About NCFA Canada | Craig Asano | Jan 26, 2024

FF EP61 Kay Khemani, Phoenix App

Jan 26, 2024: NCFA’s Fintech Fridays podcast episode 61

Making Markets and Investing in Crypto with the Phoenix App

About Featured Guest

Duration:  62mins

Subscribe and tune in each Friday to check out the latest movers and shakers in fintech. Listen to more podcasts here:

Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | and weekly newsletter

Fintech Friday Transcript of Episode 61:

KAY KHEMANI, Co-Founder and Advisor, Phoenix App and Managing Director, Hatchworks

Intro: Welcome to fintech Friday’s a weekly podcast brought to you by the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada and partners. Covering all things fintech, blockchain, AI and alternative finance.

Craig Asano: Good afternoon everyone. My name is Craig Asano, the founder and CEO of NCFA Canada. Welcoming you to Season 4 of Fintech Fridays today is Episode 61, a weekly podcast brought to you by NCFA and partners, where we sit down with the incredible Fintech and Funding community to talk all about new launches, trends, product innovations, developments and challenges as well. So today we have a fantastic guest with us. We have Mr. Kay Khemani, who’s based in London, England. Mr. Khemani is a seasoned professional in the finance and investment sector. He’s currently the Managing Director of Hatchworks, a venture firm with an in-house incubator who vets and invests across a broad a wide range of sectors from gaming to fintech, renewables, AI, healthtech and crypto. Kay is also the Managing Director of a company called Neuchatel, who’s involved with the investment committee at Hatchworks. And he’s the Co-founder, Advisor and Speaking Rep for the Phoenixapp.io, which is what this podcast is going to focus on today. Prior. Well, the Phoenix app, I’ll just say a couple words. It’s a cutting edge platform designed to transform the way individuals engage in passive investing. The Phoenix app enables users to become market makers in global trading of top cryptocurrencies, offering investors the opportunity to earn real time yields in USDC. Prior to these engagements, Kay was the Executive Director at Goldman Sachs. He had a two year post there from 2009 to 2011. In his role, he was responsible for researching and investing approximately 100 pan European cross sector listed companies. His focus was on valuation, stock picking and generally contributing to the internal investment fund at Goldman. Kay is an advisor and an active product expert with a variety of portfolio companies. So combined really with his entrepreneurial spirit and his advisory roles, he’s a distinguished figure in the financial investment landscape. So Kay, thanks so much for joining us today to share your knowledge and experience.

Kay Khemani: Thank you. It’s a pleasure. And thank you for having me.

Craig Asano: Yeah, welcome to the show. So, uh, episode 61 cannot believe we’ve already reached this milestone. We’re really excited to get into the discussion to talk all about the Phoenix app and what you’ve been up to, and here are the latest and greatest. So to kick things off, let’s just talk a little bit about your professional background, sort of your journey, what you’ve been doing and your road to getting involved with, uh, launching and uh, involved with the Phoenix app.

Kay Khemani: Sure. Thank you Craig. So basically, as you rightly said before, I was doing all of this and we’ve been doing this for almost 12 years now. Um, I was working in high finance. I did a few years at Goldman Sachs, traditionally in equities, working in equity research. And then I um, before that I was actually at JP Morgan for four years, learning the ropes, uh, of research as well. Investment research. Studied a lot of sectors. Um, and then I got into entrepreneurship around 2012, and it was a very exciting time. You know, the the whole advent of web 2.0, it was in its swing and we got heavily into it. We created a few financial technologies over the years. We had a fair share of failures as well, and small successes, but more failures. Um, and then we start to become a bit more seasoned as entrepreneurs rather than pure corporate people. We understood what it takes to actually bring a business to profitability, which is very difficult, um, as you probably know, uh, and to sustain it as well, what happened around 2015, 2016 is as blockchain technology emerged kind of out of the crevices, slightly more into the mainstream, Ethereum allowed, smart contracts basically to be used in a range of applications in blockchain, it wasn’t just about hodling Bitcoin and hoping for the best, it was actually about how you can use smart contracts and get rid of bad actors. For example, it is now possible for you as a trader to trade directly and buy Ethereum and Bitcoin and a range of digital currencies against a non-entity, a smart contract, basically. Historically, if you were to buy any asset, a stock or a bond or anything, you would have to go through your broker. Now, Robinhood and all of these brokerages, they have allowed you to to make this process pretty seamless. When you enter, you log in to your terminal. You are effectively trading, but you’re also basically the other side of the trade is either another trader, but the intermediary is always a broker. So it’s smart contracts. You can get rid of this. And that also means you could get rid of broker fraud. And that was our mission basically in 2016, 2017 is to use smart contracts to allow traders around the world to trade financial assets against other traders, but using an autonomous entity as a middleman rather than a broker. And the reason behind this is brokers would steal your deposits. This was a big problem in binary options, also in foreign exchange trading. And this allowed us to kind of crack that code, if you will. Now, what happened, of course, is you may know this or some of your viewers may know this is that CFD (Contract For Differences) trading typically 85%. The figure can be a bit higher depending on which country you’re in. 85% of traders lose money over time. It can be even as much as 95%-97% if you go to retail. Institutional, approximately 70% of institutions on CFDs don’t make money. So it’s pretty bad. So although we were able to address the problem of removing the broker from the equation, allowing traders to trade, without any intervention. The main problem of traders not being able to make money that remained unaddressed. That’s where Phoenix came into the mix. So what has happened is it’s possible now for you to actually become, to take the other side of the trade, to actually become the market maker using smart contracts. The company that started all of this, it’s actually a New York based. It’s US based. It’s called Uniswap. They are the world’s largest decentralized exchange. Billions of liquidity is flowing through there every day. But the beauty is they have democratized this. And they allow you to actually become a liquidity provider so that traders around the world can buy Bitcoin and Ethereum and USDC directly from you. But you don’t know they’re buying it from you. You’re literally interacting with a smart contract.  The process is complex. What I’ve described to you, I’ve summarized it. But for you to actually do this, to get to grips with what it means to actually contributing liquidity, setting ranges, deciding if it’s going to be asymmetric or non symmetric, all of these things. That’s what Phoenix takes care of. So for the retail retail investor, we are basically simplifying the whole process. What does that mean? Basically, the retail investor does not have to work anymore to speculate, to do market research, to do fundamental analysis, technical analysis, learn about companies, you know, learn about the underlying currencies, if they’re trading currencies or bonds. It’s a good thing to know, for example, we do have that knowledge on board given our backgrounds, but it’s not something we expect investors to know, who are, who just want to make money on the side as a passive income. And so this is as you were we were discussing before the podcast started. You mentioned, you know, how are the users doing? The good news is we launched this last year in April or May after two years of research and development, of course, and all the users that have joined, they’ve made money. They are market makers. They are not buying, for example, Tesla shares or they’re not buying the euro versus the US dollar with the view to sell it later at a higher gain. That onus to to get that research and get it right is not on them anymore.  All they do is they provide liquidity for other traders to buy and sell and for doing that, for providing that liquidity. They basically get a small fee. And from that fee, Phoenix takes a cut. The rest goes to them effectively. So basically we’re democratizing, through smart contracts, the ability for users to make passive income by becoming market makers. And that technology hasn’t existed so far. Now, obviously we’ll get into a bit more in detail, but it’s not like one is earning sort of, treasury yield type of returns 2%, 3%, 4%. If it was that we wouldn’t be doing it. It wouldn’t be exciting, right? Although it is a new source of, new revenue source of investors to make money passively. What makes this exciting is the rate of return you can earn adjusted for risk. So if you look at this from a risk adjusted return standpoint, That’s where Phoenix really stands out relative to other ways of making money in blockchain, but also tradfi (traditional finance). We can talk a little bit more about the returns later and the risk if you’d like, but I can also go over them now.

Craig Asano: That’s totally up to you. I was just looking at the outline. I think we’ve got the next 45 minutes is all dedicated right to this conversation and the Phoenix app. Yeah, maybe it’s a good time. Let’s talk a little bit about the risk and the reward and how it compares for the benefit of let’s say retail investor that may not have had that much exposure to crypto investing, and maybe as you sort of alluded to earlier, that they’re used to more trading. They might not even want to be involved with Self-custody. They may might be trading on an exchange. So how does how do the yields compare? And the word complexity. Let’s try to simplify it for anyone that might want to learn what it’s about and what it really will mean to them in their own portfolio.

Kay Khemani: Okay good question. So firstly, in terms of the returns, we have three classes of pools. Basically when you join the Phoenix app, which of course is free, I mean you don’t get charged for sign up, you just sign up and we ask you to read all the information in the app. But of course, our team can also advise you. Now you have three pools. One is for the very low risk investors. For the category you just mentioned, the people that are completely new to the blockchain, for example. And let’s say they have $100 to invest, right? Because that’s the minimum amount that one can get in with. And basically at that point we would say, okay, you should go for the lowest risk option. That pool is called buffer. And that’s called buffer because it’s there to buffer the movements in the prices of the currencies that you provide liquidity in. So if you’re providing liquidity as a market maker in Phoenix, you’re not doing anything. It’s all Phoenix is taking care of that for you. But what we’re basically doing is that the bulk of your capital, the $100 that you put on the liquidity curve by using Phoenix, almost 80% of that is in US dollars. So the bulk of that is in a fixed, stable currency, and then 10%, for example, would be in Bitcoin and the rest would be in Ethereum. That’s just an example. What that means for you as a liquidity provider is that because the bulk of your allocation. Is in a stable coin, a US dollar, if you will, the fluctuation, the value of your inventory.  As a liquidity provider is going to be very minimal. If 80% of your capital is not in those coins, you’ll still make money because you’ll be selling Bitcoin and Ethereum to people that want to buy it from you. So you get a small cut, but you’ll also be selling some of your dollars for people that want to buy dollars from you. And in the blockchain world, dollars are represented by very regulated stablecoins known as USDC. You may have heard of them. They’re planning an IPO soon as well. They’re based in the US as well regulated billion dollar project. So what makes this exciting is this low risk pool you’ll only earn around 7 to 10. Right now it’s doing around 11%. 7% to 11% a year in yields. Now when I say a year that’s the annual percentage yield. That’s not compounded. You can of course compound that at the frequency you like. But that’s approximately the yield you earn. And that tends to beat. It’s approximately in line with what stock markets will earn you over time. That kind of traditional 8 to 10% a year in over time. And it’s well ahead of real estate and certain other traditional investments. And it also beats inflation now as well. Considering inflation has come down, that’s 7% to 11%. But it’s not that exciting. But of course it’s also very low risk. What I mean by this. Just to give you an example, if Bitcoin, for example, fell by 20%, which can happen, the value of your portfolio will drop by approximately 2%.  So that’s a kind of acceptable risk, I would say, for someone who is new. Now if you want to move up the risk curve. So let’s say you spent six months in Phoenix. You had $100 invested in the system and you said, okay, I like what I see. I want to expand my position a little bit. Then you can upgrade or you can move your position to the Cruise or the Ignite pools, which are medium and high risk, respectively. And all that means is that we have changed the allocation of how we’re parking your capital on the liquidity curve. So instead of 80% in USD, it’ll just be 50% or 40%, and the rest will be in the other top decentralized currencies. You as a result, will earn more as a liquidity provider. The fees there range for for the medium risk. They’re approximately 12% to, I would say 15%, 16% for the medium pool, and for the high risk pool, it’s approximately 20% to 30%. So that’s you’re really beating the markets there. And this is of course a real time. So that’s two really important points I’d like to make is regardless of which pool you go inside, your capital is never tied up. You know, that’s something we really want to stress is you’re not investing in a hedge fund. You’re not investing in a project that will yield, let’s say, over five years you’ll get your capital back and you’re tied in. You have lock ups – no. Your capital is literally parked on the decentralized liquidity curve, and anytime you want to withdraw it, you just click the withdraw button, it gets withdrawn, it’s sent back to your address.  That’s the most important thing. The same thing is with your fees. Your fees collect in real time every second or approximately every 5s-10s someone is buying or selling a digital asset on major exchanges like Uniswap. You’re just getting a part of that action. And when that happens, you see your fee increase in your app. So it’s all very transparent. It’s all backed with on chain data. And that’s basically the risk, if you will, in the system. There is there are no existential risks. So to put it, for example, if you are trading with a, I won’t say a bucket shop unless you’re trading at a broker and that broker goes under for whatever reason. We saw that with some bankruptcies, historically as well.  You’re only protected by the amount that by law is insured. So typically that’s $75,000 in the US. It can be up to 100K in Europe, similar amounts if the broker is regulated. Here there is no broker but your money is lying on a decentralized smart contract that has had literally close to $30-$40 billion flow through it in the last 2 or 3 years, extremely heavily audited and never hacked, and one of the top industry teams behind it, the Uniswap team. So it’s it’s very, very, very industrial strength when it comes to security in that respect. So, we there are risks but they’re limited broadly speaking to to price action basically and which pool you get into if that makes sense.

Craig Asano: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as an investor, you want to understand where your money’s going and you want to understand what those risks are. And you know, I’m going to be the devil’s advocate here and try to be a retail investor that has some questions. I mean, one of the obvious questions would be is cases like LUNA. Or in the news we’ve had a lot of unusual risks for investors depending on their appetite.  Market crashes and this extreme volatility and how the ecosystem has managed to rally back has been quite remarkable. But there’s a lot of lessons there. I mean, maybe you can talk about your perspective and how that might impact or what are your thoughts with the LUNA crash and the fallout and what its impact might have been to investors then and you know, what’s happening today and maybe let’s take it a little…what do you envision how that’s going to play out.

Kay Khemani: Fantastic question. So LUNA, basically changed the game for the worse. Luna happened in the first, approximately, if I remember from memory, early 2022.  Maybe a few months before that but Do Kwon, who was the founder, who’s currently a fugitive, and he’s going to be tried by the SEC soon. You had a bunch of kids from higher education places who raised a lot of capital in the previous bull run. And this guy was was one of them. And he he was a fast talker, and he created an algorithmic stablecoin. All that is, is you’re you may have heard of USDC, you may have heard of USDT. They are the two biggest stablecoin multi-billion projects. And if people want to move out of bitcoin, out of Ethereum into stable currencies, they basically sell the former and they get into the latter. It’s been a mainstay of crypto for for a long time. And right now the market leader is USDC. This kid basically he created the Terra organization, and Terra had a bit of a run, he raised money and they basically created this narrative that algorithmic stablecoins is the way forward. You don’t need to have a fiat currency. For example, fiat currency used to be backed by gold until it was depegged. They basically said that stablecoins and crypto do not need to be backed by anything but a very smart algorithm, basically. So no treasury. And that was the first red flag, but because they showed fancy math papers and, you know, people got a bit excited and it was the bubble, right? It was we were in the middle of the 2021, the second bull run pandemic had happened. A lot of helicopter money going around. People were really excited. They said, you know what? This stablecoin is offering us 20% a year yield 20%. I’m earning in cash, and I can withdraw at any time, and there’s no risk to my capital. So in Phoenix, for example, I told you, in the highest risk pool, 20% to 30% a year is what you can earn. But there is risk to your your capital. The inventory value will fluctuate. What Terra said was there’s no risk to the capital, and this peg will always remain because our algorithms are smart, and if there’s ever a slight depegging to the dollar will go back up. Now, the fact of the matter is, on that narrative, they raised a billion plus or something. A lot of investors from Asia as well went in there. They raised a billion plus. I think it was even 2 billion, and they had all this liquidity to throw at the coin, if there ever was a depegging incident. Lo and behold, that depegging incident happened. And although they could defend that for a certain bit, once you get a depeg, when you get a stablecoin that depegs to the dollar, a lot of fear percolates in the market and they weren’t able to manage that. And then people started dumping too much. And then the Ponzi just just completely exploded. Now here’s the thing in answer to your question. What was the problem with with Terra? The red flags were there for the reasons I mentioned, but the biggest problem was there was no real source of revenue. How were they generated? They told you, Craig, come and put your capital with us. Buy this, this LUNA coin, the stablecoin, and you will get 20% a year and you get paid in a stablecoin. That sounds great to you, especially if you can withdraw your capital but you have to ask yourself this. How are they making that 20%? It turns out that 20% your money was being parked in other circular DeFi. You know, decentralized finance. There was a lot of DeFi schemes at that point, offering 100% return, 150% return by WizKids, quote unquote WizKids, who are all now in jail or disappeared. And so your money was basically being recycled in other ponzis.  And it was horrible. It was really horrible because it worked for a bit, so people got excited. They overgeared, you know, at one point our firm had put in almost $70K – $80K into it. We lost $30K on the Terra collapse. We pulled out the moment the depeg happened. Other people lost their life savings because they thought the algorithm would save them. The problem is there was never a clearly defined source of revenue. Here, and by the way, that’s not just just Terra Luna. This is almost all staking programs and crypto. The source of revenue isn’t there. It just isn’t there. It’s just hopium. More money coming in to buy the project. So the project can use some of that treasury to pay you. It’s robbing Paul to pay Peter. And this still continues. And projects like this will lure in investors and say, oh, you’re earning this much in traditional finance, 5% to 10%. We can earn you 60%, 70% a year or 100%. So you put your capital there. You know, we’re like moths to a fire, to a light. We  get excited by these returns, but they never last. With Phoenix, it’s a completely different story because we’ve told you the source of revenue. They are audited. There are billions of buying and selling happening every day on Uniswap, on some of the leading decentralized exchanges and centralized exchanges. In a centralized exchange like Kraken or Gemini or Coinbase. You can’t become a market maker readily, but you can in the decentralized markets, and that’s what Phoenix does. And and you can see how your revenues are generated trade by trade. So it’s a completely different ball game. But in answer to your final question on that, what it did to investors.  It made investors much more distrusting, which I think is good in a way because they’re much more protective of their capital. Like you saw the ETFs being approved. The Bitcoin hasn’t gone up that much, you know, and it’s actually gone down. And that was much to the chagrin of many people and also surprise.  And I think it’s that’s good because I think now you will start to see more stable programs coming through. And by the way, it wasn’t just Terra Luna, it was also Celsius. They were offering you 5%, 6%, 7%, 8% on your money. You put down $10,000 or $50,000, you get a bit more. They were investing in stuff like Terra, they were investing in other stuff. So it was all circular. There was no real source of of revenue, no tangible source of revenue.

Craig Asano: So what I mean, as an investor, what advice would you provide retail investors or anyone who’s dabbling in crypto and some of these yield farming staking programs. How do they identify red flag. What are the top red flags to look out for? And on top of that, if we can dig in a little bit in terms of the Phoenix app and how they’re mitigating some of the overall risk and the overall risk portfolio. I think that would go a long way to, building that confidence and understanding. It’s really about education.

Kay Khemani: Absolutely. So the. And that some of the main pitfalls, the way you can spot a scam pretty quickly is firstly, just go to the team section. I know this is this sounds so bare bones, but it actually is one of the best way to weed out a scam or a potential disaster. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a scam in the traditional sense. The founders can be well-meaning, but the question is where is the culpability? Right? Where are they appearing with Craig on camera, showing their faces, their location, their CV on LinkedIn and stuff? You won’t find this in 90% of DeFi projects today. Yeah, they may offer you 50% or 100% yields, but you don’t see the team. You don’t see the team because most of the teams are breaking securities laws by offering these type of things without accreditation. They’re not doing accreditation checks, they’re not doing KYC, they’re doing nothing right. And most of them are in America or China. It’s it’s one of the two. And so they’re basically on the run because they know eventually when the party stops, they’re sitting with their treasury, they’re going to rug and take that money or they’re just going to abandon the project which ultimately for you, the investor results in a loss, total loss of project value. So that’s the first sign. Please make sure that if you are getting very excited by a project and you see that they don’t have a team or you have guys called Big Flipper, if that’s the name of the founder or,iPhone Red is the name of the co-founder, then only invest 1% of your capital. Enjoy. Hope that that does 100 x but never ever bet your house on it or anything like that. The second thing, of course, is it should be a very easy question to be answered but you’ll be surprised that once you enter DeFi, how complex it becomes. Like I’ve explained to you, basically how Phoenix makes money for you today. And I understand that some of the terms were probably new, but if your users rewatch this, it’ll make sense. There’s market makers that make a market for traders. Market makers make a lot of the money. Traders generally lose money. If you become the market maker, you have way less risk and you make money. That’s what Phoenix does for you. So along with those two checks, basically first to find out who the team is. The second of all, to find out what the source of revenue is. Once you’ve done that, you’re already dealing with a good project, right? If you have the answers you need, then it’s all about capital allocation. And that’s, that’s just common sense advice that you can you can avoid most pitfalls by doing that. The final one that I would alert investors about is the level of returns that the project is promising. So typically if you go to Phoenix, the website today, you will see mention of the type of returns in terms of qualitative statements like double digit and all that. But you will never see crazy statements like make 50% a week or 20% a month, or 100% a year or anything, which sounds too good to be true. It’s very easy, especially in today’s cost of living crisis. We live in a very difficult period, especially for the younger generation. So you you have a bit of money, you’re like, okay, let me bet the house on it. Maybe this is my one shot thing. It’s not. Your money, you’re going to lose money. You’re 99% of the time you’re going to lose money. So make sure that the returns make sense to you. So when you’re entering the blockchain space, you are taking on the risk of leaving traditional finance and the protections that that part of the financial sector affords you. When you move into blockchain, it’s a bit of a black box. And so these, these sort of checks that I’ve, I’ve told you today, if you do those, you’ll fare well.  And just note that when you’re entering this higher risk space, you should demand higher returns. If there’s some project in the blockchain that’s saying you can earn 5% – 6% a year. No, that’s not interesting because you can earn that in traditional finance. Right. With lower risk. So approximately the returns that Phoenix provides are realistic as long as you can verify the source of revenues.

Craig Asano: Perfect. So, you know, you were talking about as one of the strategies and 90% of the companies offering similar services or sort of investing orientated services in crypto who don’t have their team, up on their website, who…it’s very difficult to ascertain any information on them. So maybe you can just tell us a little bit about who’s involved with the Phoenix app and how it was built.  As far as I can tell, it was incubated out of Hatchworks where you’re full time there.

Kay Khemani: Yeah. No, it’s good. So Hatchworks is a technical advisor. We absolutely contributed manpower to it. The Phoenix Company itself is not part of Hatchworks.  It’s not in the Hatchworks group. It’s a separate entity, separate shareholder structure, board structure. And in terms of the team, if you go to the team section, you will see the tech technical leads there. We have a testing team as well. Who does the user assisted testing on top. And of course, we have a legal advisor that takes care of the licenses and all those things. We have a roadmap on the regulation side as well. So the whole team can be found on the Phoenix website. I’m of course, there as well. If you also look at each member of the team, very important, you also see their career history. It’s on LinkedIn. You be able to verify all those statements. We’ve been around in blockchain for six years now. So if you just Google us, you’ll find out information about us.

Craig Asano: Yeah, well, no, it’s just good to to know. And as you’re saying, when folks like yourself are showing up and doing podcasts, you’re living and breathing, you’ve been fascinated with this space and building this. Really, it’s a new opportunity for for investors. One of the things since we’re talking about all about investing in crypto. This is sort of a news related item that took the entire industry by storm and grabbed their attention. This is about the approvals in the US with the BTC ETFs. Can you, which have now since been been approved and it’s had some impact on the market. And if you can just provide your thoughts on, what you think that will do for the market and that sort of use case and sort of where do you see it? How will that impact the Phoenix app and what you’re doing, if anything at all?

Kay Khemani: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So the approval of the ETFs is of the ETFs is a very important. It’s a seminal moment in crypto history and the blockchain industry because it legitimizes to a large extent an asset class so far that has been associated, as you know, with criminals, drugs, money laundering, racketeering and all that stuff. Cash has as well over time but Bitcoin gets a negative rap. So the fact that Blackrock, Fidelity and some of the biggest financial powerhouses in this world are now have backed it and I won’t say twisted the SEC’s arms to go ahead and approve it. You saw the SEC chairperson’s statement as well. He basically wrote that although I have approved the ETFs, I don’t actually condone Bitcoin yet myself. That just goes to show how much friction there was to get these out there because the younger generation absolutely wants to get into the blockchain. Kids today are not going to be like, oh, can I can you please find me a retirement account earning me 4%? I really want to get into real estate earning me 2% in Nevada or something like that. The world has changed. It’s all about digital currencies, and that’s why these big powerhouses know that in order to retain their competitive edge, they have to offer those products both to retail investors, but also to institutions and family offices and what have you. So, they did that and a lot of lobbying happened, and the world’s most powerful banks were behind it. I know that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have applied to be APs, Authorized Placement agents. And what the ETF basically does is so let’s say Vanguard or let’s say Fidelity or Goldman or whatever, they launch an ETF. That’s just the technical side of things. What that ETF allows to do is to raise funds by big money, and some of the marketing that goes behind this, some of the funds on the asset management fees they collect that is spent on marketing and spreading the word around the world. And these organizations have huge networks to informing the public that it is actually okay. Yes, it’s a high volatility asset class, but it is safe if you invest through it in the right way. And that’s the ETF vehicle that allows the common person.  They’re not forced to go to some crypto exchange in China or something or wherever. Give their KYC details, buy Bitcoin and hold it in some, self-custody wallet and lose the keys to them. If you do it through an ETF, you have protections in place. So in answer to your question, it’s very good because it basically increases the perceived safety of investing in that asset and also the sector, as a whole. What it means for Phoenix is more flows. So the good news is, and I didn’t mention this too much, but as a market maker in Phoenix, what you want is volumes. You want news. You you’re earning fees but the markets are rising or falling, which is very unique. But what you want is you want basically, more news. The more news, the more volumes. With the ETFs, volumes have gone through the roof. So going into the ETF. So I would say the months of July, August, September, October, November of last year, the volumes were picking up because we were coming out of the bear market. But generally speaking, the annual percentage yield you were earning on the highest pool was around around 16%, 17%. On some good days, maybe 20%-23%. Now it’s moved up structurally to 30% on the weekends. That’s another thing, is the Phoenix app you earn on the weekends as well. Because blockchain markets don’t close on Fridays. They continue to make money on Saturdays and Sundays. Traders around the world can trade. They’re not dependent on brokers. So when you see a tick up in these APYs in the system, you know that there’s something happening, and now it’s just the volumes have gone through the roof after the ETFs. And we will structurally continue to climb as well because we’re just at the at the tipping point.

Craig Asano: So getting getting back into the the model and how the Phoenix app can work for investors. One of the things you mentioned earlier in the podcast is they have full access to their own invested capital. Is it possible this is just a general question that popped into my head here to take risk off the table in part, so not the full amount, but have a program say, I’d like to take off, 5% of the gains every month as we go forward through this passive investing program. Is that a feature that if it’s not there today, is it something that you think will be introduced at Phoenix?

Kay Khemani: We so we listen to to users and if users tell us that we would love to have either an auto-compounding, we received that request a lot auto-compounding at a specific frequency. So as you said, every 5% every month, maybe reinvest it back, take the rest out or take it out, send it back to my wallet, de-risk. We don’t have these features, coded into Phoenix code at the moment, but the auto-compounding is something we definitely have to implement because so many users have requested it. So the answer is yes. It’s not a feature that currently exists. What we do, however, urge users to do is to withdraw their fees every week. Just, collects at the end of the week. It’s collecting in real time, and then on Sunday, whenever you have 20 minutes, hit the withdrawal, take your fees out, and pay yourself. Right. And so, the answer is yes. We want to code that in. We definitely want to build that auto-compounding feature in. One small thing to note is when you are moving capital to the liquidity pool, to the, to the wider decentralized smart contract,there are gas fees. I won’t get too much into it, but in blockchain, the whole blockchain is maintained…the integrity of the blockchain, whether it’s the Bitcoin blockchain, whether it’s the Ethereum blockchain, is maintained by miners around the world. You they’re called node runners. And you can run a miner, a server as well, which helps people process transactions. And you get paid in Ethereum, for example. Or if you’re a Bitcoin miner, you get paid in Bitcoin. That’s an entire industry by itself. Now the system has to compensate you, the miners fee, as a thank you for providing your server infrastructure to help process transactions. What that basically means is every time we are committing your capital on the curve, or when you’re de-installing the capital, when you’re saying, okay, I’m done with the program, I want to take my money out. There’s a gas fee to pay. Right. So that gas fee is something Phoenix pays for you. We don’t charge you that. Just let you know that. So that’s something that we take from our management fees. We pay that. But it is worth noting that this whole process gas fees can vary within the day, and sometimes they can skyrocket when the network is busy. And so this is why we advise users to do this, not every single day, but to maybe do it every week or something like that. So even the compounding, you’re going back to your 5%. We would say that it should happen at a frequency of maybe a week or two weeks or a month or something like that, rather than real time compounding. Because the system, the underlying system, is strong, the integrity of these chains is very strong. The very decentralized. Now having been there for almost a decade. But they are still somewhat clunky when it comes to gas fees.

Craig Asano: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve I’ve often read a story about those gas fees and it’s a lot more than a coffee. So you’re you’re…

Kay Khemani: You can pay. You can end up paying. I mean, it’s crazy if you’re not careful, if you’re trying to send $100 to somebody or receive, you can actually end up paying $100 to send $100 if you’re not careful. But you can also end up paying just a dollar or even less. You just have to time that, right?

Craig Asano: Absolutely. So, you know, you bring up a good point about sort of the differentiation. How how does the Phoenix app, sort of compare and contrast with other staking platforms, maybe it’s something to do on the product feature side or it’s how it’s structured. Like this example, you’re covering the gas fees, which I think can be quite significant. It’s this is one less fee that can compound and grow and get you over time. So how are you different? How is the Phoenix app different from other staking platforms?

Kay Khemani: Yeah that’s a good good point. So another thing is that when you go to a traditional staking app and I won’t get into the whole, you know, we’re doxed people know who we are and all those things that we don’t have those red flags. I mean, that’s a given that Phoenix operates in a much more aboveboard way but from a feature standpoint, yes, the fees thing is one thing that you mentioned. And the second thing is when you’re trying to stick and you go to another platform that claims to give you staking-based revenues, what do you do then? You have to connect your MetaMask or your decentralized wallet to that specific network. Hope that you don’t get hacked. And that’s a serious risk. These days. Your own web browser can be compromised. And then after that, you have to monitor the pools, how much volume is going through certain pools, and that typically these other programs have hundreds of pools to choose from. So it’s information overload. Funny enough, the APYs, what you can earn and the risk is lower than Phoenix. So we actually have industry leading APYs as well. That’s after management fees. So that’s after the fees that the system takes. So we there’s that and then once you decide on a pool you have to decide what ranges you as a liquidity provider want to provide liquidity in. If you want to provide liquidity across the entire spectrum. So for Ethereum prices of up to 10,000 all the way down to $100, you can do that, but you’re not going to make much fees. If you go to concentric. If you go to concentrated, you’re going to get stopped out, right? So you have to have fundamental analysis knowledge. If you understand what the sector is going, you have to also understand technical analysis. And given our backgrounds, we are all traders. We are all traders with backgrounds in high finance. We understand these things really well and so that you don’t have to. So if you go to these competing platforms, you’ll get lost. That’s what we’re effectively saying. We also urge users to do that. If you’re entering the space, look at some of the platforms. We can actually if you ask us for tips, I’ll be happy to tell your users which are competing platforms to go and test those out, and you’ll see it’s a it’s a complete nightmare once you’re in there. You don’t know what’s actually going on. With Phoenix you’re sending money to the Phoenix app. The app money spent is immediately located on the on the liquidity curve, and you start earning and you can withdraw your capital. So we really dumb things down.

Craig Asano: So it’s immediate once, once the capital is there and into the Phoenix app. The program will algorithmically, participate that portion as a market maker and one one thing I saw on the website was around the ability to reduce risk through hedging or hedging capital risk. Can you just explain how that would work for an investor in a simple way.  Considering that let’s say they might be a retail investor, they they don’t want to be overwhelmed with all the pools but they want to make sure that the team is there, they have confidence in the technology, they they understand the fee structure, how they can get their money in and and out. What about the the hedging or other ways that they can reduce their risk through through the Phoenix app?

Kay Khemani: Okay. So the the risk that you have as a user in Phoenix is that the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum tank. So they fall by 50% – 60%. Okay. And the market enters a bear. And although that risk is reducing now after ETFs because the products are becoming more and more institutionalized. And so you have checks and balances in place to stop those type of gyrations. But let’s say that happens. You want to make sure that you have the least exposure to those currencies when that drop happens. So the simplest way to do it is to go into buffer, which is the lowest risk pool. I gave you an example of Bitcoin fell by 20%. Your capital would drop by 1% to 2%. So it’s already very low risk if you if you want to have completely like no downside risk at all, that’s trickier. That’s a bit more trickier and it’s not something we would advise to a retail investor because that involves shorting. Specifically that involves taking out a put option contract and basically paying the premiums to the option underwriter but then your downside risk is a liquidity providers is completely hedged. And also if the price shoots up, you don’t lose out on that. If you if you did a naked short on Ethereum or Bitcoin, the problem with you then is okay if Ethereum Bitcoin fall great. You made you make money on that short but you will you will take a big hit if they rise, right. There’s no way to hedge out a horizon. So although I don’t want to get into put option and option underwriting here for the more institutional sophisticated investors, those instruments do do exist but for the retail investor, it’s not something we would advise. What we would basically say is go into buffer, which is a very, very low risk pool, an extremely low risk pool, although you don’t earn much money, you know, 7% to 10%, maybe 11% a year. Your your downside is extremely limited.

Craig Asano: Yeah. Okay. Great. Thanks. Thanks for illuminating on that. What about leverage? Often in the crypto investing space, you see advertisements, you know, 200 x leverage, 500%, in all of these things could look like opportunities, but what what are your thoughts? And do you offer leverage at the Phoenix app?

Kay Khemani: Very good question. No, we we hate leverage. So we’re we’re low risk. We don’t like leverage. Uh, you. If you are an accredited investor, you understand leverage and you have access to credit facilities and you want to go in big on Phoenix and we can get our legal team in touch with yours, and we can have a discussion about how such a pool would look for you, so that your capital is safe and generates and pays off your interest on the on the leverage. But no way would we ever recommend leverage or for anyone to take out a loan to participate in Phoenix. Although the Phoenix is a safely engineered product, the downsides are pretty well protected, loans and crypto don’t mesh. I would never recommend that. Now, if I personally, because I’m an accredited investor, I’m a quote unquote, I fall under the category of sophisticated investor. I do like where Bitcoin is headed and I wish I had more capital. And I have.  Our company has thought about it accessing leverage to go long Bitcoin like Michael Saylor did. Right. And his bet has paid off fantastically for MicroStrategy. So but for Phoenix no, the answer is no. In general, leverage is bad in the space because, you know, we discussed that quotient 85% 90% of traders lose money. Those that are using leverage, 98% of traders blow their accounts. So I would not advise taking out leverage. For Phoenix, you don’t need leverage. You really don’t need leverage. You don’t.  On that point, I’d like to like to say that the good news is we have reduced the minimums.  Because we want to also bring Phoenix to emerging markets. It used to be $1,000 to get into these pools. Now it’s $100.

Craig Asano: Minimum $100 investment for.

Kay Khemani: Yes, exactly.

Craig Asano: Got it. Okay. Well, that’s good to know. Let’s switch gears a little bit about, maybe the industry level on regulation. And, you know, the DeFi space is, has been a hot sector. An area of great interest for a lot of investors, as well as all the builders and innovators. It’s really about, well there’s many facets to it but I see that direct to consumer investments and disintermediating some of the brokers that are involved in the process. But from a regulatory perspective what are your thoughts as governments, securities regulators try to wrap their head around striking the balance? I’ll use that word, for on the innovation side and ensure that there’s not a flow out of capital from their country. They’re still providing investors in their countries these great opportunities. But we’re living in a global, world where investors can come from all walks of life, all around the globe. What do you envision? You know, well, maybe you can talk about the current state of regulation for DeFi today. And where do you see it maybe moving, in the near future?

Kay Khemani: It’s a good question. It’s a fantastic question. The thing is in DeFi, DeFi is a niche inside crypto. It’s a specific niche and DeFi, as you rightly said, is disintermediating the powers that be effectively. In theory, in a world that was run purely on DeFi, you would not need your broker. You know, you would not need JPMorgan Chase to buy shares of Tesla. That’s the truth. So it challenges the very essence of what the big banks are built on. They’re trading revenues. So you’re basically taking them on. So to regulate DeFi in my opinion, is going to be a very, very, very big hurdle. If there’s going to be any sort of DeFi, it’ll be happening between banks, if you ask me, because they want to protect what’s theirs. And so I think ultimately like it or hate it, regulators are very much influenced by big bankers and lobbies, as you see in the US, right? Washington, DC is pretty much a very well financed by banks and all this thing. You saw how much pressure Blackrock and these big guns put on the SEC to approve the ETF. So it’s very unlikely that these regulatory agencies and in answer to question today they haven’t sided with Joe Public over the banks. So and that’s how I think it will continue. I don’t think I’m not actually a DeFi enthusiast myself. I know the industry pretty well. I can tell you for the reasons I mentioned now, but also the quality of DeFi projects are so bad that it gives regulators a lot of ammunition to basically say, oh, well, look at look at LUNA, right? Look at this company. Look at this. We can’t the only way we can regulate this is try and shut it down, because it’s just garbage. So there are good concepts in DeFi. Phoenix is an example of DeFi. Uniswap is an example. Defi where you can become a liquidity provider. You don’t have to go to or trade against a broker. You can make money in a new way. But these kind of dark projects, black box projects where like Luna, where you don’t know what you’re earning from where and stuff they end up collapsing. It’s difficult to regulate those. Traditional regulation, just to end on a more positive note when it comes it is moving forward. So there’s regulatory arbitrage. It’s a great point that you brought up because what’s happening is if you’re in the US and this ETF approval didn’t go through, capital would flow out. It would go out to other jurisdictions that allow that are more accommodative for blockchain regulation, like Singapore, like Switzerland, like even the UK. Now after the ETF approval, the Americans have kind of gotten the upper hand. Again. You know, almost 50%, 60% of capital flows for blockchain are still in the US. If they lose that to other countries that’s a massive competitive disadvantage. So right now regulation is moving forward. Everyone’s looking forward to see what America i going to do next. And slowly you start to see the right moves also in Europe. For example, Germany is quite pro bitcoin which which may surprise you. The UK claims to want to be the market leader, but they’ve been quite slow in approving ETFs and all these things. But Switzerland has been ahead of the curve. So it’s it’s moving forward. Hong Kong is moving forward as well. China is a bit more draconian on that front. So it’s a bit of a I would say it’s a pop mark progress.

Craig Asano: Yeah, it seems we’re hitting a tipping point with more institutional adoption and regulators and governments worldwide, whether they are on this side of the fence or that side of the fence, they’re recognizing the value of the technologies. That’s a good segue into more of the innovation type question. I know on a lot of our podcasts, a popular question is around the impact of artificial intelligence and what that type of intelligence combined with, say, a retail investor or any type of investor. Do you see AI having a big impact into sort of your business and DeFi and in particular from an investing perspective?

Kay Khemani: I would say, AI is very exciting from a trader’s perspective because we all in an ideal world, we don’t want to put the effort to learn to trade the markets. We’d ideally like to have a little robot that can trade the markets more efficiently and make money for us, ideally on a monthly basis for life. Right? That’s what we want but it’s very difficult to get that right. And I think in answer to your question now with ChatGPT, we need to see the capabilities of how well I can ingest the myriad of data that it needs to do both qualitative and quantitative data that the internet spews out, in order to make qualified investment decisions that can actually make us sustainable return. We don’t know right now how successful it is. I can tell you there is no retail AI robot that makes money. Even after ChatGPT, you know it’s been out for almost one a year and a half. There is no retail robot that makes money that’s truly sentient. There might be neuro, what you say, NLP models that are repurposed by major investment banks and hedge funds, quant funds that can make these guys money but we retail people, we don’t have access to that technology. So I think, long story short, in order for brokers to exist, traders need to lose money, unfortunately. That is how the markets are kind of structured, wired right now. With Phoenix it’s different because there you are the market. You are the broker. Effectively you’re just making you’re selling Bitcoin and Ethereum, passively but with your traditional model, I think AI challenges that as well, and I don’t think the big banks would want to see you or me get our hands on that. But that’s just my view.

Craig Asano: Yeah. It’s such an exciting time around the world. I mean AI is really hungry for for data, and that is a processing and ingesting that data is allowing the personalization of our lives. You know, who wouldn’t want an investing robot with the guards and rails to protect us but certainly envision these types of market making programs and investment models that continue to evolve through innovation in the crypto space to continue forward. So, I guess, as we sort of move towards the end of the podcast, we’d love to hear your thoughts. What do you think the, the whole crypto investing space, the DeFi space, the model and the area that you’re focused on with the Phoenix app will look like in in five years, and coupled with that, what sort of… Are we missing anything in the discussion? We’d love to give you an opportunity to share a story or something that you feel would would appeal to investors or anyone that might have concerns. It’s really, you know, the ball’s in your court to help wrap this up.

Kay Khemani: No. Sure. Thanks, Craig. So I would say in answer to your question, if you take a five year view on where the space is headed after the ETFs have been approved, this, as I said, was a seminal moment. It will allow more information, more correct information and safeguards for new investors to be put into place so they can access blockchain technology safely and make money. More importantly, make money. And AI right now is broadly used in blockchain as a buzzword by projects to lure you in basically.  AI based staking and all that. It’s all nonsense. It’s another red flag for me. Five years from now, I think DeFi would have progressed, I think would have been more regulated. I think the returns would drop as well as more realness enters in, which is important. And I think it’ll be it’ll be like any other asset class eventually.  All the various cryptos and stuff. What I would do right now would urge all your users that have not done so is whether they like to join Phoenix or not. That’s totally, you know, their prerogative. We’re very happy to to receive them. But more importantly, we’re sitting at a very important time in the history of investing. You look back 20 years ago, you look at what Microsoft did, sorry, 40 years ago, 30, 40 years ago. Apple. What those stocks were trading at back in the late 70s, the late 80s, as you know. And you look at that amazing chart and you’re like, wow, had I invested back then. Right. How have we not all done that? And what I would ask people to do is to spend some time, like we did in 2016, which was life changingly important for us as a project to enter the blockchain with the smart contract to get rid of brokers. And that was a very big project for us. That kind of gave us the wings to create future projects. I would ask all of your users who have not done that already to really get clued up on what is happening with Bitcoin and blockchain. Specifically, what this what the ETFs mean for the access by the public to this technology. In short, I mean, again, I don’t like to give investment advice, but you see what’s happening to your cash in the bank. Inflation risks of bank failures, all these things. And then you see of course, a potential competing mechanism for cash, the one that does not deflate, one that is truly that you can own, as yours cannot be confiscated by governments. It’s important to see what these ETFs mean for the space and also prices for Bitcoin price Ethereum over the next 5 to 10 years. When planning your your investments because these opportunities may not come back. So that’s what I would say. And once you once you look at bitcoin Ethereum you learn about those. Only then I would say is you can kind of graduate to the other more kind of riskier niches in blockchain like DeFi, like NFTs and all of that.

Craig Asano: Well, you heard it folks. Not advice. Not investment advice, but from a seasoned, high finance, investor, who’s been involved with incubating lots of projects and dedicated to the Phoenix app. I think it’s exciting times, especially with the approval of the ETFs, potentially Ethereum ETFs. All these new technologies in the market today and they’re only going to continue, as Kay was talking about on the ground floor. If you get involved, get educated, ask questions. But by all means you should, get in touch with with Kay. On that one, we would just say, how do users sign up and maybe how can they they find if anyone has any follow up questions with you, how do they get involved? How do they get in touch with you.

Kay Khemani: Absolutely. So obviously they can contact you, Craig, but if they want to come directly, just go to www.Phoenixapp.io. And there’s a range of contact buttons there. Email.  Also our telegram community where I’m there as well. Our users.  You can chat to our users as well, ask them about their experiences. And you can also sign up to the app. We have a mac approved downloadable app, also PC approved downloadable app, but if you don’t like downloading stuff, you can just click on Launch app on our website and you can sign up there as well. What I would advise you is actually, do that and get to know us, get to know the project, monitor the performance for a few months and don’t invest now. Just monitor learn what Phoenix is because automated marketing market making is so unique. It’s a it’s a great source of revenue. But get educated first on it. And when you’re ready to take the dive then you can always do that in the future.

Craig Asano: That’s good information. Before we really wrap up the podcast, we can’t finish it without a rapid fire questions. It’s my favourite part of the show. We’re just expecting, quick responses and just, you know, everyone. It feels it keeps it personal and interesting. So we’re going to close this out with a rapid fire questions. You ready for that?

Kay Khemani: Yeah. Go. Let’s go.

Craig Asano: Okay. So um, in a word, how would you describe the future of crypto?

Kay Khemani: Booming.

Craig Asano: What was that?

Kay Khemani: Booming. Booming.

Craig Asano: Booming. That’s right. That fair enough. Moving on. What is the number one risk investors should be aware of in DeFi?

Kay Khemani: I would say non-doxxed teams. So teams that don’t want to show their faces, that’s a number one risk.

Craig Asano: Anyone…No transparency. Basically. No transparency. Hiding under the covers. Okay. Good answer. Next question. What’s your personal mantra when it comes to investing in crypto?

Kay Khemani: My personal mantra is don’t invest. The first thing to do is you’re not going to miss out. The space is headed up in asset prices over time. Do not worry about that. Take your time to research the project, and you can make a lot of money, but you can lose a lot of money as well. So I would say just take that time, that one week or so, of really getting to a project. And very importantly, when you’re ready, look at the world if you lost that money, how would that affect you personally? How would that affect your dependents? Your co-dependents? Your future? Your kids? Everything. If you believe that would really put you in a bad place, don’t touch this investment. Always only invest money that you can afford to truly lose. And I know people say that, but it’s only when they lose the money do they really feel that pinch. So be very, very careful.

Craig Asano: Yup, that’s great advice. Don’t bet the bank and don’t take a second mortgage out. Yeah.

Kay Khemani: No, definitely don’t take out second mortgages.

Craig Asano: Next question. Name a recent favorite book or movie that you would recommend to our listeners?

Kay Khemani: A favorite book or movie I’ve been watching entourage. I don’t know if you guys know that watching the re-runs. There’s so it’s so entertaining. It’s a great show. Sure. A lot of you already know it. Uh, my wife keeps up with the more latest Netflix movies and things. I just don’t get time but that’s what came to mind right now. I’ve been watching that, so that’s great. You would love that.

Craig Asano: That’s why you need the robot investor so we can all have more time.

Kay Khemani: Yeah, exactly.

Craig Asano: To watch. I don’t know it, but I got Netflix. I’ll have to search it.

Kay Khemani: Oh, you love it. You love it. It’s really addictive. It’s good.

Craig Asano: Perfect.

Craig Asano: So last question before we wrap up officially is what’s your favourite go to financial tool or app?

Kay Khemani: Oh, trading view by far. I love trading view. I’m sure you guys all know it. It’s just fantastic. It’s so well designed. I met the founder a few years ago just on Skype. Very accessible and there was nobody. No one was using it, and today they’re a global company. They pretty much I think they have 80% market share. Retail. Really great. Great app for free as well. Of course there’s a premium version as well. But it’s you can get so much data about charts, analysis, trading strategies, news. Great. It’s like a Bloomberg terminal for the retail.

Craig Asano: Yeah. Trading. Trading is good. It’s not. Not that expensive. Maybe it’s a couple hundred bucks for the pro version and all sorts of bells and whistles and integrations as well. So, with that folks, you heard it. We really want to thank Kay Khemani who has shared his knowledge and expertise. He’s involved with incredibly exciting project at the Phoenix app. And, his advice or non advice to investors has been wonderful. Just take it slow, get educated, watch and learn. And if you have questions, connect with folks that are transparent and willing to show their face and be along for this incredible journey. So once again Kay, I want to thank you. You’re welcome back anytime. It’s been awesome having you here.

Kay Khemani: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Craig Asano: Yeah. Well, you know, come back in a couple of years. We’d love to hear where the Phoenix App is. And if anything interesting comes out of Hatchworks. Get get in touch for us for sure. Other than that, this is the conclusion of episode 61. And I would like to say, if you’re new to Fintech Fridays, please check out some of our incredible past episodes. We think you’ll be surprised with what you’ll find. Uh, we look forward to seeing you next Friday for another episode of Fintech Fridays. Have a good weekend, everyone. Thank you.

Kay Khemani: Thank you.

Outro : you’ve been listening to Fintech Fridays brought to you by NCFA and partners. Tune in weekly for the latest fintech Friday podcast by subscribing to this channel. The National crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada is a non-profit actively engaged with social and investment fintech sectors around the globe and provide education research industry stewardship services and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers. For more information please visit ncfacanada.org.

End of Podcast

Subscribe and Listen to more Fintech Fridays podcasts here

Join NCFA’s weekly Podcast series ‘FINTECH FRIDAYS’ where we sit down with the incredible people in the Fintech community and talk about leading fintech products innovations developments and challenges!

Interested in getting involved as a partner or participant? info@ncfacanada.org

The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada’s Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org

• SEO Powered Content & PR Distribution. Get Amplified Today.
• PlatoData.Network Vertical Generative Ai. Empower Yourself. Access Here.
• PlatoAiStream. Web3 Intelligence. Knowledge Amplified. Access Here.
• PlatoESG. Carbon, CleanTech, Energy, Environment, Solar, Waste Management. Access Here.
• PlatoHealth. Biotech and Clinical Trials Intelligence. Access Here.
• Source: https://ncfacanada.org/fintech-fridays-ep61-making-markets-and-investing-in-crypto-with-the-phoenix-app/