Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Crypto Masterclass | Arjun Vijay and Vikram Subburaj @ Giottus
159 Plays3 years ago
India has a pretty strange relationship with cryptocurrency. Amidst bans, pandemics and whatnot, crypto companies continue to be bullish on the Indian market.
In this episode of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Arjun Vijay and Vikram Subburaj, Founders, Giottus, the country’s leading crypto assets trading platform. Arjun and Vikram are alumni of IIM Calcutta and have worked in Vodafone and Amazon, respectively, before starting off with this venture.
Working for customer-centric companies made Arjun and Vikram realise that the true success of the crypto industry depends on mass adoption for which an ecosystem needs to be built on the pillars of customer support, security, and trust. Based on these three tenets, they founded Giottus in 2017, with the aim of making cryptocurrency trading simple and trustworthy.
Tune in to this episode where Arjun and Vikram explain everything about cryptocurrencies and how Giottus is driving digital currency adoption in India.
What you must not miss!
- Customer service is paramount
- How do various crypto exchanges work?
- Ways in which customers are allowed to trade on Giottus
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
Podcast Goals: Learning from Founders
00:00:10
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Saurabh and you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country. And we want to learn how
Exploring Major Tech Hype Cycles
00:00:22
Speaker
to build a unicorn.
00:00:29
Speaker
So there are two broad hype cycles happening right now. One is about the whole cryptocurrency blockchain space and the other is about the whole metaverse space. I don't know about metaverse and whether this is just hype or it will actually amount to something. But I know for sure that crypto is real. Crypto is going to be what
00:00:53
Speaker
probably what people used to imagine what the internet would be way back in 90s. I think we are at that stage in crypto where people are imagining what all crypto could be, but we can't even imagine the ways in which it is going to change our lives, change society, change how everything happens in the world.
00:01:13
Speaker
which is why I love talking to founders of crypto-based startups to really get a glimpse into what the future could be
Interview with Geotas Founders
00:01:22
Speaker
like. Today, I'm talking to the founders of Geotas, which is among the leading crypto exchanges in India.
00:01:28
Speaker
You may not have heard of Geotas as much as the other exchanges because they don't make so much noise. They prefer to grow organically. But the founders of Geotas are amazing in their thought process, in the way they have clarity of the potential of crypto, in the way they are putting customer first in everything they're doing. And this
Bitcoin vs Traditional Currency Debate
00:01:48
Speaker
episode is really a masterclass about cryptocurrency and how crypto is going to change the world. So here's Arjun and Vikram.
00:01:57
Speaker
the founders of Jiotis talking about the birth of the idea that really made them quit their well-paying jobs and start Jiotis. It's an amazing journey, right? So far we have taken for granted what money is.
00:02:11
Speaker
right? It's issued by someone and how it works and all those things. Suddenly you start questioning, right? You start understanding
Philosophical Tech Debates
00:02:18
Speaker
why US dollar is a reserve currency? What makes it a reserve currency? What if Bitcoin becomes a reserve currency? And there's a lot of ifs, right? What if Bitcoin replaces gold? Why it will replace gold? How is it better? And all the
00:02:29
Speaker
things I have always taken like you started questioning why people value gold so much what makes gold important right then you read Papians right it talks about how history how India has valued gold always and because and Europeans they had nothing to give to India in return they wanted spices a lot right and they had and Indians is
00:02:49
Speaker
Give me gold because of that gold created had so much value They started going to new world and all those places hunting for gold like we as a single country We created a huge demand for gold and now gold is having so much value across the world, right? So it was a very fascinating time So so like gold is a shared delusions in a way like everyone Everyone agrees. It's valuable. So it's valuable exactly, right?
00:03:15
Speaker
And also at that point of time, Bitcoin versus Bitcoin Cash, right? This was a very philosophical argument that was going at that point of time. And these people were, this is like the proper debates that are happening. So far as it was like
AI and Future of Jobs
00:03:27
Speaker
such exciting times, like 1990s, such debates should have happened in standards of internet also, right? Netscape is an internet explorer, like what should be the format, HTML, CSS, and all those things.
00:03:38
Speaker
Kind of so I thought this space I think we are like very lucky to be part of this, right? We always read history and all the thing I used to like had I been there in World War two How interesting would I been had I been there in the 1990s? How interesting it would have been like now I got a chance right intervals kind of getting rebuilt
00:03:56
Speaker
in a decentralized way and at that point I also had this like I was reading a lot about AI kind of realized now drivers are becoming like you obsolete right once driving is obsolete a lot of simple things like cooking and all those things are going to get obsolete right even writing coding if we are able to train a guy in one year why can't you train a computer right because once you train one computer it shares the learning across so maybe in 10-15 years of years we'll have a generic AI
00:04:26
Speaker
Okay. At that point of time,
Centralized vs Decentralized Systems
00:04:29
Speaker
the singularity will be achieved on everything is going to be controlled by three for computer companies like Amazon, which already has the AWS, right? You just need it's a, before it was labor and capital. No, you don't need labor. It's just going to be capital and hardware. So I thought even in process and possibly data. Absolutely. Right. That's like the input.
00:04:51
Speaker
at some point of time, it's just going to be there's going to be no TCS, no impulses, no software companies, no nothing company, like it's just going to be robots and software and it's going to be like Google Amazon, like big three big four, they're going to control the world. It was just getting more and more towards that. And then this decentralization case, you don't need a middleman, right? You don't need a Facebook.
00:05:11
Speaker
to share the data. You can have a decentralized social network, you can have a decentralized e-commerce, you can have a decentralized chat application. This is an amazing idea. This is how the world should be. It should not be in the control of like one, like you have all those apocalyptic scenarios, like where is there an umbrella corporation ruling the world and all those things. This is like the solution out.
00:05:32
Speaker
And so it's almost like saving the world. We almost reached that point. In 2015-16, privacy was a huge thing. Like how Facebook has control over your data. Google has so much control over your data. GDPR and all those discussions were going and this kind of became the panacea. This is the solution. So even now, there's a running joke, right? Bitcoin solves this. Bitcoin solves this. They say a random problem and people say Bitcoin solves this.
00:05:55
Speaker
At that point, it kind of looked like that. Decentralization was like an amazing, amazing thing. You are almost convinced that this is how the world is going to become. The world is going to be controlled by three or four big corporations. And now you are saying, OK, decentralization will happen and power will be given back to the people. People will run the community. Community will run everything.
Blockchain Business Opportunities
00:06:17
Speaker
So that was a fascinating thing at that point of time. And at that point,
00:06:22
Speaker
But how did this lead to a business idea? So you are saying that blockchain and decentralized finance has a great future, which I think everyone agrees with. But what is the business opportunity out there? It so started that we kept reading. And just like everyone, when you start reading and we are tracking these products, you see the price growth.
00:06:43
Speaker
You obviously start trading, right? We became traders, right? We started trading, we slowly, we were passively trading initially and that some point of time we were aggressively trading, right?
00:06:56
Speaker
That was the end goal, right? We wanted to understand the technology so that you can trade, right? We didn't think about running a business or building a business here. We're so excited about it, right? See, it all started. I wanted to purchase a Bitcoin, but before purchasing, I wanted to understand how it works. Once I understood, I thought, like, what is the next, what is next, how Ethereum works, how I had to start comparing, how I should split my investments. We had a lot of healthy arguments, right? And we want to continue.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah. So there was a lot of trades actually. So, you know, not just in one or two coins, you know, there was a time in the portfolio, there was to be more than 50 to 60 coins we used to trade at a point of time. Right. Okay. So you had like a portfolio, like you pulled in money. And at some point of time, since we were talking a lot about cryptos, we had a lot of our friends even, you know, who started getting on board. And since they didn't have a lot of time to trade themselves, they used to ask us to trade on their behalf.
00:07:52
Speaker
Right?
Challenges in Crypto Trading in India
00:07:54
Speaker
I mean, unofficially, we were just, you know, just for friends, you know, you were trading and you were trading with our own money and everything. And what so happens that we used to read a lot, read about new coin. And when we have a gut feeling about this coin, we go and invest in that coin. We did some ICO investments. Neither me or Vikram, we had invested in stock markets till that point. And Vikram and Amazon stocks, right? We were not traders, right? At that point, because stocks, I thought there's all the information is publicly available. There's no edge.
00:08:24
Speaker
So, I didn't even have a passive investment going on in stock markets. I was paying off my education loan and everything. I think we could have had other
Founding of Geotas
00:08:31
Speaker
these things. So, we are not actually investing in stock markets also. We just jumped two levels and generically went into crypto investments. Yeah. So, that's what happened. So, a lot of trading happened. And in the process of doing a lot of trading, you interact with a lot of exchanges.
00:08:50
Speaker
In fact, in the sense you trade and you first buy your Bitcoin and the Indian exchange at that point of time, I think there were three exchanges, Zippe, Unocoin and CoinSecure. Now, if you see after four or five years now, the landscape has totally changed now. At that point of time in India, if you had to purchase using INR, you could buy only Bitcoin.
00:09:18
Speaker
And all the players at that time was giving only a two-way court model, a buy price and a sell price. Usually, it will be in a very, very high premium compared to the general market price or the market price outside, right?
00:09:34
Speaker
Okay, so like buying in India was costlier than buying in the US, for example. The general reason being the cryptos are not mined here. There's no supply of crypto within India, right? So that's why it's... You don't have sellers who want to take iron out for Bitcoin. At that point of time, there are also no marketplaces. Coin secure was a marketplace. The other two were like a brokerage, right? They are the counterparties. Otherwise, you have to go through a platform called LocalBitcoins.
00:10:04
Speaker
right which was appear to be here you need to find sellers who are selling bitcoin and then trust based issues time like a olx is not seamless right you might find a good seller you might find a fraud so the experience was not smooth
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, let's see and only when you provide a real time order book, right? Like how you see in an NSE or a BSE when you trade, you're going to get a better price to the customers, right? Or till that time, the exchange will make a lot of margin out of it and the prices are always going to be high, right? Now, during this phase, you know, this is the only option available,
Bootstrapping and Customer Service Focus
00:10:43
Speaker
right? For every... The spread was the SIS 60,000, 70,000. The fee, over the spread, some exchanges started a fee of like 1.18 percentage.
00:10:51
Speaker
It was very crazy. So, what happens when you make the real buyers and sellers interact with each other through an order book, they will make sure that the prices, the buy and sell prices come close to each other. Supply and demand will take care of it, right? For that you will have to pay. If you have a large large enough pool of buyers and sellers. Now, here if you take the exchange out of equation
00:11:15
Speaker
the exchange deciding price out of equation, the buyers and seller, the supply and demand will take care of the price and that is going to be the best price available, right? Now, at that point of time, there were a lot of this brokerages or the two way court model as people say, right? So, what traders here do, we buy Bitcoin from an Indian exchange here, take it to an international exchange and then do our other trades. These international exchange are open order books.
00:11:40
Speaker
like what the buyers and sellers of the common order book and they had the option to buy and sell in more than 100 plus cryptos, right? So the only job that the Indian exchanges at that point were doing is helping you to buy your Bitcoin so that you can go and do your trades to buy the other cryptos, right? So it was this phase we face a lot of inefficiencies, right? The first inefficiency, why should I buy only Bitcoin using IANA, right? Why can't I buy other cryptos, right? Why don't you launch
00:12:09
Speaker
Part 1. Part 2.
Regulatory Challenges and P2P Model
00:12:12
Speaker
This was the game-changing part for us. It was the customer service. The incident so happened in one of the exchanges when I was about to buy the Bitcoin. I had transferred somewhere around 2.53 lakh rupees.
00:12:28
Speaker
Some banking issue, see, usually there are banking issues, right? There's no, that's an issue with the bank. Payment fails, it doesn't get reversed. There was some banking issue and I wanted to reach out to the exchange asking, you know, what is this, you know, should I be waiting or what to do? It so happened for one week I was just running pillar and post to find out the person I have to reach out to, right?
00:12:53
Speaker
And it's a big sub, not like two, three lakhs. And one week to just reach out, right? To reach out and understand, okay, because all the general support means they had, there was no response. And see, now why this is a pain point for me? Because, parallelly, I'm working in Amazon.
00:13:10
Speaker
Here, things are totally reversed. Which is obsessed with customer support. I give my reviews and everything based on how customer obsessed I was in this quarter. My performance is related on that. So, we are thinking that the industry is so big. We have a heart saying that the industry is going to grow so big in the future.
00:13:32
Speaker
Now, the way the people, the way the exchanges are handling the industry seemed so short term. I'm getting money now. I'll just make money out of it for now. There was no futuristic thought process that was there.
00:13:46
Speaker
This triggered saying that, OK, now why don't we bring in all the features which we are seeing in international exchange in India? We already did our financial modeling. And after this, we did our financial modeling to see how big is the industry. Industry at that point of time itself was a big industry. And the beauty with running and exchanges, an exchange, the unit cost of running after some point of time, it keeps reducing.
00:14:12
Speaker
It's the same engine and everything. As the number of trades increases, there's no additional cost you're incurring here. Expenses are fixed. As the number of trades increases, you're going to make a lot of money. Since that is going to happen, there's going to be a big industry. It's a really good opportunity to enter it.
00:14:34
Speaker
So there was no question of should we enter into, is it a profitable industry? Yes, it was a profitable industry. Is there a problem to be solved? There was like, we pointed to three issues that we're going to solve. One, we will launch an open-order book, not a two-way code model, okay? We will have a transparency in the pricing, so it's going to be an open-order book. Two, we'll be launching coins more than Bitcoin, right? See, currently in geodes, if you see, we have 110 plus coins to trade with.
00:15:04
Speaker
The third important thing we chose was the customer support is going to be better than even the international exchanges. So till date, that's why your core that you take as your business core really matters. Till date, when you ask any Geotas customer, and ask them for a feedback on Geotas, anything in tech or coin supply, anything they say or they might not say, but one thing they definitely say
Customer Growth and Competition
00:15:31
Speaker
is we are highly responsible.
00:15:34
Speaker
We quickly respond. That was the process and the system that was built from the day one. In the initial days, it so happened that we wanted to achieve this responsiveness crazily. Me and Arjun, we used to take turns being awake in the night because it was a very, very small team waiting for our support.
00:15:56
Speaker
I see, when you have a team size which is very small, it's not just a customer support guy who's going to attend the call. Someone has to operationally resolve that issue as well, right?
00:16:08
Speaker
So there needs to be someone in Arjun and Mike added to resolve it quickly. Now we have a bigger team who will take care of all these activities, but we wanted to ensure this from the day one. That's how the brand got built, saying that we are very responsive. People can quote some other advantage or disadvantage, but I'm pretty sure that this is the place we stand in the customer's mind.
00:16:34
Speaker
And those days are magical, right? You are like so excited. The first time a customer deposits, you see like hundred customers, thousand customers, right? So until that point of time, you just have an idea. Like you think, see, see all through the 2017 and all, whenever we went to investors also, we said, what are going to be bigger? We said customer support. But that's something that everyone says. No one believes you. If you say customer support, I say this thing.
00:16:59
Speaker
Right? Even when we went to our customers, you talk about, so we had no clue how we are going to get first thousand customers, but it happened.
00:17:07
Speaker
like people could see our honest efforts, like we were there solving the issues, we had a telegram. So I want to ask a few questions before we come to the actual go-to market. So, you know, did you guys then quit your job to start the exchange or was it something that you, okay, you quit your jobs and so you must have bootstrapped it or did you like look for funding first or like tell me about that.
00:17:31
Speaker
journey from being employees to entrepreneurs, that transition period, you know, like, how did you actually launch things? And how did you choose this name of Goytas Giyotas? Sorry, and that's another question I have. Then why did you choose such a difficult name? The plan was to start a bootstrap from the day one. See, okay, we both are big fans of Zarada.
00:17:56
Speaker
As a matter of fact, we have stretched ourselves to be a bootstrap till date. Among all the exchanges who are competing with us now or who have started with us, who are there in the market and not there in the market, I think we are the only guys to be bootstrap till date and who also have a larger customer base comparatively.
00:18:17
Speaker
So, again, being big fans of Zerota, that's even now, right? So, operationally run, you know, all exchanges are good to run, right? It's the customer acquisition which is, which is requiring a lot of funding, you know, which is
00:18:33
Speaker
So, ideally, for that, you know, we'll start looking around now. But yeah, from the day one, it has been bootstrapped. It has been Arjun and my earnings from our jobs, you know, that we are completely put into Jyotas.
00:18:49
Speaker
we have to give a big shout out to the overall ecosystem, like AWS. Without AWS, bootstrapping would have been so, so difficult. Without Freshdesk, it would have been so difficult. With all these tools in place, all these SaaS-based tools in place, we're only paying for what we are using. It's kind of really easy to start up these days. 10 years back, I don't know, maybe one of us would have sold our houses to bootstrap, but that was kind of simple at that point of time.
00:19:19
Speaker
It's easy to build an MVP, basically, but customer acquisition is still where you need to spend money. At that point, even I said, Vikram, why don't we go for funding? So we were ourselves talking, who would fund just on an idea basis? Someone needs the proof of execution. Let's build this. Let's start running the operation. Let's show them that we are building so-and-so, and then maybe look at funding. And at that point, we also have clear needs.
00:19:46
Speaker
How are we going to take funding? Where are you going to use
Navigating Market Shifts
00:19:49
Speaker
it and all those things. And this is the time when the RBI was also, the circular got really, I think, let's get it. That's an amazing, amazing story that we can talk about. Okay. So yeah, so see, the first thing was we both got convinced that, okay, we'll quit our jobs, start the activity. I quit my job exactly three months before my next
00:20:14
Speaker
vesting of stock was going to happen ok. So, that so that was the level the idea you know grabbed you know. So, saying that ok now it is it is mature let us the thought process is very clear let us just go ahead and do it right. So, did that happen we build the product ok. The first first hurdle we faced what. Wait wait. The order book exchange. No sir what happened was in 2017 this was happening right.
00:20:41
Speaker
what we thought was an amazing idea the same thing a lot of other companies also thought right because they all made the same problem so by the time february mars i started getting jittery because i was seeing news all across so so that's when all these coin dcx coins which they were all none of these guys were there there you know they call coin x coin x
00:21:05
Speaker
So, that guy did a they say it so happened what the exchange product we wanted to launch that guy had launched right and we were building the product he had launched and he was he became within a matter of 2 months he became a leader in the market and by December right December 2017 he did the highest trade volume compared to everyone else.
00:21:28
Speaker
So, this shook us a bit, saying that, okay, now it is the almost similar product offering that what we are going to do, is it okay to do? So, that's when the belief kicked in again. It's not the similar product. It's not the product we are betting on. It's a concept. It's the customer support. The way we are reaching out to the customer, that's going to matter. So, that's the gut again with which we followed.
00:21:54
Speaker
And also, it was like a proof of this thing, right? So, this idea works in the market. This is what a market react and someone has already taken the bet and they have proved, right? Whatever our belief, it was going the right direction. And apart from
Innovative Trading Models
00:22:07
Speaker
CoinX, there was another 30-40 exchanges which were either getting built, they're getting launched in a month or two.
00:22:13
Speaker
So, and it's going to be from a blue ocean. There are hardly three, four companies not giving proper support. There's a huge gap in the market. Now there's a good way, extreme competition, right? And the market based model works based on critical mass, right? Just like a social network. You need enough number of customers to have that liquidity going on. You need enough number of buyers and sellers at the same time. In such a fragmented market, a lot of people are going to get killed.
00:22:37
Speaker
We are very clear on that. But we have started something. We had to go on. So we kept on building the product. So this is the time. We were almost like a week before our launch. We are making the final touches. Then this big shot came. No, no. I think you opened up for registration. Registrations were happening. We had opened up for registrations. But the product launch was still a week away.
00:23:03
Speaker
And this time the shock came. RBI sent the circular out. It said banks cannot deal with crypto entities. So this was like a shocker for a lot of people, even for us. You had spent like, we have quit in September, October. It has been like five, six crazy months. We have built a good product. We did all the testing and it's almost ready. Just in the nick of the time when this happens, we went crazy. What do we do?
00:23:32
Speaker
Then we started looking at the market, like how this is working in other markets. In China, same thing was there. So peer-to-peer was the solution.
00:23:43
Speaker
marketplace model what happens is we are in its group or both say you are looking to sell bitcoins you will deposit Bitcoin in my exchange the buyer who wants to buy he deposits money in my bank account I recognize okay I have received both then you do make an agreement okay you are selling at X price is buying at Y price okay there's some auto matching happen then you can withdraw the money to your bank account he can withdraw because to his bank account so not it is valid right
00:24:11
Speaker
But now, since I cannot have a bank account, I cannot take money from him. I cannot do an escrow. So what we did is we made the model slightly different. I still am in the escrow for the cryptocurrencies. For you to sell Bitcoin, you'll just transfer it to my exchange. But the buyer, he will not send money to me. He will send the money directly to you. After this, you give a confirmation.
00:24:36
Speaker
You have received the money and based on that, I'll release the coins to the buyer. So
Early Customer Acquisition
00:24:42
Speaker
this is called peer-to-peer model. So we realized, okay, so far we didn't have a USB. Customer support was the USB, but it's going to be a hard sell. Now we got something that's really unique and this is what the customer wants. There was a huge panic in the market. However, the good thing is the RBA gave a three months moratorium.
00:25:03
Speaker
People are really worried what is going to happen after three months. Should I hold on to my bitcoins? And this is a proper thing that's happening, right? So should I hold on to my bitcoins? Should I sell on all those things? So when we took like three, four days, we built this product. And we said, you don't have to worry. Even after three months, whatever, you can still continue to do trade. Join JOTS. And this worked beautifully.
00:25:30
Speaker
Right. We, we, so this was almost, we realized it was a blessing in disguise. Right. Otherwise, you are saying the India's crypto, like most customer friendly cryptocurrency exchange, this one would have pitched to a lot of customers, would have been a very hard sell convincing people. Right. But so what happened is we had both spot exchange and P2P going on at the same time. A lot of people joined because of P2P, but they started trading in the spot exchange because spot exchange is so. What is, what is spot exchange?
00:26:00
Speaker
the order book based order book based. So a lot of people started trading in the order book one day because P2P is not so easy, right? We have to wait for the giveaway to be converted. Yeah, there's friction. I have to wait for you to say, okay, I received the money. It might take one hour, wait for the money to reach you. And there'll be limits, beneficiary after the admission. So all these problems are there and people are not ready to trust and all those things.
00:26:23
Speaker
But our spot exchange was a huge success and we got a lot of customers. Then we started working. We know this spot exchange is going to be there for three months. After that, we have to ensure that there is a smooth experience for the customers. So we started adding features. We were the first guys to, and we were the only guys to give insurance. So what generally happens in these kinds of things is one buyer or seller might try to prod the other guy.
00:26:51
Speaker
What the buyer would do is, he will say I have sent the money, but he may not have sent the money. So, it goes to a dispute. At the same time, you may have received the money, but you will claim I have never received the money. So, then I have to do a, I have to check, take the, see the thing is we had a full proof process.
00:27:08
Speaker
I'll ask for a bank statement from both you guys. I know that the money has been sent, received, all those things, right? Even if you are trying to forge the document, I can make you come on a video call, do a screen share, make you do a net banking because it's a very clear this thing. You have paid the money or not paid the money. The other person has received the money or not received the money. This can be resolved, but customer had the doubts, right?
00:27:30
Speaker
So we created an insurance project. So if a dispute resolution goes wrong, and you have been wrongly, you have to forfeit the cryptocurrency or the money, we will reimburse up to one full Bitcoin reset. And again, this gave contents for a lot of customers.
00:27:48
Speaker
We started for anyone who was placing the peer-to-peer order for the first time. We made a call to them. See, because we're very small, we could do things like this that the larger players could not do, right? We could call each individual buyer and seller and educate them, okay? Though WazirX also pivoted to peer-to-peer, no? I think they also... People tell us what we are doing. They all started... So CoinX launched something called a loop. WazirX launched a peer-to-peer model, right?
00:28:13
Speaker
So most of the other players, they realized that P2P is the only way to survey and they all moved to P2P. How did you acquire customers? Was it through like ad spend, like Google, Facebook and all that? Yes,
Maintaining Customer Engagement
00:28:28
Speaker
you cannot do that.
00:28:30
Speaker
For cryptocurrencies, exchanges, Google, Facebook, they don't allow ads. Some people bypass it one way or the other. But had it been the way, that would have been the easy way out for us. We would have spent like lakhs and lakhs of rupees to acquire our initial set of customers. But since that option was not available, we had to do it through the hard way.
00:28:49
Speaker
Right. We started going to the communities. There are a lot of telegram communities at that point in time. Facebook groups started saying, like, this is what we are. These are principles. This is what we offer and what we promise is a good customer support. And we have to do like one one is to one conversion.
00:29:06
Speaker
But majority of our acquisition had come from a referral model, right? A lot of the customer acquisition in Geotas, even till date, you know, comes from the reference system model. Like, do you have a reference scheme? Reference scheme, you know, we give 60% of the earning we take from the customers back to the referral, right? If earning in the first transaction or like... All the transactions. Define earning. So now, suppose if I take... We give it for the first one year.
00:29:36
Speaker
So basically, if I'm getting 100 rupees earning from the customer, I give 60 rupees to the person who's referred him and 40 rupees we take back. So this referral model got in a lot of customer. See, the good thing with this is, though a lot of people could talk about a big customer base and all, the active customer base percentage in geodos is much, much better. Because the customer who we had acquired was majorly through referral.
00:30:05
Speaker
Right now, all these people acquired during the majority of the customer base was acquired during the time when there was a tough time for the Indian market, right? When the P2P was there and everything. So these are the set of customers who are wanting to trade no matter what. They're the true believers. Right. So the active customer base, the active trade base is usually what we track. It's much, much higher. The higher it is, which is which is more than 60% is here in Georgia, which is a huge number.
00:30:34
Speaker
So, this helped us. Now, even if I go start with doing a lot of advertisement spends and everything, we're pretty sure our base is going to increase, which we will be doing for sure, but how much percentage of people are going to be actively trading will start reducing.
00:30:51
Speaker
till now the gem has been that ok these are referred by a person who is already believes in your exchange. So, now in this model what happens right when why does he refer us he thinks that you know so and so for example, I say we are very very responsive right a customer is responsive he says that and gets this guys to trade with us.
00:31:09
Speaker
So, that particular branding what we wanted to do keep spreading, right? You join this because of this good factor, right? So, ideally that is one of the reasons why that, you know, now one of the key questions you had asked, right? Why Geotas?
00:31:23
Speaker
Why not, you know, why such a tough name? Easy name, like a coin something. Did you notice, you know, when you were talking about the exchanges during 2017 or 18, you were trying to say coin DCX or anything, you were not able to recall coin X quickly.
00:31:41
Speaker
The thing is, generally when you're naming what happens, usually in a crypto space you will find companies either having a coin with them or an ex with them or a bit with them. You just try to see all the names so it will have these three. So what generally happens, imagine during the time we were talking about 30 to 35 exchanges that were
00:32:06
Speaker
What is the EX coming from? Like what is the exchange? Okay. That's why coin X. Okay. Bitfine X. Okay. A lot of X comes, right? So what happens now? Now imagine we were there during a time when 35 people were there in the market and 35 more people were wanting to come into the market.
00:32:25
Speaker
Everyone will come with a combination of all this, right? So, how do I grab a real estate space in the customer's mind, right? The only way we thought is to do is, okay, now leave all these names, right? Have a name which is going to talk about our philosophy.
00:32:41
Speaker
Right. Let's have a bad ground story rather than saying X or coin or bit or anything like that. This is what we wanted to see. Now, Arjun was talking about the face when there was a P2P and everything, right? That was, it was a, you know, boon in disguise. In P2P, there is a need for a lot of interaction with the support. There's a need, inbuilt need. Yeah, you need a lot of, yeah. Because there's so much friction, so you need a lot of bad will intervention. Whatever you're saying.
00:33:11
Speaker
So, there is a lot of manual intervention required and we were the only guys, you know, even then and till now giving the regionalised support. Right? We give support in all the South Indian languages. Now, we are offering and even in Bengali, Oriya, Gujarati we are adding up. Right? So, a lot of regionalised support till date we are the only guys for delivery. So, this helps. Right? Now, this phase right now what happened now even in 2020 when the Supreme Court word it came.
00:33:40
Speaker
What we did, you know, we had a concept that, okay, now at some point of time, there's going to be some clarity. When that clarity comes, we will be the first guys to have a solution ready in hand, right? Two, two and a half months before this word came, you know, I think we were lucky to do at that point of time. We had already gone and integrated with someone who can help us enable instant deposit. Okay. Instant deposit is, you know, for each customer, there will be a bank account number that we'll be giving.
00:34:10
Speaker
You transfer amount to that account number within a matter of seconds. It'll reflect in the first year. How much did you have as your gross transaction value? Like first year of business. Consider monthly basis, no monthly trade volume. We used to do somewhere around maybe a million or two millions, right? On a simple dollars dollars, you're talking about a simple comparison. You know, on a normal day, we do two to three million today.
00:34:39
Speaker
Okay. On a normal day, right? If it's a big day and then it goes crazy, right? So that's the growth, right? Pre and post and your post the verdict has come. And how many users did you have in 2020? Maybe 40,000 or 30,000 users, right? Now we are sitting in more than 4,000 users. Also the other, remember is 2018 was a bear market.
00:35:09
Speaker
One of the reasons why a lot of coin delta, coin x, all these people went out of their business was people thought Bitcoin was illegal at that point of time, though it was not. It was clearly said it's legal even at that point of time, but people had this perception and it was a bad market. So the new customers
KYC Process at Geotas
00:35:27
Speaker
kind of became zero, like only the existing players are there. But at that point of time, these businesses had built a huge team and they were not profitable at that point of time.
00:35:38
Speaker
the volumes were not able, they were not able to support that. But thankfully, we are just starting at that point of time, we ensure that we didn't, our team, even right now, our team size is kind of small, the volume that we do.
00:35:50
Speaker
where employee or volume should be one of the highest in the industry. But we are very clear. We have to have a lean setup. So in crypto business, one of the most important things are any startup. The key thing is surviving for four to five years. You face a lot of almost near-death events.
00:36:09
Speaker
in those three to four years. But once you cross that stage, you already have a product market fit, you have a loyal customer base. After that, killing you becomes next to impossible. So we ensured we had a lean team. We prioritized security over anything. In 2018-19, if you look at it, we'd have had the fewest number of coins.
00:36:31
Speaker
or like new products. But we ensured that we didn't get hacked because once you get hacked you are killed. What is the percentage of users who are active like out of these 4 lakh users that you have?
00:36:44
Speaker
60 percentage plus. How do you define active? Or is there a standard industry norm of defining active? No, no, there's no. Apart from the KYC norm that we all industry place have agreed to, there's obviously nothing standard. So we take three month trade. Okay. At least one transaction in the last three months. One transaction in the last three months. Got it. Any meaningful transaction.
00:37:09
Speaker
And what is the customer onboarding journey? What is the KYC requirement?
00:37:15
Speaker
See, the customer has to submit his or her bank card, and then a secondary proof, which is the address proof, an ADAR, or a voter ID, or a passport, or a driving license, right? So we do a check with the government databases to ensure if whatever the card that they provided, the names and everything match and the details match, right? And then we also ask for their bank account through which that they're going to transact.
00:37:43
Speaker
We again do a check if the bank account and the Adarkar names match, if it's their account. Once that is done, then we approve the KYC of the customer.
00:37:55
Speaker
Right. And how much time does it take for approval? Five minutes, because it's all APA integrations. And I mean, so there's a lot of AI and everything that's got followed. And usually 90% it takes five minutes, 10% where the image is not clear. There's some issue, either it's approved or rejected. Either of that 90% are either approved or rejected. 10% will read a manual intervention.
00:38:22
Speaker
So people need to type in or they just scan and then the image, you pass the other number from the image. So both features are there. I mean, we pass it and put it, but people have to update if it has passed it wrongly. So again, that's what a manual intervention might be needed. Maybe it's a blurred photo and things like that. Though we say it beforehand, the image is blurred. At times, it might get accepted and the OCR might not do a good job.
00:38:51
Speaker
And for first trade, what is needed? Like they have to first transfer money to you, to the exchange. So see the processes. So usually I know now the way it works. It's not like an Amazon checkout where I choose my product, click buy and I'm going to a payment gateway. It's not like that. No. See, what we do is we ensure that customers start positive. We give free cryptocurrencies to start off with. Right. So even before you do any activity, you can claim your free cryptocurrencies.
00:39:21
Speaker
What do you give us? We used to give MATIC, then MATIC really got expensive. When we started giving MATIC a dollar, so around 50-60 paisa, then it went all the way up to 150-200 rupees. So we moved to a coin called BitTorrent. We actually, we are keeping, we are even choosing coins, we had actually a partnership with MATIC.
00:39:44
Speaker
where we were promoting Matic initially, right? We launched Matic, I mean, we still believe a lot in the project as well, right? So it was Matic and then now it is BTT, right? But there's more to create excitement among customers, right? This will keep changing. So currently it is BTT, BitTorrent. Why did
Geotas vs Other Exchanges
00:40:03
Speaker
you add this friction of loading your wallet first? Like, why not make it like Amazon that you place your order and then you go to a payment gateway?
00:40:11
Speaker
See, the first thing here is you cannot assure the price. For example, someone locks one Bitcoin. By the time the 50 lakh reaches us, the price of one Bitcoin might be 60 lakhs or 40 lakhs. And if it goes to 40 lakhs, he'll just cancel the order. Why should I pay 50 lakhs for something that's worth 40 lakhs? And if it goes to 60 lakhs, I will be ranked resident. So it's better to preload the money and then make the purchase.
00:40:40
Speaker
You need to close the trade instantly, like there can be no delay, whereas payment gateway, there will be at least a minute or two of delay by the time you. Absolutely. And payment gateway also holds an inventory, right? And the inventory, the price doesn't change a lot. Here there's a lot of volatility. So there's almost like margin requirements in stocks, right?
00:40:59
Speaker
Even in stock market, this is the principle and processes that are followed. So is this the case for all crypto exchanges? Everyone makes you load first. The thing is you cannot, it's a heavily volatile market here, right? Like Arjun said, you cannot promise the price for more than some time. Let's see, for example, the one-click model, what we are showing here, we are actually promising a price.
00:41:23
Speaker
right tilts the max amount we are promising a price. So, that is a risk that the exchange is taking right and how are we handling the risk by adding some margin to it.
00:41:32
Speaker
So, it might be a good product for beginners because a beginner might end up losing more in an open order book exchange without knowing how to place an order. It will work good for a beginner to buy it in the two-way court model, the easy buy and sell as we call it or the one-click option. As you see, this product was also built as an evolution model for the customer. The beginner will start with this and then they will slowly start moving towards the open order book exchange where they generate a lot of value for themselves.
00:42:05
Speaker
And we are offering, it's been more than 100 plus cryptos they are offering to trade. The more you research, the more you try each and every coin, the platform will be much more useful for you. So you start with Bitcoin, Ethereum. That's the gradual progression that we are seeing with people. Apart from there is another progression that we, type of progression we are seeing with people is where they start with a meme coin, SHIB or Doge.
00:42:31
Speaker
They try to ride the wave and after sometime they realize that these waves are short-lived and then they come to the Bitcoin Ethereum route.
00:42:42
Speaker
So the two systems of buying that you have, is this common across others like CoinDCX, CoinSwitch, WazirX? Do they all have these two systems like closed book and open book? If you can help me understand the characteristics of each of these players and how it compares with you, just as a lay of the land, what does the industry look like? If you have both, if you don't touch it. For example, CoinSwitch Kibir has
00:43:08
Speaker
only this two-way code model, this one-click model. They don't have an open-order book model. Wazarex has an open-order book. And what is the coin switch pitch then that they must be saying that this is a better approach. What is their pitch to a customer? Their pitch is like this is the convenient way to buy crypto.
00:43:33
Speaker
So it's easy for the masses like that's their pitch like hassle free easy. So this is for a naive investor, right? If you have like, if you find this everything is complex, you'll be paying higher, but you will find it easy. Right? Yeah. And they're reaching out to new set of customers to their marketing initiatives, right? And so a lot of people enter through this model, but what we believe is they'll mature and then they'll start using the open order model. Open, open. And what about DCX? What is their approach? They have both.
00:44:02
Speaker
Okay. And they have by option. They don't have a cell option in the two way court model. And then they have an order book.
00:44:12
Speaker
Okay. What would be the ranking of these players and like, you know, like you told me, you did two, $3 million of GTV per day. What do these other players say? When I see volume wise, right? So it's a game, if you see volume by C1, there is no clear-cut understanding of volume though the volumes are being quoted in coin market cap. There's always a question of what the exchanges are quoting. But volume wise, if you see, I think Wazarex will do a higher volume compared to others.
00:44:42
Speaker
How much would they be doing like their daily volume? Yeah, that is what they quote in coin market cap could be something but it'll be tough for me to come. I'm pretty not sure if that's what they're doing. No, what do they quote like just to understand the 40 million. Okay, so they are about 10x of you currently. And these are the coin switch and coin. The coin switch they don't give their volumes.
00:45:12
Speaker
Because it's a closed order book, it's very difficult to find and they don't share the volumes. Coin DCX,
Cryptocurrencies as Investments
00:45:18
Speaker
they also have a liquidity sharing. So, they accumulate liquidity from multiple other international exchanges and then they share a cumulative overall volume. So, some of the volume is actually what they do and rest of them is actually pulled from other exchanges.
00:45:36
Speaker
So I thought like, like, you know, these US exchanges, like the names we hear about, like, I think Coinbase. Yeah, I thought these would be the biggest ones. Like, yes. Like, because that's Coinbase is big. See Coinbase is in the regulated space, right? They offer their services in US, I think, and very few other countries, maybe Singapore, things like that. So Binance and Bitfinex, they offer the services across the globe.
00:46:06
Speaker
So they are connected to more users. For example, Indian users cannot access Coinbase. Right, right. Okay. So these exchanges like Bitfinex and Binance, they don't have like a KYC norm because they're not part of any country. They do have. So before like three, four years back, it used to be very lax. But recently, like a lot of agencies are coming against them.
00:46:28
Speaker
So, each of them have made their own changes. Like Bitfinex has a very strict ABC norm, right? Binance, there used to be like up to two Bitcoins, which is like a crore now, you don't need a KVAC, right? Now, they have reduced that limit to 0.06 Bitcoin, right, per email icon, right? So, things are getting more and more stringent.
00:46:46
Speaker
But so the thing is they don't have a regulated license to operate. So they're like incorporated in some in one of those places where there is no regulation or favorable or favorable crypto regulation. Okay. And which is why Wazirix, I think they have that collaboration with Binance, right? Binance has bought Wazirix.
00:47:09
Speaker
which allows them to offer liquidity. So talk to me about the type of coins. I think the way you have different items in a restaurant menu and everything is meant for a certain need or whatever. So similarly, I think there are different types of coins. So talk to me about them. What are the different kinds of coins? And which coin is for what type of person? From the investor perspective, there are multiple ways to categorize coins.
00:47:37
Speaker
There is the DeFi coins, NFT coins, platform coins, and then there is the currency, yeah, stable coin, currency coins. But from an investor perspective, the way for any new investor, how we educate is, when you enter a stock market,
00:47:55
Speaker
What is the advice you get? You invest in a large cap or a blue chip to start off with. You have no clue. It's very difficult to go wrong by investing in a TCS or a HDSP or a HUL. If you're in the similar comparison, here you start with Bitcoin.
00:48:13
Speaker
The biggest problem Indian investors have is, or like maybe this is across the world, right? One Bitcoin is already $65,000, already above 50 lakh rupees, right? They think it's too late, right? But if you look at it in the last perspective, it's just 10 years old, this overall take us. We have a long way to go.
00:48:34
Speaker
Two years back, people thought they were too late to invest in Bitcoin. Six months back, people thought they were too late to invest in Bitcoin. So this is something that people always have. And see, when you are buying gold, right, gold is one kg, I think more than four or five crores. But you can still buy a gram, right? You don't go and buy 10 kilos of iron just because it's so cheap.
00:48:55
Speaker
But not many people want to have a lot of coins rather than having a fraction of a single coin. This happens in startup also. There's a saying, it's better to own 50% of 100 crore startup than 100% of a 1 crore startup.
00:49:12
Speaker
So, this is the normal advice they give. When you are entering new, when you don't know a lot about a lot of coins, don't invest in this meme coin, don't invest in this high risk coin, because already you are taking a risk by investing in cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are risky asset plans. It promises you 10x. At the same time, because there's a 10x possibility, there's also a possibility of a zero. So, in that, choose a safe asset, which is Bitcoin. And after Bitcoin, it's Ethereum.
00:49:39
Speaker
So Bitcoin is like the blue chip category. So what are the other categories? Very close to Bitcoin, right? Okay. These are both like blue chip category. So everything after that, it's almost like angel investing, right? You need to look at the team, right? Are they in the trend?
00:49:59
Speaker
So, but, but what team, these are decentralized. There is no, there is no owners of a coin, right? Like what, what is, what do you mean that you need to look at what happened is there's a guy called Satoshi Nakamoto. You always need a founder, right? You need someone to kickstart things that idea comes from a team or a founder, right? He starts. And so it's just like an two way, like how geota started initially, there's no buyer, right? I initially, there's no seller when there is a buyer who is coming is not finding a salary. It goes away, right?
00:50:29
Speaker
We need to work hard to build that critical mass, to build that community, to build that user base. Once that is set, then things can get automated. After that, you no longer need the original person. You don't need to do all these kinds of things. So in the same way, each and every coin has a founder and a founding team, development team. So they kickstart things. It is their mission that is being transformed into a project.
00:50:56
Speaker
And what happens is after Bitcoin, Ethereum came, so there is Vitalik Buterin, right? So, generally the developers keep some part of that coin for themselves, right? It is in to their advantage. There's an incentive mechanism, just like Aesop's Vikram had. This is like the Aesop for them, right? If the value of, if they do a very good job, the value of that coin rises and they make a lot of money. So they have this incentive, right?
00:51:23
Speaker
So all these coins generally have a developer team. And they all have, for example, Solano team. Each of them will hold some amount of Solano tokens. Generally, 15 to 20 percentage is allocated for the developers. 20% is used for marketing activities. 10% is for legal. And 40% is sold to the public. So this kind of arrangement exists in all these coins that do ICOs. So when it comes to cryptocurrencies, first you have to understand
00:51:51
Speaker
the question that you are saying, what are the different types of currencies? So the thing is the application. What is Bitcoin used for? Bitcoin is very uniquely positioned. It's a currency. There's no way to measure effectiveness of a currency.
00:52:08
Speaker
Right. It's just about collective belief that what everywhere. Right. So just like gold, you might find a new element, like say platinum or rhodium that is 100 times like we talk about how noble it is. It doesn't react after even 1000 years gold under the earth. If you take it out, it's still gold. Those kind of elements you can still find. But because over 4000 years, people have built gold is the best thing. It's very difficult to dislocate that thought.
00:52:35
Speaker
Nowadays, people are making artificial diamonds, which is better than the original diamonds. But still, people start seeing campaigns like why you have to buy the original diamond and all those things. Same here. So, it is very difficult for another currency to topple Bitcoin. There are a lot of currencies like Tezos, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash. All of them are, in one way or the other, they are the currencies.
00:53:02
Speaker
but they are finding it very difficult to topple Bitcoin.
00:53:05
Speaker
But Bitcoin is very public, right? All the transactions, you can see right from 2009 when it started to till date, all the transactions that have happened from which address to which address, how much coins have moved, all these things can be tracked. So people are saying there should be some anonymity. So there is some privacy coins, right? For example, Zcash, Monero. OK, this is their USB, right? This is the respect to the currency part. The next is the platform.
00:53:33
Speaker
Okay, if you look at Ethereum, what Ethereum simply is, it's like a decentralized Google Play Store. So when you create an app, you take permission from Google, and then you upload that app into the Play Store. Similarly, you can create a DAP, decentralized app, and launch it in the Ethereum platform. Right? And it's all paper used. So there's no censorship. Anyone who wants to create a DAP, they can go ahead and launch in Ethereum without asking for permission or anything.
00:54:02
Speaker
And it's pay as you go. If you are making one transaction on that network, you pay, what is the gas fee? Okay. It cost me a hundred. What is gas? All those weighing machines are there in the bus stands, right? You put one rupee and you get this thing. It's similar. So Ethereum is like the weighing machine. Anyone who wants to run an application on that, they are going to consume some computing resources, right?
00:54:30
Speaker
They'll do five multiplications, 10 additions, huge for it. And these computing resources are provided by the miners. Yes. So there is a pool of miners who provide computing resources, and those computing resources are accessed by the dApps. And in return for accessing those resources, the dApps pay in Ethereum to the miners. Like the miners mine Ethereum, which is a way of
00:54:56
Speaker
getting paid for providing the computing resources. If you talk about mining, so miners have two incentives. One is the transaction fee that we pay. Second is new coins being minted. Like if you talk about how bitcoins are created, this is how it's created. Every time they add a block, some new bitcoins are issued. This is how bitcoins come into existence. Same thing happens. So miners will have two income streams. One is the transaction fee that we pay. Second is the mining reward, people call it. So this is about Ethereum.
00:55:26
Speaker
So, Ethereum, all these dApps spoke. These are all innovate tokens. For example, look at what Uber is doing. Uber is doing a very easy job. It finds the nearest driver and allocates to the rider. If this logic I can take and put it into the Ethereum blockchain, right now I'm paying 35 percentage cut.
00:55:52
Speaker
Right. So why should I pay 35% each cut for doing the simple match? Just like how Wikipedia exists, right? You don't pay for accessing data from Wikipedia, right? So similarly, I'm creating an Uber, like a DAP and putting it on the blockchain and a driver and rider, they can do the match themselves. And this middle man is eliminated. So similarly, each and every transaction, you can, you can put it decently as way of doing it. You can do it for azomato, you can do it for an Amazon.
00:56:23
Speaker
You can do it for the social media network. For me to watch your photos, why do I need Facebook permission and why does Facebook have access to your photos? And the key important thing about these cryptocurrencies is they need a blockchain platform. All these miners are protecting the platform in a way.
00:56:43
Speaker
But if you want to create a small application, you don't want to do all these things from scratch, having your own nodes, your own blockchain, your own set of miners. So what you can do is your application, you just create and run it on Ethereum. Just like how we don't have our own servers, we just use the AWS servers. Ethereum provides this entire pre-built set of templates and you can just run operations on that. But the problem with Ethereum is there's a lot of traffic now. A lot of dApps are created.
00:57:13
Speaker
like this USDT Tether and a lot of tokens like Chainlink, all these tokens, they all run on Ethereum, right? Okay. What is the difference between token and coin? Ethereum is a coin. On a other blockchain platform. Okay, Ethereum is a coin, but people actually use it, what to say,
00:57:37
Speaker
both interchangeably. So sometimes they mean token when they say coin and it kind of became a normal thing. So you don't even have to correct them. But normally there are two different things. Some coins have their own blockchain. Tokens generally they don't have their own blockchain. They piggyback on a larger blockchain and use their computing resources and then they pay.
00:57:58
Speaker
Right. And basically a blockchain is like a decentralized AWS
Decentralization Advantages
00:58:03
Speaker
where these miners are providing storage and computing power in exchange for coins. Because these are more like applications. I kind of always compare it to the Play Store. Right. So each of them has a specific app because a normal retail customer, he has no clue how an AWS works. Right. So for him, it's easy to understand. Okay. There's a Google Play Store. I can go and use the apps and run on it.
00:58:28
Speaker
So this is what Ethereum does. But Ethereum does a lot of traffic. So for even sending and doing a small transaction, it takes 1000, 1500 rupees for each and every transaction. For example, sending one USDT from my account to Vikram's account, it's a transaction.
00:58:48
Speaker
because the costs are high because in blockchain what happens is they are not kept things free if it is free what happens is it what happens to your email right there is a lot of spam to prevent spam there is a fee that you allocate since there's no censorship higher the fee you pay higher the priority you get
00:59:07
Speaker
So when there's a lot of traffic, what happens is each of them start outbidding others. For me, this transaction is really important. I'll pay 2,000 rupees for this transaction to pass through. Someone pays 2,500 to pass through. So because of it... So his pass is through first? Okay. Yes. So either you go for slow and cheap on Ethereum or you go for fast and expensive.
00:59:27
Speaker
Yes, yes. So you have that choice. Sometimes I don't have to pay him immediately. I've got next two, three days may, whenever it reaches him, it's okay. In that case, you can pay a low gas fee. So these things exist. But so what, but there is a bottleneck. There's a problem with Ethereum condition, right? So there are a lot of other blockchains which are saying they are solving it. Solano is one. Solana is one, right? Then there is Luna, this Tron, EOS,
00:59:56
Speaker
The key part is... And what is their positioning? Like what is Solana's positioning or what is Solana's pitch to people that why they should choose Solana over Ethereum? See, all these people, what they promise is throughput. They support 3,300,000 transactions per second, 400,000 transactions per second. That's what they are trying to do.
01:00:17
Speaker
Talk about. And which Ethereum does not support. Let me pitch in here. Actually, so what they're doing is the same problem is being solved with different solutions here. So what Ethereum is trying to solve, it's through the way through which a transaction will get accepted or be mined. Ethereum is trying to solve through a new concept called proof of stake now.
01:00:39
Speaker
There's another blockchain which allows a different concept called proof of history. So each of this platform is trying to find a new solution to accept a transaction or process a transaction. So this new solution, right, is the one which decides what is the throughput they will have.
01:00:56
Speaker
The new solution is it allowing 1000 transactions per second or 5000 transactions per second. Now, there are two problems that will come in, right? Now, one solution is saying I am okay to allow 10000 transactions per second. Then the biggest question comes is how secure are they, right? What is Ethereum working on? Now, I am saying this is my throughput but my solution has been proven for the last 5 to 6 years to be solid.
01:01:20
Speaker
Now, what Bitcoin says, okay, my throughput is even lesser than the Ethereum's throughput, but the solution that I'm providing is so solid and it's run for 11 years without any issue, right? So, two key parameters. Throughput is what? Order security. And third is decentralization. There are blockchains like Ripple, which is heavily centralized. It's almost like a Visa Mastercard. There's like one computing system that's causing all the transactions. So, in that case, you
Blockchain Scalability Solutions
01:01:48
Speaker
can even offer a million transactions per second.
01:01:50
Speaker
There's no issue. But when you want to do it in a decentralized way, when you want to have multiple people. What is the advantage of going decentralized? Why not just use Ripple? It will probably be cheaper also. Then there's a middleman. Then you're going back to the old ways of having a Facebook or Google in the middle. I'll give you a simple example. Now, Ripple, for example, any coin, suppose you have printed 1 million coins, you're put into circular shift.
01:02:18
Speaker
Now, I am a centralized, you know centralized company like Ripple or anyone. Okay, now you have purchased 10,000 of that coin and they're valued at for example, each coin is wired at 10,000 rupees. Tomorrow I decide the centralized guy, I decide I'll print one more 1 million coin. What is going to happen? Your value drops heavily, right? This is one of the major reason why Bitcoin came in, right? Now whenever there's a centralized authority and they do monetary easing,
01:02:46
Speaker
Unless only your value is getting slashed out, right? So that is what happens. Yeah. So what we can say is happens, right? The new guy says, I'm not going to be like the old guy, right? Maybe ripple has this problem, but I am going to be very honest. I am going to be corruption, but then it's going to be same thing. So the thing is, don't trust a person, trust the blockchain, right? So these are called trustless systems. You don't have to trust 1% to be ethical.
01:03:13
Speaker
Right. One person should be the system is designed in such a way that there is no incentive to actually said that it is said that even if there are all crooks running the system till they cannot, you know, make any mistake. Right. So that's why. So in a bank, if there's like one insider employee who is willing to compromise the credentials, you're able to hack it. So here anyone can participate. So it's assumed that the hacker is part of the network.
01:03:44
Speaker
Even then, they are not able to do anything. That is the power of this network. That is why centralization is not good. At any point in time, that guy can say, I'm going to switch off this network or take a drastic decision. Or get hacked. That is also a risk. See, look at all the bank servers. Sunday, there is a downtime. In the nighttime, there is a downtime. Bitcoin has been running for 10 years. There's no downtime.
01:04:09
Speaker
because there's no centralization in this thing. It's spread through. Of course, the throughput cannot be matched. Banks will process much more transactions. But this throughput again, this throughput problem is the internet problem. In 1990s, we had 56 KBBS, 28 KBBS models. Crewput and bandwidth issues are always solved eventually.
01:04:29
Speaker
So, today it is not it may be a problem may be 5 years 10 years down the line because you will have a higher throughput because they are implementing one solution after the other. There is a lightning network there is a snore signature that they are bringing in which will make it much more compact your theorem is bringing sharding
01:04:45
Speaker
And
Crypto Investment Strategies
01:04:46
Speaker
there's also layer 2 solutions. Still now I spoke about platform. So the thing is, now these platform coins are very important. In the sense, what they have done, they have created industries, larger industries within the crypto space. Now, if I take for example, in an equity market, what you will do, the strategy will be have a multi-cap fund that you will invest in.
01:05:10
Speaker
Spread it across or else what you will do, you will do sector specific investments, right? Till some 4 to 5 years back these clear-cut industries were not there in cryptos.
01:05:22
Speaker
Now all the coins that were created, they were solving some tech problem which a customer was not able to relate to. Now with these platforms, now like Ethereum platform like Arjun was saying, you can build an application as such. One of the largest industry that has gotten built in this is the DeFi industry.
01:05:42
Speaker
Lending, savings account, and all the models that you're seeing, providing liquidity, a decentralized exchange, a DEX as people call it, right? All this has been possible because these platforms have come into being. Now you see from tech point of view and from the investment point of view. From tech point of view, what has happened? A platform has been built, which is helping throughput, be it Ethereum, which is the largest platform now where a lot of dApps are being built, where DeFi is currently holding a larger share now.
01:06:12
Speaker
Now, these same products can also be built in other platforms with the promise of a better throughput and a better security even. Like Solano, NFTs, there's a lot of promise that people are putting on Solano for NFTs and all. Now, what you can choose? Now, platform which can win in future can be one type of investment or you split your investment and put it into different platforms.
01:06:36
Speaker
Now, in the platform itself, let's see if you're not betting into the platforms, you're betting into the industries. Now, what are all the industries? DeFi is an industry. NFT is an industry. Now, stablecoin per se is an industry, but I don't look it as an investment opportunity per se. Now, platform and then industries which are getting created. But people use stablecoins across. For example, USDT is the most popular. If you take Loona, for example, they have a stablecoin that is directly related to the token Loona.
01:07:07
Speaker
okay there's a terra and there is a stable coin so what is happening is for creating that stable coin issuing one dollar of stable coin you need to burn some amount of luna right so the more and more people use that stable coin the supply of luna will reduce by that much and the luna's price will increase
01:07:29
Speaker
So, Vikram might say stable coins, you may not look at the investment, but you can observe stable coins and see which are the platforms people are actively using and based on that say USDT is existing on multiple platforms. You can use it on Tron network, you can use it on Celo network, you can use it on Ethereum network. You can see the interaction and find which is the most popular platform that we also see. So far we have spoken about this. Let us talk about MATIC. MATIC is one of the biggest projects to come out of India.
01:07:56
Speaker
not one of the the biggest project and they have an amazingly simple solution to reduce congestion in Ethereum. So, Ethereum congestion you can think it as a road that goes through the city right. They are asking why should all the traffic be routed through the city right, why do not we create a bypass, but in that way
01:08:17
Speaker
If everything goes through the bypass also, there's an issue, right? You don't trust that bypass. You trust this as the main thing. So what Matic does is it's called a layer two solution, lot of heavy transactions and all those things. You do it in Matic network, but the key results to prove that these are the things that have happened. I go back and store it in the Ethereum network.
01:08:40
Speaker
Okay. So a lot of applications, games, right? Well, you need intensive computation. They all started moving to Matic because it provides a security of Ethereum network without compromising on the throughput, right? In the future, there can be multiple layers to solutions and one main network like Ethereum. See also, you see a lot of winner take all effects. In search, there's just Google, right? In social media, there's Facebook, e-commerce, Amazon. So similarly,
01:09:08
Speaker
maybe 10 years from now, there may be just one platform like Ethereum, right? Or it could be just Solano. Like Vikram was saying, there are different industries working on different platforms. Like if you bet on DeFi, then you should buy Ethereum. No, let's do this. No, see what is happening. Each token that is built on top of DeFi
01:09:32
Speaker
a bit on top of Ethereum they are having their own value right. From an investment point of view right what you should be looking into is how I maintain a portfolio right. Now it is usually like how you start you get into a large cap Bitcoin and Ethereum.
01:09:47
Speaker
Then there are two options that are open to you. Are you going to go sector specific or are you going to, you know, have a multicap balanced investment, right? Suppose you are someone who's into reading, right? And you like reading technology. It is advisable to go sector specific. What will happen? You will start reading about DeFi. Like Arjun was quoting, right? Now, MATIC is going to help Ethereum's congestion. If you're someone who's being able to read this and understand this, you can pick up projects like this.
01:10:17
Speaker
Now, different problems are solving the same, solving the same issue differently, right? There's a, there's a platform called Polkadot, which is going with the concept of exclusivity of projects. Not every project can be there, right? Only, only chosen projects, right? They have a concept of Parachain and everything. Now, if you're someone who likes to read all these projects, you can take sector specific saying that I will invest in platform coins.
01:10:44
Speaker
If you got a, let's say a crore, what coin would you invest it in? Like what is your personal favorite that you would want to bet on? My favorite is Bitcoin, right? The second favorite is Ethereum. So the thing is making money is easy, but keeping that money is very difficult, right? So we have a crore in hand. The first thing that you have to protect your investment, right? Basically people say return on principle is less important than return off principle.
01:11:13
Speaker
So, it should not become zero. So, you put I will say 80 percentage in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The ratio can be different 60, 20, 40, 40, 30, 50. However you want you can do it. But I will say 80 percentage we have to stick to Bitcoin and Ethereum. 20 percentage I will take random wild bets.
01:11:35
Speaker
Yes, so 2% in Solana, 1% ship, 1% in Dodge, maybe they can go 10x or even 100x. So in that case, that 1% will give me the entire corpus back. But if it goes to 0, I'm still left with 99% intact. So I'm taking risk, but a very calculated risk. So that's how I do it.
01:11:59
Speaker
So first thing, you'll have to register us as the risky investors. That's why we are in this space. We have our own careers built here. See, ideally, we both are extreme believers of Bitcoin. So my huge chunk will always rest with Bitcoin. Maybe 50% will rest with Bitcoin. Now, the rest 50, I would try to split it across industries and platforms.
01:12:29
Speaker
Right? Now, I would part some in Ethereum, I would part some in Solano, some in Polkow.
01:12:37
Speaker
Ethereum
Exploring NFTs
01:12:38
Speaker
will have a higher percentage. I would put maybe 20% in Ethereum, 10-10% in other platforms. Like Solana and what else? I'm also a fan of Polkadot. I'll try to put in Polkadot. See, after this then comes further industry specific. Now I went to platforms and I'll try to put in industry specific. In DeFi I'll try to split. So 50% you'll put in Bitcoin. What about the remaining percent?
01:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, so maybe there's 20 in Ethereum, okay, 10 in Solano, 10 in Polkadot, right? Now, apart from this, then I'll do something industry-specific. I see, for example, in DeFi, I will try to choose one or two projects, right? Maybe a land or an app or a comp, you know, one or two projects which are there and going stable now for some time, right? After that, you know, we'll try to do something in NFT. NFT is a market that is growing and booming.
01:13:36
Speaker
either it's an NFT direct coin purchase or an NFT as such you know to be purchasing which is which is the thing that is booming right now right. What is an NFT coin? Okay see now the concept of non-fungible token is
01:13:52
Speaker
Now, every token like a Bitcoin or Ethereum, they are fungible. Fungible meaning if you are holding one Bitcoin, I am holding one Bitcoin, we can just swap it. Both are same one Bitcoin, right? In NFT, what happens? Each of these tokens have got different value, different perception, right? This is for sake of it, you have white t-shirt, I have white t-shirt, but your white t-shirt has got MS only signature in it. The value suddenly changes, right?
01:14:16
Speaker
So, in NFT coin, what happens in each of the tokens, you can associate some values to it. Now, the famous thing is the paintings. What is happening? There are digital arts and everything where you can associate with each of these tokens. So, the value for each of the tokens within a coin itself, it will vary. And which are the coins which are used for NFT?
01:14:39
Speaker
See, now, before seeing into NFT coins, right, you can also check into a lot of NFT platforms like OpenSea and everything. If you go and check out these coins, you know, you could go check out things which are being listed there, you'll find funny, like Theta is one, Mana is one, these are all NFT tokens. Try to check out OpenSea, you know, I think OpenSea runs on Solano if I'm not wrong.
01:15:05
Speaker
right? Where you will see a lot of these paintings. At times you will find what craziness is this?
Introduction to the Metaverse
01:15:10
Speaker
Why are these guys like, like, bored apes? Yeah, find a guy selling a stick, stick diagram for $10. But yeah, this is, you see, now, application wise, it's such a huge industry. Now, if you look into the concept of
01:15:27
Speaker
Metaverse, you know, why is Facebook suddenly talking about Metaverse, a virtual world and everything, right? This is reality that is going to happen, right? Now, when I'm talking about NFT, I'm also talking things like digital land to be owned, right? Now, imagine Facebook is trying to have the second life concept which came sometime back, where you will be having an avatar which is in the social media platform and everything and you'll be interacting.
01:15:57
Speaker
Imagine in that second life, you will be owning a land that you can sell it. So these concepts will look way too much to think now, right? But it is happening now, like for example, the people's art which got sold, right, for 250 million dollars or something that was, I'm not sure if you know it, it was an Indian who bought that painting, right? As a matter of fact, he's my Bitzpilani junior, right?
01:16:24
Speaker
So, he had bought it if you try to see what is the logic why he had spent so much money. So, he has his platform which is a virtual world that people can play in that virtual world.
01:16:37
Speaker
He is going to put it in one of the museum, virtual museum that he's going to build it. He's going to put this painting inside. People who want to view that painting is going to give an entry fee and go view the painting. This looks too much for someone who's not inside the world to understand. But this is the revenue model, right? This is a beautiful revenue model that he's making money out of.
01:16:56
Speaker
Right? So, you know, this NFT, they'll be parting somewhere, right? And the next main thing, right, I would also put some money into a very small percentage of, you know, less than a one percentage or something into these meme coins.
Investing in Meme Coins
01:17:10
Speaker
Why? Just for the fun of it. You crazily don't know what is going to kick in, right? Now, see, as a matter of fact, you might never know, Dodgecoin might sometimes become one of the leading coins, right? It has got the blockchain, it's got the mining power.
01:17:25
Speaker
Crazily everyone we thought that you know, this is the big thing that is going to happen. Right? So this is possible to happen. So I'll pass some and put in these meme coins as well. Right? But if you're going to ask me, am I going to put in all the coins which are going to end with the name Eno, Shibino or all the Eno, maybe Eno. Right? For the sake of betting and playing things, I'll put in one of these coins. Now, but ideally if you see what I've done is, each of this industry and year or year and a half back, they were nothing, they were very small.
01:17:54
Speaker
Now, for example, a decentralized exchange was so small, 2 to 3 years back, people are saying, who will
Functioning of DEXs
01:18:02
Speaker
put in DEX? Now, there are DEX. Now, there are projects, PancakeSwap and all these projects that have come up. So, these industries will grow as the bet. When the industries grow, you already have put in a project which has been proven for 6 to 8 months at least. 6 to 8 months is a big deal in the crypto industry.
01:18:22
Speaker
So that's how what I'll be trying to do is 50% in a large cap that I bet in, right? And Ethereum another 20%, it's 50 to 70% in large caps, then I go spirit across sectors. Now, even if one of the sectors grows big, I'll get my returns back.
01:18:40
Speaker
Okay. What are these DAX projects? Like you said, PancakeSwap, help me understand. Basically, we are all centralized exchanges. Okay. We run the show, right? Now imagine on the top of Ethereum or any of this platform, I write the logic
01:18:57
Speaker
saying that buyer and seller order matching do like this. And then you exchange the coins like this. So the whole exchange, what we are running here, just take the fiat part out of it. Still, fiat should be centralized because there's a bank that is involved in everything. Imagine a crypto to crypto trade that is being happening, right? You don't need an exchange for crypto. You don't need an exchange. There's just general logic that has to run and do. Here, the biggest challenge is liquidity.
01:19:26
Speaker
right, liquidity and what is the price that pays the biggest challenge here. So, in this scenario the all these projects what they do they try to solve the liquidity by giving incentive to the people who is providing liquidity right, if you go and put liquidity you will get some 1 percentage, 2 percentage, 3 percentage returns.
01:19:43
Speaker
Right? Then these projects. How do you put liquidity? Like you put up stuff for sale. Like if you put coin for sale, then you're providing liquidity. Let's consider it as simple as that. No, I'm going and putting like 1000 USDT for asset liquidity pool. I'm going to get returns from that. Right? Now that is the incentive for me to go put in liquidity there.
01:20:04
Speaker
Correct? The next main thing is these, these DEXs have to make sure that the prices are being perfectly driven, right? For example, based on the liquidity that is there, suppose if I am putting one Bitcoin purchase, I will get one price. 10 Bitcoin, the price will be higher because of the liquidity issues, right?
01:20:25
Speaker
So now the price management, everything should happen. This is done through one of the algorithms that they will have called a price oracle and stuff like that, which is a main concept, right? A DEX with a very good price oracle will be appreciated much more than a bad price oracle. A DEX with a very good liquidity will be appreciated much more than a, you know, so all these DEX projects are coming in. Now imagine, no, now these projects have an issue of Ethereum's blockchain being very expensive.
01:20:54
Speaker
When you are making a buy and sell in a DEX, the actual Ethereum transactions are happening. So, you are actually paying a fee, even Ethereum fee when this is also happening, which is a big trouble, right? So, now what these DEX are also seeing, why should we always be based on Ethereum? Why cannot we look into other platforms?
01:21:10
Speaker
So, now each of these industries, how where are they moving towards, which are the platform that they are moving towards. These are all things that we can track to. If they are moving into for example, a Polkadot or Solano or a Tron, we have to look for all these things. When we are looking into a lot of DeFi's moving into this platform, then that's the time to go purchase, you know, cryptos from these platforms.
01:21:34
Speaker
Right? Got it. Okay.
Polkadot and Developer Attraction
01:21:36
Speaker
Which is why you like Polkadot because defies are moving or DAX is moving. No, not necessarily. I like Polkadot because they are giving some exclusivity for projects. See, it is more like they've created chains, like individual chains, and not everyone can be part of the chain.
01:21:51
Speaker
that you know and only some 100 projects are 100 projects if I am not wrong can be part of the chain which will control the throughput issue of the platform. So, now what is happening for those 100 platforms to come in there is a there is a race right like it is more like there is another sister platform where these platforms will come in first and then the pretty good platforms they will apply to come into Polkadet. So, this is like layering and then taking a cream out and bringing into this platform.
01:22:21
Speaker
So, ideally there is more chance for these projects to run better, right. So, Polkadot is giving an option for these guys to be creamed out and layered out. So, these projects most probably will work better than other projects. Hence, the base platform of Polkadot might also work better, right. But that is the again the main thing is there is a lot of mights here because Ethereum is much older than you know much proven abilities and capabilities.
01:22:46
Speaker
Right? So the bet is always higher in Ethereum compared to these platforms. I think a lot of it is essentially about which coin is attracting the best talent, right? Because like you said, the best algorithm wins, you know, or whoever. This is all community driven. No, this is a tech proceed. Whatever you say at the end, these are all pure play tech products.
01:23:06
Speaker
Pure Play tech products, which are open source, like Linux. The best of the minds are sitting in developing Linux as an open source. That's why Linux is better than every other operating system. Now, in this, Ethereum is having some set of developers. These guys are having some set of developers. Now, who is going to attract the best developer community to build their product matters here? Ethereum has done a beautiful job in that. That is why you're seeing a lot of innovation happening in Ethereum.
01:23:33
Speaker
Now, the other projects we are talking about, they are also having some good founders, good people who are being developing that. But the results that they have to start showing, the smart contract capabilities they have to start showing, that matters. Ethereum has already shown it. These products have discovered. See, the biggest achievement of this decade is like the 2000s, the best of the minds, engineers, they were like spending all their time voting to make people click more.
01:24:02
Speaker
There was all the major tech platforms, there was a major way to get money and that's what they are focusing on. Nineties were the most productive time for the internet, the protocols were getting designed, standards were being set. But again, we are coming back to that phase where the most brilliant minds, they have a very challenging problem to solve.
01:24:25
Speaker
right and there is a race just like how we have this race to the moon right whether it is Soviet or US there is a actual race and the good thing is a lot of money is also flowing in. The way machine Nakamoto did is like the tech the protocol you also come into the money aspect right.
01:24:42
Speaker
is the most important thing, right? You might have the most beautiful idea, but if there's no financial incentive, how will you attract best of the talents? But these people who are part of the Bitcoin developer community, they're not earning Bitcoins, right? Because they're not the miners, right?
01:24:59
Speaker
say they are not but they have this incentive right like this open source community why do they do things they want to be part of something big right what can be bigger than bitcoin right bitcoin is the biggest open source project if you can do something and you're part of your code gets listed in bitcoin it's featured right you don't need anything else right and these people make money outside they will do have side projects like i'll be happy to hire someone who has worked in the bitcoin main mainnet right they'll be speakers
01:25:29
Speaker
See, it's more about recognition here, Akshay. If they say their code, whatever they built, has been accepted into the main project, it's a recognition. It means that you're a very solid programmer. And there's going to be hundreds of years, right? Bitcoin, if it stands a test of time, you are part of history.
01:25:52
Speaker
So in a way, they are also like investors, possibly like they would own some Bitcoin and they're so passionate about it that they would also be contributing code to it. They will take payments in form of Bitcoin when they make a speaking assignment, all those things. So they would want to get paid in Bitcoins, right? And they will not sell all those coins. They are definitely going to hold.
01:26:16
Speaker
What's your advice to people who are new to cryptocurrency?
Crypto Investment Advice
01:26:20
Speaker
What is the way in which the shit can hit the fan, so to say? What can go wrong? So the first thing is don't go all in, like Vikram said. So there are people saying that I need money three months from now, six months from now, but I want to invest in cryptocurrencies and I want to take the money out in six months. The more volatile the asset is,
01:26:47
Speaker
the longer your time horizon should be. So anything you need in the medium term, you cannot invest in cryptocurrencies, like maybe for your children's education, it could be a hospital, all those things. Never put something in cryptocurrencies because it's extremely volatile and see when there is a risk of Bitcoin going to 10x, it is because it's a very nascent technology. You mean nascent, there's also a risk of it failing.
01:27:13
Speaker
We are in this industry, we are believers, we have created carriers here, but even as we will not sell our house and put all our money in Bitcoins because in 2005, Orkut was a great idea. Then it was Myspace, HiFi, then Facebook. So we are believers, we strongly believe Bitcoin is going to be the future, but we don't go all in. There's a risk, we have to understand the risk before entering.
01:27:38
Speaker
You can have a dream and all those things, right? But put only money that you can afford to lose and that will gauge on your risk appetite. That is the number one advice. Number two is, I will say start small, right? And gradually grow this thing. Don't take all the money and put it in one this thing. You burn your hands. Now you understand the industry but you don't have any more funds to bring in, right? I will say you are going to make some losses, right? Start small, lose small but
01:28:06
Speaker
The important thing is keep learning. Four years back, we knew nothing. Five, six years back, we knew nothing about cryptocurrencies. But we ensured that we understood what this space is about. What is the next big thing? What is the next big thing? What is happening? So always don't just put your money, also spend time to understand the projects. Because here you have an edge if you can understand the technology.
01:28:33
Speaker
If you are not able to do all these things, if you are not able to read white papers, if you are not able to watch YouTube videos and understand or able to evaluate projects, I will say only invest small money or even stay away from it, right? You can't be a passive investor when it comes to crypto. In shitcoins, right?
01:28:54
Speaker
See, if my friend is coming or my aunt or my mom, I'll say invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Don't go beyond that. Because you're not understanding the sector. Bitcoin and Ethereum is relatively safe. And even then, I'm not going to say put 20% or 50% of portfolio value. Overall, whatever your assets, put 2%, 3%. If you're having extremely risk appetite, you put 5% to 10%. Don't go beyond that.
01:29:22
Speaker
right and start with Bitcoin and Ethereum and then move to small caps don't look at like just because this Bitcoin has gone from 10 rupees it has gone to 50 lakhs this coin is 10 rupees so this is a pitch and a lot of
01:29:38
Speaker
Scammers do, right? Yeah, right, right. Two years back, people thought launching a coin was a very difficult thing. Today, the readymade template that exists, launching a coin is very easy. It's not so difficult at all. It is an ecosystem, the application, that's what makes it worth it, right? So there will be a lot of people try, they'll have their own coin, they'll pitch it to you, say Bitcoin went from 10 rupees to 50 lakhs, right? This coin is also 10 rupees. Why don't you buy 1000 coins, 10,000 coins? Don't invest in those things, right?
01:30:08
Speaker
So let them get mainstream and then invest. And there are other basic digital guidelines that you normally follow, right? Safety hygiene, like don't share your OTP, don't share your password, right? See Bitcoin allows you to be your own bank, right? You don't have to store your cryptocurrencies in Geotest, you don't have to store in any exchange, you can store it yourself. But with great power comes great responsibility, right? The curious thing about the crypto is there's no forgot your password.
01:30:37
Speaker
Right. Yeah. If you forgot your password, then it's gone. Yeah. If you store it in your test, there's a forgot your password option because you are not holding the keys. We are holding the keys. But when you try to store it yourself, right? There are two problems that can come. You copy the keys and keep it everywhere so that you don't lose it. But if it gets in the hand of some random person, he is going to take away all your Bitcoins because they're not doing any verification. The Bitcoin network doesn't do any verification. The guy who has the password, he has the control.
01:31:07
Speaker
Second part is you have only one copy and there is a fire or some random thing. It gets destroyed. That money will stay in that address. You can see that, but it'll not be able to use it. There are like stories in this space. I've had 10,000 Bitcoins, 5,000 Bitcoins.
01:31:24
Speaker
and they are not able to reclaim it because they have lost access to their password, right? So be very careful, right? And I'd say, see, for us, if customer trades more, we earn more. But we would advise the customer not to do a lot of trading.
01:31:40
Speaker
right? Invest and sit tight, right? Do as little trading as possible, do not be very trigger happy. Warren Buffett says he has all his money like 90 percent of his investments he has made only through 5 investments, right? You do not have to invest in every new idea, you do not have to invest in every new thing, you should be willing to let go of a lot of things, right? So, what normally happens is the trader mindset
01:32:04
Speaker
discipline traders when the price goes down they buy when it goes up they sell right but this is what you'll also want to do everyone wants to do they want to buy low and sell high but a typical emotional human what he does is when it goes high he becomes four more i i i put only 10 lakhs i should put like these b coins yes i'll put more money more money more money
01:32:29
Speaker
And when it goes down, you panic. Oh my God, I got to $30,000. Let me sell it off before it goes to zero. Again, when it bounces back to $40,000, they'll again buy. So in the last, now Bitcoin is today, it's at the all time high price.
01:32:47
Speaker
No one who has been in this business for four or five years, they should be in loss. But there are people who are in loss. They have bought at $50,000, sold at $30,000, then buy again at $40,000. So this is a very common thing. People say, what are you doing? They'll say, normally what I do is buy high and sell low. Basically, there's like fundamentals of investing. Don't be driven by greed and fear.
01:33:15
Speaker
Absolutely. People want to do the opposite, but they cannot control their emotions. They don't have the discipline. So you can even do it safely. If you think you don't automate as much as possible, don't take decisions. I will say if you don't have any new money to invest, don't even watch their portfolio.
Geotas SIP Product Announcement
01:33:33
Speaker
Does Geotas have an SAP product? Yes. That is something we are launching this month. So we are happy. Okay, good that you asked the part.
01:33:43
Speaker
It's actually launched in the next two weeks. We're having an SIP product, which can help customers to streamline their investment and help beat the volatility.
01:33:58
Speaker
See, in 2017, people were thinking, right, now the $13,000, I should have bought it at $2,000. Yeah, yeah. I should have bought it at $5,000, $6,000. But today, the thing is, you should have bought Bitcoin, irrespective of the price. It's at $60,000, right? Don't try to time it. It's very difficult to time. Even the most experts, they are finding it very difficult. So, I'll say the best time to invest in Bitcoin is today, right? So, go and invest fully. Put 20% or 30% each. Keep some lumps up. Even if it dips,
01:34:28
Speaker
You can buy Bitcoin at a better price. What if it doesn't dip and goes straight away to $100,000? You still have some Bitcoin. You're already in profit. Spread your investments in this periodically. And if you're investing in shitcoins, don't forget. What is a shitcoin? A shitcoin is like this doge and all.
01:34:48
Speaker
So, I mean, some people will call it the best coins, right? You might never know, you might never know, you know, like Mars says, you know, Mars will start adopting Doge, you know, anything can happen, right? See, this is a learning that we got, right? It's a very important learning. In 2017, we stayed away from projects that we thought were not good.
01:35:10
Speaker
They are very hyped, but we thought they were not good and they went on to become 50x, 100x despite not having fundamentals right. So, there are there are very good technology you can invest for a long term and there are like lot of short term money making opportunities like all this if I like whatever is in trend you can go and blindly put invest make 3x return and then take the money out right.
01:35:32
Speaker
and not investing in for long term, right? And just riding on the hype. So, you should have a clear thesis why you are doing what you are doing and when you do what you will do, right? When I am going to exit, when I am going to enter, all those things we have planned. I mean, this is very easy to talk, but very difficult to implement. Over a period of, after 2-3 years in the space, you will start getting all these things naturally. So, that's why I am saying, don't go all in in the first year. You need to have some chips to bet at the later years also.
01:36:04
Speaker
If you like the founder thesis podcast then do check out our other shows on subjects like marketing, technology, career advice, books and drama. Visit the podium.in for a complete list of all our shows.