Welcome to the second installment of our interview series with the ADALend CEO Kaspars Koskins. Recent events in the US and Canada have illustrated that Decentralized Finance is more important than ever before. ADALend is at the vanguard of this revolution in the lending industry by using blockchain technology to disintermediate the traditional middlemen – providing unprecedented access to loans for those ignored by the traditional banking system and providing high yields for investors in a persistent low-interest-rate environment.
Штавише, како смо видели драматично прекорачење СЕЦ-а у САД и канадској влади, платформе за децентрализоване финансије постале су важније него икад за заштиту богатства обичних грађана. Били смо преплављени позитивним повратним информацијама након последњег интервјуа са Каспарасом, па без даљег збогом, да почнемо.
Интервјуер: Welcome back Kasparas, in our last interview we discussed deeply the value that ADALend provides for the middle classes in the western world as well as emerging markets. For those of our audience that missed it, can you summarize the ADALend value proposition?
Коскинс: Certainly, first let me just say it’s great to be back here. The passionate ADALend community loved our last interview and we touched on many topics that resonated with them and attracted many other like-minded folks to join us. Today we are going to go even deeper philosophically into why Cardano and decentralized financial systems are more important than ever, and how recent events in the US, Canada and even Russia are highlighting this. However, first let me recap the ADALend vision and mission as you wisely suggested.
Here at ADALend we are developing a scalable, trustless, and decentralized lending protocol that protects its users within a self-governed environment. From our earliest inception, we committed to build natively on the Cardano blockchain, which will enable the lending platform to aggregate protocols that support business models that give economic support to billions of users. ADALend will bring back the balance of power between lenders and borrowers. By allowing the use of digital assets as collateral, the use of the platform will be diversified to the benefit of the user.
We chose to build on the Cardano blockchain as Ethereum is no longer usable by the majority of people on the planet due to the high transaction costs – with gas fees reaching into the hundreds of dollars per transaction. This is unacceptable to ordinary people in the western world today as well as the millions of unbanked people in the developing countries of Africa and Asia lending and borrowing far smaller amounts. Ethereum is now only usable by the already wealthy, while new platforms like Solana and Avalanche have problems with centralization, security and reliability. Cardano is the only truly decentralized blockchain with the required security, speed and low transaction fees required to provide a truly democratic financial solution that can be used by every human on planet earth.
As I mentioned in our last interview – the ADALend vision aligns perfectly with that of Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson who is passionate about improving financial outcomes for people all over the world, regardless of race, nationality, gender or financial status.
Интервјуер: Хвала вам на резимеу Каспарс, заиста је импресивно шта ви и ваш тим градите. Оффлине смо причали о новчаној казни БлоцкФи СЕЦ и акцијама канадске владе против протеста Камионџија. Шта ови догађаји имају заједничко и можете ли да поделите више о томе како се они односе на мисију АДАЛенд?
Коскинс: Absolutely, in recent weeks we have seen the SEC fining BlockFi $100 million US dollars for providing a decent interest rate to its users; Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken the unprecedented step of invoking the Emergencies Act to crack down on anti-vaccine mandate protests.by freezing their bank accounts; and Western leaders threaten to cut Russia off from the SWIFT banking system if they invade Ukraine. Now, regardless of your political opinion on these events, they highlight how governments and institutions can, at their convenience, cut ordinary people out from earning interest on their savings, accessing their savings or transferring money internationally. I am old enough to remember when in 2013 the government of Cyprus decided to unilaterally impose a 10% “haircut” on bank accounts to bail themselves out after the financial crises and literally unlawfully stole the money from people’s accounts. This was my conversion moment that we need to protect individuals hard-earned wealth from overreaching governments and began my journey into Bitcoin, then Cardano and ultimately the desire to build a truly decentralized financial system,
With a Decentralized Financial platform like ADAlend, people can earn a good interest rate on their hard-earned savings without worrying about the risks of the Government attacking the platform as they did with a centralized crypto lender like BlockFi or the government trying to freeze your bank account if they don’t agree with your opinions or peaceful protest like they did in Canada. DeFi systems are by their very definition more robust and antifragile than centralized companies like BlockFi. The ADAlend protocol and network is more akin to Bitcoin or Cardano whereas the network scales it will become more robust to attack.
In parallel to the completely decentralized ADALend protocol and core platform, we are exploring offering regulated centralized lending services in each jurisdiction that we operate in. These will offer slightly lower interest rates and yields than on the ADALend decentralized staking and liquidity provision platform, but still far far higher than any bank or credit union. This is because we understand that while our crypto-native community members are comfortable investing the time and energy to interact with DeFi protocols, we have mature users as well – business owners, doctors, lawyers, and self-employed tradesmen who simply don’t have time to live online.
For these hardworking people, we will provide high-interest rates on stablecoin and crypto savings, in a highly regulated environment. We are working with the regulators on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis – beginning with my home market of the European Union with an Estonian entity, followed by the United Kingdom with a London HQ, and then United Arab Emirates, with a regulated entity in the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC). Next on the roadmap will be the US and Canada so we are watching and learning from the experiences of BlockFi, Nexo Celsius and others as we plan our market entry. We believe that to truly recolutionalise finance you need to disrupt the system from inside and out, and this is why we have adopted a two-pronged strategy of rolling out a DeFi protocol and a CeFi business in parallel globally.
Интервјуер: Thank you Kasparas, it’s tremendously exciting to hear how your mission is evolving over time and how each misstep and overreach by governments only makes the ADALend value proposition more compelling and essential to protect the hard-earned savings of ordinary, hard-working people all over the world.
Дакле, да пређемо са филозофског и стратешког на тактичко, хајде да засучемо рукаве и разговарамо о томе како ти и момци извршавате ову мисију у рововима. Како напредују комерцијални и технички радови?
Коскинс: Thank you for the kind words, yes it’s both exciting and frightening to see how the macro events in the news make the ADALend mission ever more vital each time we speak. It truly strengthens our resolve and motivates the team that we have chosen a worthy goal to focus on: providing financial inclusion, security and wealth protection for savers and investors of all sizes.
Са техничке стране, ојачали смо наш развојни тим новим техничким директором Алијем Кринитским, који доноси дугогодишње оперативно искуство у вођењу пројеката и пројеката развоја софтвера за предузећа и потрошаче и технологије и са собом доноси лојалан, искусан и вредан тим програмера.
Занимљиво је да Али има веома јаку истраживачку и академску позадину, што га чини веома погодним за истраживање и процес изградње на Цардану који води рецензент. Он је прави технички геније који је радио на супер занимљивој технологији као што је свамм нетворкинг, тако да су АДАЛенд тим и заједница благословени што је он градио за нас. Али дели моје мишљење о томе како данашњи макроекономски и политички догађаји убрзавају значај и релевантност АДАЛенд-а, а пошто је рођен у бившем Совјетском Савезу, Али превише добро разуме опасности од прекорачења владе у способности приватних лица да зараде и задрже своје богатство!
Ali and his team have been working around the clock to leverage the latest research and reposts from IOHK and other Cardano knowledge repositories to inform their development roadmap for the Plutus and Haskell powered staking and lending platform back end, while also working on the UX and UI to ensure its a best in class FinTech experience. We have found that one of the barriers to mass adoption of DeFi protocols it the poor frontend user experience that scares off the casual user so we have endeavored to ensure that the user experience of ADALend’s DefI and DeFi projects will be as slick and user friendly as the latest consumer applications that we expect and demand in the present environment.
On the business development and commercial side, we are busy building relationships with the regulators in Europe, the UK and Dubai to ensure we don’t hit any roadblocks like BlockFi did along the way. Obviously, another area that we are hyper-focused on is our upcoming Public IDO launch in early March, where the ADAL token will be offered to the public.
Интервјуер: Одушевљен сам што чујем да Али и његов технички тим испоручују робу и да мапа техничког развоја напредује. Чини се да су у току и интересантни развоји на комерцијалној страни! Последњи пут када смо разговарали били сте у приватној продаји, можете ли нам рећи више о лансирању АДАЛ токена и како наши читаоци могу да сазнају више?
Коскинс: Absolutely – in the world of crypto the public launch or IDO is similar to the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of a tech company. ADALend is currently in the final stage of its private sale so it’s similar to buying Google, Amazon or Apple stock before their IPO. The ADALend private sale ends on the 28th of February so that would be the last date to buy the ADAL tokens at a significant discount. The launch will be in the first week of March and a limited number of ADAL tokens will be sold across several launchpads in parallel and will begin trading on the exchanges shortly afterward. The starting price is one US dollar, but as you know the token price can perform dynamically in the first days of trading so it is very important to register your interest early to avoid disappointment.
To learn more about the ADALend mission, and to register interest for the final allocation of discounted private sale tokens, your readers can email: [email protected] with the subject line: CEO INTERVIEW and our team will add them to the priority list, and get back to them ASAP.
Интервјуер: Као и увек, разговор са вама је био и едукативан и инспиративан. Хвала на издвојеном времену Каспарс.
Коскинс: Задовољство ми је, желим вама и вашим читаоцима профитабилне месеце и квартале унапред и радујем се нашем следећем интервјуу након јавног објављивања.
Source: https://bitcoinist.com/adalend-ceo-kaspars-koskins-100m-fine-for-blockfi-canada-banking-freeze-highlights-the-importance-of-decentralized-finance/