true.

1162
01:27:47,880 --> 01:27:52,220
Anyway, anyone listening who has a question, please feel free to come up and ask.

1163
01:27:52,220 --> 01:27:57,240
I would add one other thing, by the way, which is that if you're delegating to a state pool operator,

1164
01:27:57,400 --> 01:28:03,540
who's part of the RealFi Accelerator program, you're not risking any of your principal.

1165
01:28:03,540 --> 01:28:08,940
You know, if I've got a thousand ADA sitting in my wallet and I delegate it, that thousand

1166
01:28:08,940 --> 01:28:11,560
ADA is staying with me the entire time.

1167
01:28:11,660 --> 01:28:12,900
I've never let go of it, right?

1168
01:28:13,200 --> 01:28:16,180
But I'm delegating to, say, your pool, right?

1169
01:28:16,760 --> 01:28:18,040
And I'm getting my rewards.

1170
01:28:18,280 --> 01:28:20,920
But I'm getting these points for the RFG token as well.

1171
01:28:21,840 --> 01:28:23,000
Extra, you know?

1172
01:28:23,540 --> 01:28:28,320
So I think, yeah, you're getting everything that you're already getting, but you're getting

1173
01:28:28,320 --> 01:28:32,280
something extra if you delegate to a real estate pool operator.

1174
01:28:33,540 --> 01:28:39,540
Jenny.

1175
01:28:39,860 --> 01:28:42,740
I want to make sure, I don't know, KB looks like he hasn't turned up,

1176
01:28:42,840 --> 01:28:44,360
but it might be just on my end.

1177
01:28:44,600 --> 01:28:45,780
You know how this thing works.

1178
01:28:46,900 --> 01:28:48,080
Nope, just glitched.

1179
01:28:48,080 --> 01:28:48,420
Okay.

1180
01:28:49,220 --> 01:28:50,700
My shoulder's not tired yet.

1181
01:28:50,780 --> 01:28:52,000
All right, good, good.

1182
01:28:52,700 --> 01:28:58,380
So I guess my question is more about, like, what's next?

1183
01:28:58,380 --> 01:29:01,380
I mean, there's so much that's happening with you guys.

1184
01:29:01,500 --> 01:29:02,740
I've been reading so much.

1185
01:29:02,740 --> 01:29:05,280
Maybe I missed something.

1186
01:29:05,700 --> 01:29:06,740
What's the next step?

1187
01:29:07,280 --> 01:29:08,740
What are you guys...

1188
01:29:09,880 --> 01:29:13,200
Of course, you're busy with the SPO stuff

1189
01:29:13,200 --> 01:29:15,720
and the accelerator and the workshops.

1190
01:29:16,780 --> 01:29:18,740
But what does the roadmap look like

1191
01:29:19,340 --> 01:29:21,380
in the near future?

1192
01:29:21,780 --> 01:29:22,440
What's next?

1193
01:29:22,720 --> 01:29:22,840
Yeah.

1194
01:29:23,880 --> 01:29:25,960
I mean, the big focus is honestly

1195
01:29:25,960 --> 01:29:27,580
getting ready for mainnet.

1196
01:29:27,580 --> 01:29:32,460
So this is basically buying assets

1197
01:29:32,460 --> 01:29:35,020
getting all of our trading infrastructure set up,

1198
01:29:36,160 --> 01:29:40,640
figuring out, you know,

1199
01:29:40,780 --> 01:29:42,880
how basically we scale assets, right?

1200
01:29:43,020 --> 01:29:44,340
You know, it's one thing if we launch

1201
01:29:44,340 --> 01:29:47,120
and there's, you know, $20 million of demand,

1202
01:29:47,680 --> 01:29:50,740
but, you know, probably the closest analog we have

1203
01:29:50,740 --> 01:29:53,540
is Athena, which grew to, I think,

1204
01:29:53,600 --> 01:29:58,240
like $2 billion of TBL in like four months or five months.

1205
01:29:58,520 --> 01:30:00,380
You know, God knows how successful we'll be,

1206
01:30:00,380 --> 01:30:01,980
but you obviously, you need a strategy

1207
01:30:01,980 --> 01:30:06,060
if there's 10 million dollars of demand 100 million dollars demand billion dollars demand

1208
01:30:06,060 --> 01:30:11,820
so there's a lot of work around that um and then of course on the technical side uh all the cardano

1209
01:30:11,820 --> 01:30:17,260
stuff's done smart contracts audited etc but we're busily working on our evm mainnet contracts as

1210
01:30:17,260 --> 01:30:22,060
well so all of that needs to get all this as well so there's a lot of technical work uh of course

1211
01:30:22,060 --> 01:30:29,180
as well and then we have the gtm work stream you know um which texas will be on which curators will

1212
01:30:29,180 --> 01:30:36,220
be working with RealFi, which sectors will be working with RealFi, pitching to crypto

1213
01:30:36,220 --> 01:30:40,300
allocators, people who've got lots of stable coins to come in and participate.

1214
01:30:40,300 --> 01:30:41,720
So just a lot all over.

1215
01:30:41,720 --> 01:30:47,960
But the TLDR is, we're targeting mainnet in probably eight weeks.

1216
01:30:47,960 --> 01:30:53,780
So yeah, making sure we're ready legally on the asset side, on the GTM side to be able

1217
01:30:53,780 --> 01:30:55,620
to have a strong launch.

1218
01:30:55,620 --> 01:30:58,300
Thank you, John.

1219
01:30:58,300 --> 01:31:06,920
Can I ask you more of a human side kind of question, which I usually like to ask, which is, what brought you to this?

1220
01:31:07,120 --> 01:31:11,600
What inspired you? What moved you? What makes you tick?

1221
01:31:13,240 --> 01:31:17,900
I mean, look, I think I've always been interested in impactful finance.

1222
01:31:18,560 --> 01:31:27,180
I think for many years I've been trying to figure out how to kind of square the circle and build a product that I think does impactful stuff in emerging markets.

1223
01:31:27,180 --> 01:31:32,920
whilst also basically doing something that's useful for people who currently have crypto.

1224
01:31:33,580 --> 01:31:41,520
And I think it all kind of clicked for me once I started seeing basically the yield-bearing stablecoin market start to emerge.

1225
01:31:42,100 --> 01:31:48,900
When I saw what Athena had done with tokenizing basically this hedge fund trade to be able to generate yield from funding rates,

1226
01:31:49,260 --> 01:31:52,480
it kind of clicked to me that we might be able to do something similar.

1227
01:31:52,480 --> 01:31:58,440
But rather than this funding rate trade, do something similar and replace the engine

1228
01:31:58,440 --> 01:32:02,320
with something that could make capital more productive and more impactful.

1229
01:32:03,180 --> 01:32:06,300
So yeah, that's basically been the journey, putting this together.

1230
01:32:06,920 --> 01:32:10,920
And now we're ready, and I'm just honestly really excited to see this come to life.

1231
01:32:12,840 --> 01:32:16,640
Did you start from scratch, or did you find some tech that was available

1232
01:32:16,640 --> 01:32:20,600
and repurposed it or anything like that?

1233
01:32:20,600 --> 01:32:22,400
No, we built it all, right?

1234
01:32:22,480 --> 01:32:26,640
So the starting point was the last like three or four years where we've been doing this

1235
01:32:26,640 --> 01:32:28,060
fintech based lending.

1236
01:32:28,060 --> 01:32:34,140
So data driven underwriting of fintechs and providing capital to them and generating, you

1237
01:32:34,140 --> 01:32:35,660
know, strong risk adjusted return.

1238
01:32:35,860 --> 01:32:39,100
So that's like the more traditional finance stuff we were doing.

1239
01:32:39,300 --> 01:32:41,580
And that's also what we were talking about earlier, right?

1240
01:32:41,620 --> 01:32:43,220
How do you underwrite a fintech?

1241
01:32:43,340 --> 01:32:46,220
How do you analyze the loan book at scale?

1242
01:32:46,500 --> 01:32:49,700
You know, all of these loan books have got millions and millions and millions of loans

1243
01:32:49,700 --> 01:32:50,280
and entries.

1244
01:32:50,280 --> 01:32:54,580
So how do you ingest all of that process to understand that and use it to make lending

1245
01:32:54,580 --> 01:32:55,080
decisions?

1246
01:32:55,800 --> 01:32:57,240
So we'd sort of been doing that part.

1247
01:32:57,760 --> 01:33:02,780
And then, you know, once I saw the, I suppose, the Athena opportunity, it was starting to

1248
01:33:02,780 --> 01:33:05,740
think about what else would you need in the portfolio on the asset side?

1249
01:33:05,920 --> 01:33:06,880
You know, T-bills, yes.

1250
01:33:07,340 --> 01:33:08,280
But what else?

1251
01:33:08,500 --> 01:33:12,700
What kind of, and that's the sort of Janus Henderson, Cielo parts that we started to

1252
01:33:12,700 --> 01:33:12,940
add.

1253
01:33:13,200 --> 01:33:15,460
Then after that, it was okay, great.

1254
01:33:15,620 --> 01:33:17,580
We've got like an asset strategy now.

1255
01:33:17,760 --> 01:33:18,960
We think it's impactful.

1256
01:33:18,960 --> 01:33:22,340
But what would the legals look like?

1257
01:33:22,340 --> 01:33:23,620
How would you structure this?

1258
01:33:23,620 --> 01:33:24,620
Where?

1259
01:33:24,620 --> 01:33:26,200
What regulations, et cetera?

1260
01:33:26,200 --> 01:33:28,340
And then finally the technology piece, right?

1261
01:33:28,340 --> 01:33:31,660
The smart contracts, how do they work?

1262
01:33:31,660 --> 01:33:33,200
But I had some great help with that.

1263
01:33:33,200 --> 01:33:39,460
Danel, who started this with me, he was CPO at Cardano and IOG for many years.

1264
01:33:39,460 --> 01:33:44,440
We've also been working very closely with Pi at Sunday over the contracts as well.

1265
01:33:44,440 --> 01:33:48,200
So yeah, that part honestly has gone really well because we've been working with such

1266
01:33:48,200 --> 01:33:55,720
great people. Phil on this call has been super, super, super helpful. So yeah, a lot of great

1267
01:33:55,720 --> 01:34:04,040
people. That's it for me. Thank you, John and Ben, both of you for coming here today. Back to you, Maureen.

1268
01:34:08,760 --> 01:34:16,120
I definitely would love for people to come up and ask questions. I see a lot of people down there.

1269
01:34:16,120 --> 01:34:18,560
I know you all have great questions.

1270
01:34:19,740 --> 01:34:22,200
Feel free to come up and ask questions.

1271
01:34:22,940 --> 01:34:29,920
So, Ben, so other than all the things we've talked about,

1272
01:34:30,040 --> 01:34:31,660
oh, I see Jonah is coming up.

1273
01:34:32,480 --> 01:34:34,160
Other than the things we've talked about,

1274
01:34:34,240 --> 01:34:37,200
is there anything you guys have left out

1275
01:34:37,200 --> 01:34:40,820
that maybe you want to share as far as RealFi is concerned,

1276
01:34:40,960 --> 01:34:41,820
what you're trying to do?

1277
01:34:41,820 --> 01:34:52,280
I'm sorry go on then well I will then seeing as you give me the conch but what I'm really excited

1278
01:34:52,280 --> 01:34:58,280
about um is working with tape and thinking about how we could create an environment in which people

1279
01:34:58,280 --> 01:35:04,740
could innovate and come up with ideas and even build but it's like I'm just trying to make sure

1280
01:35:04,740 --> 01:35:10,320
that I've set the spo community up for success first but I'm really passionate and interested

1281
01:35:10,320 --> 01:35:15,980
about kind of ecosystem strategy and you know you've probably all seen kadana's ecosystem map

1282
01:35:15,980 --> 01:35:22,380
and how we can get not just more people like more actors but thinking about the value chain right so

1283
01:35:22,380 --> 01:35:28,140
that we can get a network effect so we can think about like a field of interaction so you know i'm

1284
01:35:28,140 --> 01:35:33,640
really interested in talking about builders next um but obviously doing it in a way where my

1285
01:35:33,640 --> 01:35:39,100
enthusiasm and ideation doesn't get in the way of the important work the team needs to do so i'm

1286
01:35:39,100 --> 01:35:47,460
trying to build the opportunities for people to participate around the engine as we're building.

1287
01:35:47,560 --> 01:35:52,380
So yeah, I'm really interested in getting developers in next. That's top of my mind.

1288
01:35:52,800 --> 01:35:53,420
John, you?

1289
01:35:56,120 --> 01:35:57,360
I think you've covered that.

1290
01:36:02,420 --> 01:36:03,820
Jonah with the hand up.

1291
01:36:04,160 --> 01:36:08,380
I'm just laughing at John saying he's on an audio loop of me talking.

1292
01:36:09,100 --> 01:36:16,140
This must be his worst nightmare, just never ending Ben O'Hanlon with ideation.

1293
01:36:16,140 --> 01:36:18,860
All your words, Ben, not mine.

1294
01:36:20,860 --> 01:36:26,140
Thank you, Maureen. Thank you, everyone, for coming up today. Thank you for the team for

1295
01:36:26,140 --> 01:36:31,340
presenting. I had one question. I'm not sure if it was addressed because I didn't catch

1296
01:36:31,340 --> 01:36:37,900
everything from the end. I will definitely listen back from the beginning. But the question I have is,

1297
01:36:39,100 --> 01:36:42,760
Why did you decide to build another stablecoin?

1298
01:36:43,180 --> 01:36:52,800
Is there something special about RUSD that you guys wanted to do that other stablecoins didn't provide?

1299
01:36:58,060 --> 01:37:00,360
Yeah, I'll take that.

1300
01:37:01,120 --> 01:37:04,740
I think that stablecoins are an incredible product.

1301
01:37:05,280 --> 01:37:06,300
They're useful.

1302
01:37:06,620 --> 01:37:07,700
Everyone wants them.

1303
01:37:07,700 --> 01:37:10,980
and they've already seen proven market demand, right?

1304
01:37:11,080 --> 01:37:13,380
You know, I think when you look at Tether,

1305
01:37:13,560 --> 01:37:14,460
when you look at Circle,

1306
01:37:14,600 --> 01:37:16,220
you can see that the demand was there.

1307
01:37:16,640 --> 01:37:18,240
But you're not going to break into this industry

1308
01:37:18,240 --> 01:37:19,660
by going and doing the same thing.

1309
01:37:20,360 --> 01:37:22,040
The opportunity, I think,

1310
01:37:22,140 --> 01:37:24,080
is that both Tether and Circle

1311
01:37:24,080 --> 01:37:26,880
have got an incredibly lucrative business model

1312
01:37:26,880 --> 01:37:28,760
that they don't want to disrupt, right?

1313
01:37:28,940 --> 01:37:32,140
Ultimately, when you mint USDT or USDC,

1314
01:37:32,660 --> 01:37:33,840
you give them a dollar,

1315
01:37:34,340 --> 01:37:35,500
they go and they take that dollar

1316
01:37:35,500 --> 01:37:36,800
and they give you a digital dollar.

1317
01:37:36,800 --> 01:37:40,500
But they're going and investing that into T-bills and they're taking all of the yields.

1318
01:37:41,060 --> 01:37:51,360
There's not really any incentive for them to go and change that model because it's enabled Tether with, you know, probably around 100 people to be as profitable as Goldman Sachs is.

1319
01:37:51,660 --> 01:37:54,200
This was last year. There was an article about it, right?

1320
01:37:54,220 --> 01:37:56,020
So it's an incredibly lucrative business model.

1321
01:37:56,740 --> 01:38:04,100
I think what we have is the opportunity to go and leverage the lessons from this, which is that stablecoins are really useful.

1322
01:38:04,100 --> 01:38:08,640
but change the economic model over who gets what.

1323
01:38:08,820 --> 01:38:10,620
And that's what we're doing with RealFi.

1324
01:38:11,220 --> 01:38:13,400
So that's kind of the opportunity, right?

1325
01:38:13,640 --> 01:38:15,800
It's, you know, take something that works,

1326
01:38:16,140 --> 01:38:18,240
change the economic model to provide people

1327
01:38:18,240 --> 01:38:20,880
with an incentive to go and try yours.

1328
01:38:21,880 --> 01:38:24,020
Secondly, there are some really cool use cases.

1329
01:38:24,520 --> 01:38:25,740
You know, yield bearing collateral

1330
01:38:25,740 --> 01:38:28,860
from a trading perspective is really interesting.

1331
01:38:29,120 --> 01:38:32,320
Rather than posting dollars as collateral for trading,

1332
01:38:32,320 --> 01:38:37,080
if you could post, you know, yield bearing collateral or asset appreciating collateral,

1333
01:38:37,380 --> 01:38:42,580
then a lot of trades which may not have worked can start to work, right? Just as an example,

1334
01:38:42,800 --> 01:38:47,800
if you were getting 8% on your collateral, that's pretty exciting from a trading perspective.

1335
01:38:48,420 --> 01:38:51,940
And that's not even really thinking about the opportunities for people to think about it from

1336
01:38:51,940 --> 01:38:57,560
a savings perspective, right? You most people in their bank accounts really don't get a lot.

1337
01:38:57,560 --> 01:39:01,100
I think my NatWest is like 1% or something like that.

1338
01:39:01,220 --> 01:39:08,660
So you can really start to see the advantages of tying this into a dollar-denominated stable product.

1339
01:39:08,760 --> 01:39:11,940
I think it's got a lot of product market fit.

1340
01:39:12,280 --> 01:39:15,020
So I think that was kind of the idea here, right?

1341
01:39:15,400 --> 01:39:21,960
Is rather than starting with something complicated, start with a really useful, easy-to-understand concept like a stablecoin,

1342
01:39:22,180 --> 01:39:25,660
and then attach towards it the kind of assets that we're building.

1343
01:39:25,660 --> 01:39:33,880
And I think that way it's got the widest market appeal, whilst also doing something differentiated from what the bigger players in the market like Tether and Circle are doing.

1344
01:39:34,360 --> 01:39:35,900
So that's kind of how we thought about it.

1345
01:39:37,100 --> 01:39:39,340
Thank you, John. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

1346
01:39:39,440 --> 01:39:52,600
I understand. Just what I heard is that you want to utilize the yield that obviously comes from issuing a stable coin to use it more creatively that kind of benefits your user base and your business as well.

1347
01:39:52,680 --> 01:39:53,880
That makes perfect sense.

1348
01:39:53,880 --> 01:39:55,920
Yeah, it's actually all going there, right?

1349
01:39:56,080 --> 01:39:58,880
We're super transparent over how RealFly charges.

1350
01:39:59,600 --> 01:40:02,180
But if you would think about the normal model,

1351
01:40:02,380 --> 01:40:05,400
which is Circle takes everything and you get nothing,

1352
01:40:06,160 --> 01:40:09,660
we're on the opposite model

1353
01:40:09,660 --> 01:40:12,720
where the user takes almost everything, right?

1354
01:40:13,460 --> 01:40:13,920
That's excellent.

1355
01:40:14,220 --> 01:40:15,600
I had a little follow-up.

1356
01:40:15,700 --> 01:40:16,860
Sorry, BlockDuck, I see your hands up.

1357
01:40:16,960 --> 01:40:17,760
I had a little follow-up.

1358
01:40:17,760 --> 01:40:38,540
I understand that there is like a component where when the user moves into the staking part, that you guys are then sort of like more aggressively investing that profit into yield bearing, other yield bearing assets.

1359
01:40:38,880 --> 01:40:40,940
Are those going to be micro loans as well?

1360
01:40:41,220 --> 01:40:42,620
Did you mention that?

1361
01:40:42,900 --> 01:40:44,520
It's a portion of it, right?

1362
01:40:44,520 --> 01:40:47,940
So I was slightly jumping the gun there on this, right?

1363
01:40:48,060 --> 01:40:50,760
And probably next week or the week after,

1364
01:40:51,140 --> 01:40:53,400
I'll do like a nice simple whiteboard video

1365
01:40:53,400 --> 01:40:55,520
on what assets are being held,

1366
01:40:55,940 --> 01:40:56,940
how risk is managed,

1367
01:40:57,200 --> 01:40:59,220
ultimately what risks you're actually taking.

1368
01:40:59,440 --> 01:41:01,240
This is really important for me, right?

1369
01:41:01,280 --> 01:41:04,440
I want to make sure that we're super transparent over this.

1370
01:41:04,940 --> 01:41:07,440
I believe that risk is being managed

1371
01:41:07,440 --> 01:41:09,000
and really, really effectively,

1372
01:41:09,280 --> 01:41:10,360
but ultimately, you know,

1373
01:41:10,380 --> 01:41:12,180
everyone has to do their own research.

1374
01:41:12,180 --> 01:41:19,500
And there are a number of ways in which we create protection from a financial perspective on anyone that's participating on this.

1375
01:41:19,780 --> 01:41:29,840
That being said, absolutely, some portion of the assets are basically doing working capital finance in emerging markets, really highly impactful stuff.

1376
01:41:30,260 --> 01:41:38,260
But at the same time, generating a nice, you know, a nice return on that particular part of the book and whilst also doing something good.

1377
01:41:39,520 --> 01:41:40,940
Awesome. Love that.

1378
01:41:40,940 --> 01:41:43,220
And then, sorry, this is just a little bit more.

1379
01:41:43,820 --> 01:41:47,240
Will you ever have like a user-facing part of that, of the product?

1380
01:41:47,360 --> 01:41:49,840
Will you ever have like the loaning and borrowing component?

1381
01:41:49,960 --> 01:41:54,980
Is that something you want to build out as a user-facing product or will be more institutional?

1382
01:41:55,720 --> 01:42:00,680
Yeah, look, what you've just described there is kind of the holy grail at the end of it, right?

1383
01:42:00,740 --> 01:42:03,140
This like fully decentralized flow all the way through.

1384
01:42:03,620 --> 01:42:06,080
All I can tell you is that that part won't happen quickly, right?

1385
01:42:06,080 --> 01:42:16,320
There's really good reasons why you do things from a pooled perspective, from a portfolio perspective, with like a bunch of intermediaries within this part, right?

1386
01:42:16,400 --> 01:42:23,060
And I would say I've tried to adopt a very pragmatic approach versus a philosophical approach, right?

1387
01:42:23,260 --> 01:42:32,160
We're doing things that work, that have been proven to work, that manage risk effectively, versus trying to stick towards maybe a more purely decentralized dogma.

1388
01:42:32,160 --> 01:42:44,180
At the end of the day, I want to build a product that scales, that does its job well, that people love to use more than I want to stick towards a fully decentralized ethos.

1389
01:42:44,180 --> 01:42:45,640
So yeah, absolutely.

1390
01:42:45,820 --> 01:42:47,820
It's a direction that's interesting in the future.

1391
01:42:48,300 --> 01:42:54,120
But at the moment, it's very much done through regulated partners working with FinTechs that

1392
01:42:54,120 --> 01:42:59,180
have licenses that have been doing this for years, that have large equity cushions, that

1393
01:42:59,180 --> 01:43:02,800
have really, really good track records with really low default rates.

1394
01:43:03,000 --> 01:43:05,500
When it comes towards the other parts of the book, right?

1395
01:43:05,840 --> 01:43:11,480
The CLO ETFs, we're working with some of the largest providers of these in the world with

1396
01:43:11,480 --> 01:43:15,880
really deep secondary markets so we can always sell those assets if we need to have redemptions.

1397
01:43:16,440 --> 01:43:20,440
So yeah, that's kind of the approach, right? We're trying to build the best portfolio possible,

1398
01:43:20,440 --> 01:43:27,320
but still driving impactful things. But in a proportion that still means that we can meet

1399
01:43:27,320 --> 01:43:32,120
our redemption requirements, that we're not holding too much risk, etc, etc.

1400
01:43:33,800 --> 01:43:36,920
Well, again, I really appreciate that thoughtful answer. Thank you so much.

1401
01:43:36,920 --> 01:43:43,600
Thanks for the questions, Jonah. I see Blogjog has his hand up.

1402
01:43:43,600 --> 01:43:45,000
Hello, Maureen. How are you?

1403
01:43:47,720 --> 01:43:48,380
Hi, Blogjog.

1404
01:43:48,380 --> 01:43:52,280
It's good to see you. Good to talk to her. Good talk to you. I can't see you right now,

1405
01:43:52,280 --> 01:44:00,200
but ultimately, well, so first off, I just want to say, hi, Ben. Haven't talked to you in a minute.

1406
01:44:00,760 --> 01:44:05,560
Ben is one of those people that was like almost like an onboarding emissary for me

1407
01:44:05,560 --> 01:44:10,080
into the wider community and made me feel very, very welcome.

1408
01:44:10,660 --> 01:44:14,400
And also engaged me and got me to start thinking about

1409
01:44:14,400 --> 01:44:17,480
how I can contribute to Cardano in a broader sense.

1410
01:44:17,840 --> 01:44:24,100
And so I want to first say I'm really glad that Ben is a part of this particular protocol

1411
01:44:24,100 --> 01:44:25,700
and the team.

1412
01:44:26,100 --> 01:44:28,600
And of course, also with John.

1413
01:44:29,100 --> 01:44:30,840
John, I've been following you since the beginning.

1414
01:44:30,980 --> 01:44:32,020
I've been around here seven years.

1415
01:44:32,220 --> 01:44:35,200
And one of the things that led me here was pushing power to the edges.

1416
01:44:35,560 --> 01:44:40,080
And you were the lead on that, in my mind, over all the work that you've done.

1417
01:44:40,140 --> 01:44:42,480
I know you've ran into a lot of roadblocks.

1418
01:44:42,540 --> 01:44:45,580
It's been very difficult, especially in some of the regions that you work in.

1419
01:44:46,260 --> 01:44:48,840
But at the same time, it's very challenging, I know.

1420
01:44:48,840 --> 01:44:51,460
But you kept on and you didn't give up.

1421
01:44:51,660 --> 01:44:57,880
And that's one of the things I really value when it comes to people that I either follow or work with.

1422
01:44:58,260 --> 01:45:01,080
And so, one, first, thank you for all of that.

1423
01:45:01,780 --> 01:45:05,040
The second is that, obviously, I'm a BD lead for USDM.

1424
01:45:05,040 --> 01:45:07,040
We had a meeting yesterday with Senny and Clay.

1425
01:45:07,720 --> 01:45:09,460
Great guys, by the way.

1426
01:45:09,700 --> 01:45:10,780
Great part of the team.

1427
01:45:11,180 --> 01:45:12,920
Look forward to meeting the rest of them.

1428
01:45:12,980 --> 01:45:25,300
But I'm curious, we had a little bit of discussion afterwards having to do with how exactly, in your mind, could USDR be used as a way to be able to mint USDM?

1429
01:45:25,300 --> 01:45:38,080
You know, this is something that we're discussing now, but it feels as though we couldn't exactly take USDR or burn out into USDR through USDM through our portal, which we do with USDC, USDT and PYUSD.

1430
01:45:38,340 --> 01:45:41,480
But we'd like to be able to do it with USDR as well.

1431
01:45:41,640 --> 01:45:45,140
Do you see a path for that in your mind?

1432
01:45:46,160 --> 01:45:47,320
Such a great question.

1433
01:45:47,460 --> 01:45:53,540
And to make you feel better about this, this is all actually on my list for Monday to start looking at.

1434
01:45:53,540 --> 01:45:56,040
basically the guys said that you had a really great conversation.

1435
01:45:56,500 --> 01:45:59,200
They've got some notes for me and we said we'd have a chat about it on Monday.

1436
01:45:59,340 --> 01:46:04,520
So you're probably a couple of days too early for me to give a proper answer to that question.

1437
01:46:05,040 --> 01:46:09,300
What I will say is, you know, I'm obviously a huge fan of what you guys have been doing at USDM.

1438
01:46:09,800 --> 01:46:13,380
You know, you're kind of like the homegrown Cardano stable queen.

1439
01:46:13,800 --> 01:46:18,760
So yeah, you know, I'm excited for us to try to think about ways in which we can sort of work together

1440
01:46:18,760 --> 01:46:21,060
and support what you guys have been doing.

1441
01:46:21,060 --> 01:46:25,900
So no easy answers for you right now, but I promise you you're on a list for Monday.

1442
01:46:26,500 --> 01:46:27,620
No problem.

1443
01:46:27,780 --> 01:46:28,760
I look forward to that.

1444
01:46:28,860 --> 01:46:32,520
And I do look forward to working with you guys in the future and finding solutions to things.

1445
01:46:32,620 --> 01:46:39,420
Because ultimately, in the end, the real goal for me and the reason I came here was to, in effect, affect people's lives.

1446
01:46:39,860 --> 01:46:43,460
And in most cases, without even potentially knowing I'm doing it.

1447
01:46:43,560 --> 01:46:48,880
And it's just simply because Cardano and its ability to be able to reach anybody anywhere and empower them.

1448
01:46:48,880 --> 01:47:00,140
And when you give people financial security, self-sovereignty, freedom of choice, no matter where they live, you've now empowered them and more than likely everybody around them.

1449
01:47:00,400 --> 01:47:02,220
So it's exponential in its impact.

1450
01:47:02,820 --> 01:47:07,680
And so this, in my mind, is something that is very near and dear to my heart.

1451
01:47:07,840 --> 01:47:10,220
And I want to definitely happen.

1452
01:47:10,300 --> 01:47:13,260
And I know you said this is you're doing it a little bit more pragmatically.

1453
01:47:13,260 --> 01:47:25,280
I understand that, you know, doing these, like what Kiva does, say, for example, the default rates surrounding that, the way they built that particular model is to, in essence, kind of break even, it feels like to me.

1454
01:47:25,420 --> 01:47:32,340
It isn't like a real business venture, more so as a philanthropic way to be able to provide people loans, which I actually do that.

1455
01:47:32,380 --> 01:47:36,600
And that was Charles, actually, talking about that, I want to say, three years ago or something.

1456
01:47:37,040 --> 01:47:40,540
And I've continually kept doing it since, you know, and it's been absolutely amazing.

1457
01:47:40,540 --> 01:47:43,000
It's exceedingly gratifying to be able to do that.

1458
01:47:43,260 --> 01:47:47,700
And so I really look forward to the day where it comes full circle.

1459
01:47:48,260 --> 01:47:54,700
And what you guys are doing with USDR does provide that ability to be able to also provide that particular function as well.

1460
01:47:54,860 --> 01:47:57,400
And then at that point, we've arrived, right?

1461
01:47:57,440 --> 01:48:01,940
And we've successfully done what I think Cardano is meant to do.

1462
01:48:02,500 --> 01:48:04,640
So, yeah, looking forward to that, John.

1463
01:48:04,700 --> 01:48:06,760
Thank you for coming to Cardano for Coffee.

1464
01:48:07,540 --> 01:48:11,400
And Ben, thanks for coming in and chatting, man.

1465
01:48:11,400 --> 01:48:13,460
And you're never too verbose, my friend.

1466
01:48:13,580 --> 01:48:15,500
I think I match you at least potentially.

1467
01:48:16,300 --> 01:48:17,340
So not to worry.

1468
01:48:17,760 --> 01:48:17,900
Yeah.

1469
01:48:18,460 --> 01:48:20,420
You know, look, let me just add one final thing

1470
01:48:20,420 --> 01:48:21,460
and then I apologize to everyone,

1471
01:48:21,660 --> 01:48:22,560
but I do need to jump.

1472
01:48:22,920 --> 01:48:25,540
But, you know, look, even with essentially the sort of,

1473
01:48:25,780 --> 01:48:28,380
I consider it kind of my like trial years

1474
01:48:28,380 --> 01:48:29,440
across the last three years

1475
01:48:29,440 --> 01:48:30,740
when I've been working on this model,

1476
01:48:31,220 --> 01:48:33,200
you know, I was lending out

1477
01:48:33,200 --> 01:48:35,420
a relatively modest amount of capital

1478
01:48:35,420 --> 01:48:37,080
from a real world perspective.

1479
01:48:37,480 --> 01:48:38,820
But I still think we did something like,

1480
01:48:38,820 --> 01:48:40,580
you know, 4 million loans across,

1481
01:48:40,580 --> 01:48:44,620
you know, for countries whilst we've been building out the model for this.

1482
01:48:45,160 --> 01:48:46,680
And that's huge scale, right?

1483
01:48:47,000 --> 01:48:50,080
From, as I say, a relatively modest amount of capital,

1484
01:48:50,600 --> 01:48:52,440
but huge impact as well, right?

1485
01:48:52,480 --> 01:48:55,420
So as we go and we roll out Cardano, sorry, roll out RealFi,

1486
01:48:55,840 --> 01:48:58,100
be looking to sort of tell more of these stories,

1487
01:48:58,420 --> 01:49:01,000
but that's the kind of impact you get from doing things

1488
01:49:01,000 --> 01:49:03,740
in a more institutional way versus, you know,

1489
01:49:03,800 --> 01:49:06,700
the more human to human Kiva side.

1490
01:49:06,700 --> 01:49:09,200
So yes, of course, you lose some of the immediacy,

1491
01:49:09,200 --> 01:49:12,440
the connection with that end person that you're lending to.

1492
01:49:12,800 --> 01:49:15,360
But what you get is scale, and scale drives impact as well.

1493
01:49:15,580 --> 01:49:18,140
So, yeah, I think there's a lot of exciting stuff we can do here.

1494
01:49:20,140 --> 01:49:21,460
Thanks, my friend. Appreciate it.

1495
01:49:21,620 --> 01:49:25,320
And here's to the future of us trying to change the world,

1496
01:49:25,440 --> 01:49:27,180
and we do it one little bit at a time.

1497
01:49:27,280 --> 01:49:28,120
So, appreciate that.

1498
01:49:31,520 --> 01:49:34,200
Thanks for coming in, Ben and John.

1499
01:49:34,620 --> 01:49:37,640
We have 10 minutes to the end of the show.

1500
01:49:37,640 --> 01:49:41,760
but I do want to know if you guys have a call to action

1501
01:49:41,760 --> 01:49:43,440
for everyone listening right now.

1502
01:49:46,420 --> 01:49:49,040
Yeah, my call to action is to join the Discord

1503
01:49:49,040 --> 01:49:50,660
that if you're in Cardano

1504
01:49:50,660 --> 01:49:53,360
to delegate to one of the state pool operators

1505
01:49:53,360 --> 01:49:55,700
that are in the RealFi state pool operator program

1506
01:49:55,700 --> 01:50:00,080
and it's an opportunity to be part of the community early

1507
01:50:00,080 --> 01:50:02,300
and if you were here in the early days of Cardano

1508
01:50:02,300 --> 01:50:04,600
that might be something you'd really like to do.

1509
01:50:05,440 --> 01:50:06,980
What about you, John? Call to actions?

1510
01:50:07,640 --> 01:50:13,040
Oh, if anybody has any great interviews or X spaces that I could line up for John, DM me them as well.

1511
01:50:13,180 --> 01:50:13,560
Thank you.

1512
01:50:14,740 --> 01:50:18,760
Yeah, just call to action is, yes, as Ben says, you know, follow us along on Discord.

1513
01:50:18,760 --> 01:50:21,080
But, yeah, please do play around with the testnet.

1514
01:50:22,100 --> 01:50:25,160
You know, testnets are not just to be able to give out points.

1515
01:50:25,340 --> 01:50:27,740
They're also to battle test your product.

1516
01:50:27,880 --> 01:50:32,560
So it's really useful, right, for the development, engineering, and product teams to be able to do that.

1517
01:50:33,180 --> 01:50:35,820
And then, yeah, just get excited to main that.

1518
01:50:35,820 --> 01:50:40,580
I think we have an opportunity here to build a product that's really useful.

1519
01:50:40,580 --> 01:50:45,480
They can attract the liquidity over from ETH World to put some real points on the board

1520
01:50:45,480 --> 01:50:48,580
for Cardano in the DPI TVL side.

1521
01:50:48,580 --> 01:50:52,820
So, yeah, please do support us rally around and I think we can do something special.

1522
01:50:52,820 --> 01:50:53,820
So thanks everyone.

1523
01:50:53,820 --> 01:50:56,820
Thank you guys for coming.

1524
01:50:56,820 --> 01:51:00,820
I can't remember this part at the top for anyone that wants to join.

1525
01:51:00,820 --> 01:51:05,580
I just want to say thanks for taking the invitation and I appreciate it.

1526
01:51:05,580 --> 01:51:08,320
Just a reminder, you can always come here.

1527
01:51:08,840 --> 01:51:10,980
It's open and free.

1528
01:51:11,880 --> 01:51:14,180
It's like we've been doing this for five years now.

1529
01:51:14,860 --> 01:51:18,640
And now that you're here, just come and join us.

1530
01:51:18,900 --> 01:51:20,540
Keep us updated on what's happening.

1531
01:51:21,100 --> 01:51:26,860
Mondays is open for all, so it's always a great day to come and give an update.

1532
01:51:26,860 --> 01:51:35,560
If anything changed throughout the week or you have a new announcement, it's a great way to stop by and do what we call drive-by shilling.

1533
01:51:35,580 --> 01:51:38,820
just to keep

1534
01:51:38,820 --> 01:51:40,320
a little watering hole

1535
01:51:40,320 --> 01:51:41,560
sort of thing

1536
01:51:41,560 --> 01:51:43,460
keep people in the loop

1537
01:51:43,460 --> 01:51:46,140
and if you have something bigger you want to talk about

1538
01:51:46,140 --> 01:51:48,040
just schedule

1539
01:51:48,040 --> 01:51:49,780
another long

1540
01:51:49,780 --> 01:51:52,340
form and we just dedicate some time

1541
01:51:52,340 --> 01:51:52,780
to it

1542
01:51:52,780 --> 01:51:55,400
all the best to you guys

1543
01:51:55,400 --> 01:51:56,360
thank you Ben

1544
01:51:56,360 --> 01:51:58,980
I feel like an interview with Ben

1545
01:51:58,980 --> 01:52:00,920
the life and times of Ben O'Hanlon

1546
01:52:00,920 --> 01:52:04,320
feels as though this might be a feel good

1547
01:52:04,320 --> 01:52:04,720
piece

1548
01:52:04,720 --> 01:52:06,800
that we could discuss.

1549
01:52:07,240 --> 01:52:08,280
And you might have some nice juicy tidbits.

1550
01:52:08,280 --> 01:52:09,760
We need a happy ending, though, right?

1551
01:52:10,380 --> 01:52:11,460
Well, there's always having,

1552
01:52:11,640 --> 01:52:13,640
and you landed right in the right spot.

1553
01:52:13,720 --> 01:52:15,300
I was worried for you for a hot second,

1554
01:52:15,360 --> 01:52:16,680
and then I wasn't worried for you at all

1555
01:52:16,680 --> 01:52:19,540
because I know you manage yourself very well.

1556
01:52:19,640 --> 01:52:20,740
So I wasn't really concerned.

1557
01:52:20,900 --> 01:52:23,340
And then you landed with John and the rest of the team,

1558
01:52:23,380 --> 01:52:26,180
and I was just exceedingly gratified by that.

1559
01:52:26,720 --> 01:52:30,280
So, yeah, I would love to hear a story from Ben.

1560
01:52:30,280 --> 01:52:32,300
I mean, for some people, they don't know,

1561
01:52:32,980 --> 01:52:34,580
in some cases, who Ben even is.

1562
01:52:34,720 --> 01:52:39,760
you know really right and so i mean i've known him for shoots since consensus austin and before

1563
01:52:39,760 --> 01:52:45,360
that in chris's space with the tech space i used to come in and jump in there and talk so um yeah

1564
01:52:45,360 --> 01:52:49,120
i think that would be absolutely amazing just to have ben come in and speak for 25 minutes on

1565
01:52:50,000 --> 01:52:53,360
everything he's doing and is a little bit of his experience here that'd be awesome

1566
01:52:54,000 --> 01:52:57,440
i'm actually writing a um i think i mentioned this at the very beginning

1567
01:52:57,440 --> 01:53:04,340
i don't know what you want to call it an e-zine or a book or a series of five um posts but

1568
01:53:04,340 --> 01:53:10,260
basically it's about the intelligence revolution will be decentralized um let me get my thing up

1569
01:53:10,260 --> 01:53:15,820
and i'll give you 30 seconds of the outline but basically the prelude is talking about like money

1570
01:53:15,820 --> 01:53:21,380
as a coordination technology um hang on are you interested in this because i'm going to post this

1571
01:53:21,380 --> 01:53:26,400
in the next couple of months if you read did you read the numbers come before strategy in my pinned

1572
01:53:26,400 --> 01:53:35,300
post, Jock? I have not. No, I have not. I still have your map, though. I have it sitting on my

1573
01:53:35,300 --> 01:53:40,460
desk, actually. Okay, so the map is showing you how to think about ecosystems in terms of roles

1574
01:53:40,460 --> 01:53:45,840
and layers, right? Then pinned to my profile is an article about numbers come before strategy,

1575
01:53:46,060 --> 01:53:52,100
and there's a flywheel in it that shows how ecosystem growth can happen if you agree that

1576
01:53:52,100 --> 01:53:58,980
growth is capital productivity and that the issue in an ecosystem is the blind men and the elephants

1577
01:53:58,980 --> 01:54:05,540
so that is that roles and layers will optimize rationally locally but that if you look at it

1578
01:54:05,540 --> 01:54:11,320
from a system-wide point of view those behaviors aren't always rational when you think about the

1579
01:54:11,320 --> 01:54:16,600
good of the whole you know and so therefore what you need is you need to establish a small set of

1580
01:54:16,600 --> 01:54:22,400
system-wide units of account. This is an axis around which 100 different projects or 100 different

1581
01:54:22,400 --> 01:54:28,620
proposals or 100 different schools of thought could contend. And it allows that decentralization,

1582
01:54:28,840 --> 01:54:34,180
which is a superpower of crypto. But you do need to understand what are the core numbers that you're

1583
01:54:34,180 --> 01:54:40,820
ultimately trying to move, right? So the reason I've explained that is because there's three

1584
01:54:40,820 --> 01:54:44,560
kind of pillars I'm trying to tell. One is the numbers, which we've just discussed.

1585
01:54:44,560 --> 01:54:50,040
the second is what i'm talking about now which is basically like where are we right when i look at

1586
01:54:50,040 --> 01:54:56,580
near protocol or eigenlayer i think those guys are really good at pivoting to the narrative cycle and

1587
01:54:56,580 --> 01:55:03,080
i think that karana has to think about where are we in terms of like the grand narrative the arc

1588
01:55:03,080 --> 01:55:08,600
of history right so that's what this vision piece is about and then later on i want to get into

1589
01:55:08,600 --> 01:55:14,440
stories which which is in fact super positions across many minds but okay you can start the

1590
01:55:14,440 --> 01:55:20,460
timer 30 seconds i'm going to tell you what i'm writing right so it starts with the prelude uh

1591
01:55:20,460 --> 01:55:25,140
you know and we talk about how money is a system was captured in the 20th century so money is a

1592
01:55:25,140 --> 01:55:30,160
coordination technology control over monetary affairs is a critical part of genuine sovereignty

1593
01:55:30,160 --> 01:55:36,020
so that's individual businesses the nation state and by the end of that prelude we're then able to

1594
01:55:36,020 --> 01:55:41,660
say like in the 21st century the coordination technology is AI and that is going to be captured

1595
01:55:41,660 --> 01:55:47,240
right if we're not careful right so there's the symmetry so that's our prelude right then we go

1596
01:55:47,240 --> 01:55:52,980
into like the acts which are basically like the stakes which is you know setting the stakes are

1597
01:55:52,980 --> 01:55:57,740
we going to join the permanent underclass so this is like a fear that everybody has right and how

1598
01:55:57,740 --> 01:56:03,960
the intellectual commons is being captured right and are the intellectual inheritance of all of

1599
01:56:03,960 --> 01:56:06,120
our children is being taken away from us.

1600
01:56:06,820 --> 01:56:09,340
And there are some axioms that are explored, right?

1601
01:56:09,440 --> 01:56:11,940
So basically, these are the axioms.

1602
01:56:12,140 --> 01:56:13,960
Technology is an agent of change.

1603
01:56:14,120 --> 01:56:16,920
An example is a mechanization in print, right?

1604
01:56:17,780 --> 01:56:18,980
Our agents have changed.

1605
01:56:19,080 --> 01:56:20,620
Got a big printing press, for example.

1606
01:56:21,300 --> 01:56:23,180
Technology is a conduit for coordination.

1607
01:56:23,580 --> 01:56:28,220
So the Enlightenment would be a good example of how you had to have those conditions,

1608
01:56:28,220 --> 01:56:34,580
steam and print to get to the enlightenment because basically print standardized information

1609
01:56:34,580 --> 01:56:41,380
and suddenly america and france and england could start discussing ideas and it standardized it too

1610
01:56:41,380 --> 01:56:47,280
right um and then you get to the third axiom which is technology is ecology so it's not just

1611
01:56:47,280 --> 01:56:52,300
that technology is a tool that you change the world with it's an environment that we're in

1612
01:56:52,300 --> 01:56:57,820
that changes us as well. And I'm getting there, Jock, right? Stay with me, right? So why am I

1613
01:56:57,820 --> 01:57:03,100
making all of these points? Because the point I'm trying to make is the Enlightenment was about

1614
01:57:03,100 --> 01:57:09,180
governance, right? Man's ability to determine his fate, right? Or women, you know, I'm modern, right?

1615
01:57:09,740 --> 01:57:14,560
And the second Enlightenment is in economic Enlightenment. And that's actually what crypto

1616
01:57:14,560 --> 01:57:21,680
is to me. It's the conditions that you need to determine your own economic sovereignty. But

1617
01:57:21,680 --> 01:57:24,400
But the revolution hasn't happened as prophesied.

1618
01:57:24,560 --> 01:57:28,660
You know, we feel that like big finance or government have come in and take crypto.

1619
01:57:28,940 --> 01:57:33,780
So the argument that I'm making is it's only because of where we are in time.

1620
01:57:34,000 --> 01:57:37,980
Right. If you went back to a certain point in the Enlightenment, you would think it hadn't happened.

1621
01:57:38,080 --> 01:57:44,080
The revolution, then the glorious revolution, French revolution, American revolution, all these things happened as like a cascading event.

1622
01:57:44,080 --> 01:57:51,040
right so the argument i'm making is that um ai is the selection pressure that is going to create

1623
01:57:51,040 --> 01:57:56,220
that revolution and that's why i'm saying technology is an ecology right because the

1624
01:57:56,220 --> 01:58:01,900
environment creates selection pressures okay um and the fact that everybody's scared of what's

1625
01:58:01,900 --> 01:58:05,880
going to be happening with their jobs aren't going to be replaced oh my god it's the end of the world

1626
01:58:05,880 --> 01:58:10,160
and it's like tyranny there's like the four horsemen of the apocalypse charles was talking

1627
01:58:10,160 --> 01:58:16,160
about right um where you've got ai and quantum and bioesthetics and then you know and all these

1628
01:58:16,160 --> 01:58:21,500
technologies that when you combine it with ai which is extended cognitive capability without

1629
01:58:21,500 --> 01:58:27,360
consciousness right um is terrifying so then the argument is well you know you're gonna have there's

1630
01:58:27,360 --> 01:58:30,960
gonna have to be an information insurgency it's gonna have to be a counter-revolution

1631
01:58:30,960 --> 01:58:36,440
where we say no you can't capture all of our intellectual inheritance and set it back to us

1632
01:58:36,440 --> 01:58:41,120
as a utility on a meter right where like and there's something interesting happened right

1633
01:58:41,120 --> 01:58:47,240
where the usa put export controls on fables so then it's like this is really interesting because

1634
01:58:47,240 --> 01:58:53,240
a nation states cannot allow right their ability their means of cognitive production

1635
01:58:53,240 --> 01:58:59,060
to be taken away at a whim depending on where you're born right which is why the prelude was

1636
01:58:59,060 --> 01:59:04,440
relevant because we've seen this happen with the monetary system right now ai is at stake so now

1637
01:59:04,440 --> 01:59:09,160
sovereign nations are going to have to start responding to this right um and then like where

1638
01:59:09,160 --> 01:59:14,120
we're getting to is basically this is like act four at this point about crypto superpowers which

1639
01:59:14,120 --> 01:59:20,280
is you know uh instant capital uh capital for instant global capital formation and and the fact

1640
01:59:20,280 --> 01:59:25,400
that you can give everybody a stake the incentives you know and that's how you can drive coordination

1641
01:59:25,400 --> 01:59:30,200
uh and so then when you get to this point what you're saying is okay let's start looking at what

1642
01:59:30,200 --> 01:59:36,560
what the superpowers and capabilities of crypto are um and i'm gonna this is i don't know am i

1643
01:59:36,560 --> 01:59:42,240
sounding crazy so i'm trying to write this whole series out and um i've been deep in it this is

1644
01:59:42,240 --> 01:59:48,360
like what i did after i left io i went a little bit crazy you know um i can carry on by the way

1645
01:59:48,360 --> 01:59:52,260
i'm just conscious that i probably just uh streamed or talked at you for a little bit there

1646
01:59:52,260 --> 01:59:59,340
but but the car with the culmination anyway so here are the five acts right um the stakes that

1647
01:59:59,340 --> 02:00:03,200
we talked about like where we are the permanent underclass the pattern with those technology

1648
02:00:03,200 --> 02:00:09,560
axioms uh the crisis we just talked about um where everybody can be touched you know who's allowed to

1649
02:00:09,560 --> 02:00:15,280
eat it's a famine so there's abundance but it's only if you can access that abundance that you're

1650
02:00:15,280 --> 02:00:19,520
going to get this utopia that's promised if you can't access the abundance that's actually a famine

1651
02:00:19,520 --> 02:00:23,920
right which is what people are worried about then we talked about the second enlightenment and

1652
02:00:23,920 --> 02:00:28,880
superpowers oh right and then the final combination act five now i'm done jock is too long in 30

1653
02:00:28,880 --> 02:00:33,840
seconds, isn't it? Is the shelling point. And the point is, what's going to happen is China,

1654
02:00:33,840 --> 02:00:37,840
and you're already seeing this, they're going to make open source, open weight models available to

1655
02:00:38,400 --> 02:00:46,720
deprive America of that, of having that system of control the same way they did the monetary system.

1656
02:00:47,440 --> 02:00:50,560
And also because they're building chips and production and this kind of stuff.

1657
02:00:50,560 --> 02:00:53,680
And so therefore open source and open weight and decentralised,

1658
02:00:53,680 --> 02:00:57,040
is the counter revolution is inevitable.

1659
02:00:57,680 --> 02:00:59,060
So that's my pitch.

1660
02:00:59,240 --> 02:01:00,200
How long does that take me?

1661
02:01:00,340 --> 02:01:00,900
Three hours?

1662
02:01:04,480 --> 02:01:05,640
Someone needs to talk.

1663
02:01:05,700 --> 02:01:07,400
Otherwise, I just feel like I'm in a cupboard.

1664
02:01:08,220 --> 02:01:11,320
I've just ranted at the cupboard for a good 30 minutes.

1665
02:01:11,320 --> 02:01:13,000
You lost block, Jack.

1666
02:01:13,180 --> 02:01:14,240
It's a rabbit hole.

1667
02:01:15,180 --> 02:01:17,160
Did any of it make sense or not?

1668
02:01:19,300 --> 02:01:21,340
For all of it made sense for me, Ben.

1669
02:01:21,340 --> 02:01:23,320
I read the article.

1670
02:01:23,780 --> 02:01:26,580
I think you posted it somewhere else in your sub stack before, right?

1671
02:01:26,780 --> 02:01:26,980
Yeah.

1672
02:01:28,820 --> 02:01:30,940
Go ahead.

1673
02:01:31,120 --> 02:01:33,500
You should put it up in the top if you know how to do that.

1674
02:01:33,600 --> 02:01:35,020
I can't do it from my phone.

1675
02:01:35,380 --> 02:01:36,220
I was pinned on my thing.

1676
02:01:36,540 --> 02:01:43,080
But the point is, the reason you would write it is because you want to be able to say, like, the fight's real.

1677
02:01:43,080 --> 02:01:47,920
There's still this exciting tech that we've been building.

1678
02:01:47,920 --> 02:01:54,220
and everybody's tired with governance and fucking shit and you know everybody needs to get paid like

1679
02:01:54,220 --> 02:01:59,960
fair enough me too we all have to get paid right but but the point is like i just when we got into

1680
02:01:59,960 --> 02:02:04,300
this it was because it was fucking exciting and we wanted to build cool shit and we thought we

1681
02:02:04,300 --> 02:02:10,260
could change the world and like you know we felt like the systems as they were um just weren't

1682
02:02:10,260 --> 02:02:15,800
serving us or our children or their children and i want to get back into that and i can see the

1683
02:02:15,800 --> 02:02:23,860
grand arc of history when you start looking at those revolutions and those technologies that

1684
02:02:23,860 --> 02:02:29,800
were agents of change it's really interesting um and i and i just think something like that is what

1685
02:02:29,800 --> 02:02:35,080
could galvanize people you know potentially but um i think that a lot of us feel that way

1686
02:02:35,080 --> 02:02:42,200
ben to be honest like uh today's interview there's like one part that john was talking about like um

1687
02:02:42,200 --> 02:02:49,740
kiva being a charity thing right and i'm here like well you don't have to go too far to take

1688
02:02:49,740 --> 02:02:59,800
it to kiva i mean i feel like this this whole like our ecosystem turned everyone every regular

1689
02:02:59,800 --> 02:03:08,280
everyday person that was willing to put some capital to lift this uh turn people regular people

1690
02:03:08,280 --> 02:03:12,920
and to angel investors that were not angel investors,

1691
02:03:13,080 --> 02:03:15,060
like supporting all this like startups

1692
02:03:15,060 --> 02:03:18,140
with absolutely no, you know,

1693
02:03:18,700 --> 02:03:22,080
nothing to back up this, you know,

1694
02:03:22,540 --> 02:03:24,500
this investment, nothing but risks.

1695
02:03:24,840 --> 02:03:29,220
And it was like so much people lost so much money

1696
02:03:29,220 --> 02:03:34,140
that a lot of people are just broke, man.

1697
02:03:34,260 --> 02:03:35,840
And they're just still showing up,

1698
02:03:35,940 --> 02:03:38,060
but there's no money.

1699
02:03:38,280 --> 02:03:44,280
you know this is too like so this is the thing with john is like he he's not uh real fire is

1700
02:03:44,280 --> 02:03:50,840
not trying to um it's not retail money right it's businesses so i like that and then i like what

1701
02:03:50,840 --> 02:03:57,840
you're saying as well because it's like the old age of like l1s and where it was really partisan

1702
02:03:57,840 --> 02:04:03,440
like i feel that's going to die one way or the other because the agentic economy won't care about

1703
02:04:03,440 --> 02:04:11,820
like the the um the what's the word i'm looking for um but the partisan politics of it right

1704
02:04:11,820 --> 02:04:15,460
they're just going to care about the primitives and like what does the tech actually do

1705
02:04:15,460 --> 02:04:21,160
and we're probably a little bit we're not on top of a genetic economy yet but then finance coming

1706
02:04:21,160 --> 02:04:26,200
isn't going to care about this stuff either so i think the other thing is like crypto and blockchain

1707
02:04:26,200 --> 02:04:32,700
and even tech right it it is a narrative market right it's narrative cycles and the reason that

1708
02:04:32,700 --> 02:04:36,780
I think that you need to go numbers, vision, and then stories is because of that superposition.

1709
02:04:37,620 --> 02:04:43,600
So, you know, there's many, many minds are co-occurringly coming up with these interpretations

1710
02:04:43,600 --> 02:04:50,140
and probabilities. And that's the superposition I'm trying to get about in AI, where everything

1711
02:04:50,140 --> 02:04:59,240
is like such a hyper, fast velocity cycles, where you don't even like so much is happening so fast,

1712
02:04:59,240 --> 02:05:06,100
and it's changing all the time you don't even know uh which way to lean in you know there's a

1713
02:05:06,100 --> 02:05:14,540
lot of opportunity to shape um that attention that potential narrative energy if we as uh

1714
02:05:14,540 --> 02:05:20,780
cardano can get out of ourselves um and i think like you have to bridge these other ecosystems

1715
02:05:20,780 --> 02:05:26,160
and real five is one way of doing it and possibly pogan and i think the guy from c swap was trying

1716
02:05:26,160 --> 02:05:31,120
to do bitcoin stuff too so i'm not just trying to name io ventures you know um but we have to

1717
02:05:31,120 --> 02:05:38,400
bridge the other ecosystems um and we've got to kind of um get fresh talent in which means i think

1718
02:05:38,400 --> 02:05:44,800
we need to get out of our bubble to be able to yeah we have to become one ecosystem like the

1719
02:05:44,800 --> 02:05:51,420
industry has to kind of yeah work together yeah it's yeah it's like relationships it was people

1720
02:05:51,420 --> 02:05:56,960
all the way down right like do you do you know there's um do you know games or what is it minecraft

1721
02:05:56,960 --> 02:06:01,380
or whatever where you can make all of the land disappear and you can just see where it's just

1722
02:06:01,380 --> 02:06:08,920
people all the way down the whole thing's people you know um so yeah um yeah so sorry jock i didn't

1723
02:06:08,920 --> 02:06:13,840
give you my life story but uh it would have basically gone i got born in england lived in

1724
02:06:13,840 --> 02:06:19,120
saudi went to lots of boarding schools in england and then i worked as a chef did market research

1725
02:06:19,120 --> 02:06:23,840
built a banks community and then I got into privacy projects and then I got into Kedane.

1726
02:06:24,060 --> 02:06:25,600
That's my life story.

1727
02:06:28,000 --> 02:06:33,480
So I don't want to cut the show short, but I really do have to go.

1728
02:06:34,180 --> 02:06:35,480
Thanks for coming, Ben.

1729
02:06:35,640 --> 02:06:39,840
And I really enjoyed talking to you guys.

1730
02:06:40,420 --> 02:06:45,660
So maybe you can join us, like Jenny said, once in a while for banter

1731
02:06:45,660 --> 02:06:48,760
or just to talk more about the project.

1732
02:06:49,120 --> 02:06:50,480
100%

1733
02:06:50,480 --> 02:06:51,420
Thanks everyone

1734
02:06:51,420 --> 02:06:56,820
This is my last day

1735
02:06:56,820 --> 02:06:59,320
So I won't be in CURTA or NOVA coffee after today

1736
02:06:59,320 --> 02:07:01,820
So thank you Ben for showing up for my last day

1737
02:07:01,820 --> 02:07:03,940
All the way to you guys

1738
02:07:03,940 --> 02:07:04,560
Love you

1739
02:07:04,560 --> 02:07:08,360
Jenny I'm so glad I caught you on the last day

1740
02:07:08,360 --> 02:07:09,880
I know you are exiting

1741
02:07:09,880 --> 02:07:11,580
I didn't know this was the week