ADALend CEO Kaspars Koskins : “We Are Building a Secure Lending Platform on Cardano”
January 15 2022 - 4:52AM
NEWSBTC
Starting ADALend CEO Kaspars Koskins interview series, one of the
most promising companies that is revolutionizing the lending
industry by using blockchain technology to disintermediate the
traditional middlemen – providing unprecedented access to loans for
those ignored by the traditional banking system and providing high
yields for investors in a persistently low-interest-rate
environment. I hope you are as excited for this conversation as we
are so let’s jump in. Q: Welcome Kaspars, we know you are a busy
gentleman these days with the public launch of the ADALend lending
platform and token this quarter but thank you for making time to
speak to us today. Let’s start at a very high level – can you give
us the elevator pitch for ADALend that so that those of us that are
new to Decentralized Finance and Crypto (or Web3 as they
fashionably call it these days!). Koskins: It’s a pleasure to be
here and I am thrilled to share with your audience a little more
about what we are building at ADALend and how they can participate
but first let me try to summarize in layman’s terms what our
mission is. We are developing a scalable, trustless, and
decentralized lending protocol that harbors users within a
self-governed environment. From day one, we committed to building
natively on the Cardano blockchain, which will enable the lending
platform to aggregate protocols that support business models that
give economic support to billions of users. ADALend will bring back
the balance of power between lenders and borrowers. By allowing the
use of digital assets as collateral, the use of the platform will
be diversified to the benefit of the user. Q: Thank you for that
– can you tell the audience a little more about why you chose
the Cardano blockchain when there are already successful DeFi
projects built on Ethereum and new blockchains like Solala for
example? Koskins: Certainly, let me begin by explaining that
Ethereum is no longer usable by the majority of people on earth due
to the high transaction costs. The gas fees on Ethereum have
reached hundreds of dollars per transaction over the past year.
This would be unacceptable to ordinary people in the western world
today but for the millions of unbanked people in the developing
countries of Africa and Asia, this renders ETH useless as they need
to lend and narrow far smaller amounts. Ethereum has therefore
become a layer 2 blockchain for the rich and the newcomers you
mention like Solana have problems with centralization and
reliability. Cardano is the only truly decentralized blockchain
with the required security, speed and low transaction fees required
to provide a truly democratic financial solution that can be used
by every human on planet earth – and our vision aligns perfectly
with the Cardano Charles Hoskins who is passionate about improving
financial outcomes for people all over the world, regardless of
race, nationality, gender or financial status. Q: Thank you, those
are truly powerful words Kaspars, and we are fortunate to have
projects like Cardano and platforms like ADALend that can bring
this vision of democratic inclusion into reality. So as well as the
mission to do good in the world, many of our readers are
executives, professionals and small business owners that are
managing their own portfolios and wondering how they can preserve
their capital and earn a good yield in this hyperinflationary
environment when interest rates are so low. People are seeing
their retirement nest egg or children’s college fund declining in
real terms due to the frankly crazy macroeconomic environment we
find ourselves in today in the US, Europe and many other parts of
the developer world. How can these middle-class, hard-working
people benefit from ADALend? Koskins: Well this is the other side
of the coin isn’t it. One of my personal inspirations to found
ADAlend is that in my home country of Estonia in northern Europe, I
was working in the traditional retail lending space and with credit
unions savings. I have seen firsthand how people were unable to get
a decent interest rate at the banks and were genuinely worried
about their future as prices and the cost of living was rising far
faster than salaries. The banks’ hands are tied as the interest
rates are set by the Federal Reserve in the US and the European
Central Bank in the EU. I began exploring Decentralised Finance
(DeFi) as a way to earn a yield on my own family’s savings which
led me down the rabbit hole and brings us here today. Our
commitment to ADALend lenders is that we will provide a safe secure
lending platform where they can stake their hard-earned savings in
Cardano (ADA) or the ADAlend token (ADAL) or the form of stable
coins like USDT or USDC and earn a market-beating yield on it in
the high single-digit or lower double-digit percentages. The
ADALend platform is highly liquid without long-term lockups so our
lenders will earn interest for the time their savings are “staked”
on the platform and can withdraw anytime. The other side is for
borrowers – many small business owners, entrepreneurs and the
self-employed can find it hard to borrow money from traditional
banks to buy a car, pay a downpayment on a house, invest in their
business or fund a dream holiday. At ADALend we don’t do credit
checks and we don’t care about salary history. Traditional banks
and lenders do not recognize digital assets as collateral. We will
provide an over collateralized lending facility to these borrowers
where they can stake their digital assets like Bitcoin, Cardano or
any other major cryptocurrency and we will lend them US Dollars
or Euros against their holdings. This will provide crucial
liquidity to a large number of hard-working professionals and
self-employed people that were previously ignored by the banks. By
the way, this type of over-collateralized lending against access
has been used by the top 1% of wealthy people in the world to fund
their lifestyles and investments and to optimize tax for decades.
ADALend is now bringing these financial solutions to everyone that
were once the privilege of the rich. Q: That is truly a noble goal
– and I love to see that you are helping out the middle classes
like us as well as the poorest folks in the world. Let’s talk
about partnerships, investors and technology. I understand that
DeFi and CeFi (centralized finance) is a highly competitive space,
especially before your Initial DEX Offering (IDO) in March 2022,
but what can you share in that area without all our readers signing
an NDA? Koskins: Absolutely – you have hit the nail on the head,
the space is getting more and more competitive by the day from
other new projects building DeFi on other blockchains and the CeFi
incumbents like BlockFi so we need to be selective about what we
can reveal. However, I can share some insights with you today, On
the technology side – by leveraging the Cardano blockchain, ADALend
will be able to tap into the vast digital cash management market.
By creating a technology that allows anyone to delegate their
digital cash and make it available for a loan, ADALend is opening
up the potential for blockchain-powered liquidity. We are aiming to
be Cardano native in everything we do and are building the platform
using Haskell and Plutus and working within the present limitations
of Smart Contracts on this blockchain. On the partnership side,
Input-Output Hong Kong (IOHK) has listed ADALend on their
“Essential Cardano List” of projects that are considered part of
the ecosystem supporting and providing Cardano users with products
and services. We are also listed on CardanoCube.io and I know
our Business Development team is hard at work on several exciting
partnerships we will be announcing in February that will really
move the needle so watch this space! In terms of funding, we were
delighted to have a highly respected Venture Capital from Moonwhale
Ventures as our lead investor and our private sale is almost
closed. We are now in a very good position financially and more
selective in who we will take funding from, as we don’t want to
favor the VCs over retail investors as many projects do. We are
reserving a good allocation of ADAL tokens for our community also.
Q: This is excellent news Kasparas – I am hearing all too often
that new crypto projects are providing huge allocations to the VCs
who then dump on to retail. It looks like you are being far more
inclusive at ADALend and giving excellent opportunities for smaller
and medium-sized accredited investors to access the private sales
that were once the preserve of the VC elite, as an experienced
small investor myself I salute you! I must say, after our
discussions today I am super keen to get involved and I am sure our
audience is too. Where can they learn more about the private sale,
the public IDO launch and how to get involved? Koskins: Thank you
for the kind words and thank you for the conversation today – I
genuinely enjoyed it and sometimes I still have to pinch myself
when I realize how far we have come in the past year! Sure, we are
in the final stages of the private sale now so if you or your
readers would like to apply for an allocation of ADAL tokens you
can email privatesale@adalend.finance with the subject line “CEO
Interview” and I’ll make sure our private sales team responds to
them ASAP. You can find more details at our website ADALend.finance
Q: Thank you for your time Kaspars, and I’ll get back to the
building. Koskins: My pleasure, and I’ll take this opportunity to
wish you and your readers a prosperous and profitable year ahead!
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