The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Amir Kaltalk CEO & Katia Zaitsev CBO and Co-Founders of LEXIT

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

Amir Kaltalk CEO & Katia Zaitsev CBO and Co-Founders of LEXIT Lexit.com LEXIT is a platform for transforming Intellectual Property into Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Anyone owning Art, Music, Film/Videos, Patents or Technical Inventions, can join and submit a listing for an NFT Launch, collect NFTs, follow/like its favourite creators and have the ability to build their NFT identity with LEXIT. LEXIT will soon after also release an extension of its NFT Launchpad with an integration of its Decentralized Exchange (DEX) which will make launched NFTs immediately available for trading on LEXIT’s DeFi Pools.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. Who knew we'd do it again? A thousand plus podcasts and we just keep going? I don't know. It's really weird that way. But we figure we'd put out one more. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. To see the video version of this, you can go to YouTube.com, Forge Us, Chris Voss.

Hit the bell notification button. Be part of a family that's the best family in the world, the family that doesn't judge you. You can be who you are, and we still love you. It's not unconditional, but there you go. Anyway, guys, we'll see all of our stuff we're doing on all of our major groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all those places the crazy kids are at these days. Also go to goodreads.com for Chess Chris Voss. You can see everything we're reading and reviewing on there and some of the great authors that

we have. I think later on today, we have someone coming up for the New York Times that wrote a book that should be pretty interesting. See all of our coverage of CES 2022, which we put up. And also go see our massive group on LinkedIn, 132,000 people, and the newsletter that we've got that's just killing it every day. Anyway, guys, we've got always the best guests on the show. Today we have two amazing co-founders on the show. Amir Kaltech, he's the CEO and founder of the company Lexit. And we also have on the show with us, Katya Zaitsev.

She's the co-founder and CBO of Lexit.com. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. How are you? Hi there. Oh, we're pretty great. We just got to New York and it's always great to be in this town. There's so much energy, so yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for

having us. We're very excited. And then I get the pronunciations, everyone's names right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, good job. The energy you throw at the beginning of the show and then your scatterbrain, like after that you're like, okay, what do we do now? I think that's different. So welcome to the show. I already plugged the the website but give us the plugs again and stuff

all right great so lexicon.com is the next level when it comes to nfts and defis so we are a platform to create nfts and to bring these to the masses it's a very mainstream approach to make it very simple to use for everyone. So anyone who's interested in NFTs and in amazing things related to the DeFi space, visit Lexit.com. And let's give a foundation for those who are still catching up to what an NFT is. What is an NFT? An NFT is, in its essence, a certificate of ownership. Let's put it this way.

It's been hosted on the blockchain. There are different blockchains where you can do. And as usually, you are taking a piece of art that's currently very popular, and you are making an NFT, which is tied to that piece of art, which could be a digital piece of art or a physical item. And then that NFT is representing that piece of art and its transaction, its value.

Awesome. Give us a little bit of background on both of you guys, your bios, if you will, and what brought you to this venture? Yeah, ladies first. Yeah, I've come from a competitive athletic background. I used to be a rhythmic gymnast. That's how I started, I guess, my career from a young age. National Canadian champion. Wow. Yeah. So I was first for 10 years, a competitive athlete. And then I went to school in U of T and also come from the corporate world. I worked in IT consulting. And yeah, so that's where I guess I grew my career. But Amir and I met in 2016 when the first thought of intellectual

property on a blockchain was discussed. And it was more at that time a project and R&D, let's say, right? Yeah, I would say so. Yeah. And I was so fascinated. We kept in touch. And earlier last year, or probably the tail end of 2020, we reconnected and we had some meetings virtually and we thought, you know what, let's do it. Let's get this going. Crypto started to go back up and flew straight from Mexico at the time to Switzerland.

And we've been working on it ever since. So it's an exciting time. That's awesome. And then your background, Amir? I am what you would call a lifelong nerd, a corporate hippie or something of sorts. I was like a small kid already, I don't know, with eight or something, hacking stuff into a computer in the 80s. Yes, I'm that old. So that was how I started.

My background is math and physics as a general, but I'm an entrepreneur since over a quarter century. Always been in IT, but also media production and songwriting and sorts of things, but always somehow tied to the IT world. And yeah, Lexit isn't my first IT project. And so I'm very excited to bring this with all the experience I can hopefully bring to the table, bring it to the right place. All right. So tell us more about Lexit, what you guys do or what you guys are hoping to do in the marketplace. What do you guys are building? It's quite difficult nowadays, still is, to actually create NFTs or even to connect as a normal person to the NFT world.

We try to build the best solution out there, which is going to make it very easy to actually create NFTs, tie value to it, and to bring it out there, to promote it. And at the other end of the story, to be able to easily access these and easily obtain and collect NFTs and trade NFTs. So Alexa is all about access. It's all about lowering the barriers for everyone on both sides to participate. And if you are a artist or inventor, so anyone who is creating intellectual property, you are very welcome because we're going to make it very easy for you to get started,

hook you up, get you out there and hopefully help you to elevate your, whatever you do. Yeah. And just to piggyback on that, as Amir mentioned, for sure, accessibility, but also opportunity for artists, accessibility, but also opportunity for artists, athletes, anyone that is trying to get into an industry that might be maybe too expensive or

too difficult to get in. NFTs could be utilized in a way to fund yourself, fund yourself to where you want to be. Athletes could have accessibility with their fans through NFTs and also be able to raise money to get into the career that they want. For example, racing. It's very expensive to get into the racing industry. And there's a lot of racers depend on sponsors. You could be the best driver out there, but you might not have a sponsor to be able to race in the next season.

So we could create NFTs for them to be able to launch a collection and be able to raise that money, build a community around there, and also engage with their fans through NFTs. Add utility to those NFTs, something I can do with it. An NFT is a token, like Bitcoin, like anything out there, right? So you have it in your wallet, and what are you going to do? You can keep it, you can trade it, make some money with that for instance, or you can use it as access as a key to something that the creator provides. It can be anything that the creator

thinks is cool. If you're a race driver, access to the paddock. So like to have a really, you know, skin on skin with it, with the whole thing, it could be something for instance. Yeah. Yeah. It's really amazing what they're doing with NFTs. There's all sorts of stuff you can build into it. You can build in different things for people to buy them can get some sort of personal access or some sort of personal reward or something like that. And it's really an interesting environment and people like collecting these things and just like a collector's item.

And since they're not just a picture or a graphic, since they have a value beyond that, like you say, they're pretty interesting. Now, what is a DeFi for people that need to understand some of the terminologies and basis of this industry? Yeah, let's break it down. DeFi stands for decentralized finance. Now, what is that? It is an attempt of many projects to, let's put it this way, bring the financial system into the future, to decentralize finance, to create new ways to obtain loans or to let people participate in benefits of whatever you do. So DeFi is a novel concept. Well, not so novel anymore, like two years since it really has taken off to make many people participate on the project's goal and intention.

So new ways to use your money to participate in a DeFi space and create value for yourself. And you guys are a Dey platform is that correct yes yes we are as a matter of fact the only nft platform that is going to fully utilize and unlock the potential of defy so today in nft it's already interesting you can buy this collectible and it somehow goes crazy in value and you're sitting on a pile of cash but But we believe that is okay now. And it's interesting that all these picture collections, whatever they are, create value and access. But we believe that the future is more that those NFTs become tradable, accessible,

because some of these NFTs are already in the millions of value, all right? That's expensive. So if that individual were to sell that NFT, only a very wealthy person can actually buy it. So what Lexit does, you take this highly valuable, famous NFT,

you bring it on to Lexit, to our launchpad, and we are going to fractionalize it in a regulatory compliant way, worldwide, to many people for a way lower price on it. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And the next step is even the most amazing part. Once that happened and the individuals, everyone participating, has a little piece of the action, then we are opening up a liquidity pool, which is essentially an exchange. And this, in the beginning, single NFT becomes a tradable asset for the masses and that is very interesting now wow it's really uh wild what this is opening up and where this is taking place and i guess you also help educate people work with them especially probably they're uh some major players or celebrities to help them kind of work through all the details because it's quite it's a little complex or at least it feels that way. Yeah, it is. It is complex. And think about this industry right now, NFTs, DeFi, combining it,

what every day there's something new to learn and you have to stay on it as much as possible because something that the conversations that we're having about this industry in May are totally different now. One, there's way more people, I think more people involved in the industry and understanding, but it's evolved so much. And so many people are creating such fascinating ways to incorporate this technology into either their business or their personal life as well. So I'd like to mention Katja just joined recently, Filey, incredible network for empowering female founders. And this is where she is taking part in educating this network. Maybe you can. Yeah, yeah. Because the industry is very male and which is all right.

But I think it's very important to get a lot more women involved in the industry and minorities. And part of, you know, my mission is to educate not only women, but everyone out there to get more of them to involved in the industry and also get more educated, either adapt to their current business model with whatever business that they might be owning or part of or to themselves personally. Yeah. That's awesome. And I know on Clubhouse, I don't know if you're familiar with the Clubhouse web app. I know it's huge over there, the discussion of it. I know I see a lot of women on Instagram that are my clubhouse kind of circle. They're in it. And I think it's pretty inclusive so far. At least

it seems to be. Those who are really into it are getting really into it. What are some of the other things that we need to know about Lexus? How you guys operate? What you do? What's the best way to onboard with you guys? Yeah. So currently right now, we haven't launched yet. We are launching end of February, beginning of March. So the date is not announced, but stay tuned.

And for you to be able to be aware of when the date is going to be announced, you either could go on our website and you could join the wait list. Currently, it's on www.lexit.com and also follow our socials.

We are very active on Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, Discord as well. See, the main reason we haven't determined the launch date is actually that we just very recently closed a very cool NFT deal with a racing team that is fully branded with one of the top

entertainment brands on the planet. Everyone knows it. We can't say it yet. We want to keep the suspense a little bit more. And when that has happened and all ramped up, Katya is going to pull the planet. Everyone knows it. We can't say it yet. We want to keep the suspense a little bit more. And when that has happened and all ramped up, Katya is going to pull the trigger. Yeah. So right now where we're at is we are creating a campaign for a launch. We have our future NFT clients that are going to be around different industries, whether that's racing, sports, music, visual art, physical art pieces as well. And we want to showcase, we're creating NFT models for them currently,

so we could showcase them to see how NFTs could really benefit in their careers. And we are timing that launch with them on a weekly basis. So we're very excited. That should be a wild launch. And then you guys are going to have proof and the positive of what people can see. So the best way for people on board is to, for now, go on your website, check this out, order it. Of course, we have people watching our videos 10 years from now. You should be able to access if you're watching this a year, two years, three years from now.

So this is going to be pretty cool. With NFTs, let me clarify this. If you own art, music, film, videos, patents, or technical inventions, you can use these for these launches. What are some of the ways you're seeing people use NFTs? Experiences. For instance, yeah. Experiences could be as well. It's, you know, yes, of course, you can monetize on arts and your music,

which is great, but also… You can sell songs on art and your music, which is great. You can sell songs directly as an NFT. Kings of Leon did that. Kings of Leon just recently. It really depends. But I think going towards the experience aside, it's becoming very common right now. If you're going to a Formula One, for example, you could launch an NFT for having almost a trip included. It could be a ticket included and kind of an after party and events, so to say. But you could package it into so many different ways.

That digital ticket will be your access point for that event. So that is going to be one of our we're going to have an NFT launch with that as well that we're going to offer for our users. Yeah. And I'd like to shed some more light on the inventors you know that these guys are really dear to my heart because it's so hard if you are creating something some technical invention and if you are not really well connected you will have a hard time to even have the funds to patent it but if you for instance patent your invention, right, this is just the very first small step. It's very hard to go then to a big corporation and try to convince those people to license your patent.

They're going to listen to you. They're going to ask you a lot of questions. And at the same time, going to try to find a way around your patent, if it's a great idea. And we want to, I really, this is dear to my heart, want to help these guys. And what you can do on Lexit is this.

You have your patent. We turn it into this NFT, as I explained. And then into all the fractions and in the liquidity pools. And you as an inventor can now say, okay, the rule is, you can just say that. Anyone who has 51% of these fractions gets an exclusive license to my patent. And now if it's something hard, really, say, for instance, some super invention for smartphones, you can imagine what's going to happen.

Samsung, Apple, Google, they're going to try to buy these charts. And what's going to happen? The value of these is going to increase and the inventor is benefiting. This is how this would work. And I think it's important to note that the way Lexis started

was Amir had code that he wanted to sell and there was no viable option or that one you could evaluate the price of it. Correct? And where to do it. So that's how Lexis was actually founded. Exactly. Bringing the intellectual property onto the blockchain and make it accessible. Yes. This is pretty amazing stuff, guys. There's just so many things you can do. I remember when there was the one band, they sold one record. The only one person could buy the one record, and they spent, I think, $2 million on it.

I forget. I think it was a rapper or a thing. So this would be a way to do that. I know a lot of bands and musicians do meet and greets at a concert where you pay extra and you can go backstage. You can meet and greet the band and take pictures with them and stuff. This would be a great way to do that. There's just like endless possibilities of what you can do with this thing.

The beauty, just may I say this, the beauty is just like that NFT is immutable. It's like impossible to hack. If you can hack the blockchain, you can hack any bank in the world currently. You know what I mean? So it's impossible. So it's an absolute true certificate of that access or that value it provides. And that's the beauty of it. Yeah.

Just watching all the people who've done so many different things with it and just seeing it expand, the ideas that are really behind it are really important. Now, you guys have your own token? Yep, we do. Lexi coin. L-E-X-I, Lexi coin. We had, like in last May, the initial fundraiser, which is IDO, initial DAX offering. We did it on bscpad.com, which is a very successful pad to do such a launch.

It was sold out in 42 seconds, five times oversubscribed. It was really great and enabled many things we do now to be able to afford the great people we're working with to make this platform a great piece of technology. That is freaking awesome, man. Awesome. Can people still buy into it and stuff? Yeah, absolutely. It's currently very low cap, so we didn't do anything for it because we thought it's going to be used on the platform and then it's going to pick up. So we just let it out there. It's traded currently on bitmark.com. It's a New York exchange and on pancakeswap.finance.

You can find it there. If you want more info about it and more details, just go to lexit.com and check it out. And you guys help people create these things with regulatory compliance. How does that work? I didn't even know there was an oversight body or is that part of the FCC? How does that work? I mean, yeah, yeah. See, you have to be really careful when you are defining your tokenomics,

the way your token and the way these NFTs operate in a financial and legal way. And so the model we developed and we started thinking about it already in 2016. So like I said, it's not just one overnight thing here. You know, there's an R&D that went into it. And so the way we are structuring the entire platform and the way these NFTs are being fractionalized and the way they're going to be then accessible is going to come, when regulations are getting tied up and there are clear rules and that day will come, that we are ready, that we don't have to completely overhaul and change the way our platform works. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to add to that. So as we do want to stay ahead of the curve, what we're offering on our platform is anyone who wants to create an NFT or purchase an NFT, you have to go through a KYC process, know your customer.

Identity check. Yes. To make sure that what you're about to NFT is actually and you are a real person. We want to be in front of that because we do want to work with many individuals, brands, labels, et cetera. And for that to happen, we need to stay ahead of that and be very compliant. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot of different dicey stuff. It's very important. Does the SEC oversee this for investment compliance? Yeah. If you were an American company and you were to issue a token, you definitely are going to raise the interest at the SEC.

You do. We're not an US entity. We are a BVI slash Swiss operation. So we can do stuff. But the way we do it is as if we were a US entity. See, that's the thing. Because the United States of America

and the market here, you cannot ignore that. The technology being developed here is shaping the world, literally. And so we believe that our approach is to be compliant everywhere. That's awesome. That's awesome. Anybody can, in the future, when you guys open, they can sign up now to get on the wait list, and then when you guys open, they can talk to you about onboarding, getting everything on your guys' launchpad and everything else. What other stuff do we need to tell people or entice people with to get them to go to your

website and find out more about you? Yeah. There's many reasons why. One, because we are going mainstream. It's going to be the easiest platform to be able to create a profile in NFT. You can create an NFT in under 10 minutes on our platform. That's ideal. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you have your copyright and your pictures prepared, of course. You know what your bio is? Okay, let me say this.

If you know all your information, you have it all handy, and you're ready to submit it, it will take you under 10 minutes. That's awesome. you have it all handy and you're ready to submit it, it will take you under 10 minutes. And there's a lot of very exciting NFTs that we have that have partnered with. We have great NFT clients that are athletes, musicians, very talented artists that are going to be launching kick-ass NFTs with us. And they're going to be for our launch. And I would sign up now. We're going to have a rewards offering and high incentives for the early birds.

So not announced yet, but it will be for sure. There's going to be some Lexi coin, maybe a chance to win a free NFT, etc. That's going to be all coming. But once the campaign starts, it's going to be really exciting. There's going to be a lot of benefits to users to join. Also to have accessibility to a lot of these NFT clients that we are partnered with, that they can be a part of their journey as well. This is going to be really cool because it's just not selling collectibles. There's all sorts of

branding intertwines you could do. I'm seeing big brands starting to get really interested in this. Some of the big platform social media companies are talking about building stuff. It's going to be really interesting, but yeah, there really needs to be like a place you can go where it's very simple and easy. It kind of helps you with the maybe stuff you don't know, or maybe pitfalls, regulatory stuff that you would need to know about. So you don't fall down those holes. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And see, right now also, there's a large problem or gap, I would say, that there's many talented creators, athletes, musicians that really want to get into NFTs, but they don't know where to start. So what we're doing right now, especially with our current NFT clients and anyone that would like to be a part of our Lexit team and Lexit launch, we are walking them through the process from beginning to end, how to educate them, what NFT is, brainstorm what they should NFT based on their goals, whether they want to interact with their fan base or build revenue, build following or

get into a new field. We provide that offering, that service for free for them to be able to bridge that gap and launch with Lexit and get into the NFT space. That's awesome, guys. This has been pretty insightful. Anything else you want to touch on before we- All I can tell you is if you are a creator right now, you should get in touch with us because we are making sure that you are not being taken advantage of. Look, right now, anyone can just take photos of a famous person, make NFTs out of them anonymously on all those platforms out there, no names here, and just sell it and make quite a lot of money. So there's a huge potential of being exploited with your art.

We will not allow that. So if you go to Lexit, we will check who you are. And in case there is a breach, there is someone using copyrights of someone else, then there is a paper trail, so to say. And we make sure that the rightful owner gets his. We used to have to do this with a modeling agency back in the day, an actor agency, where every now and then somebody would be used in a commercial. So they get picked up in the background somehow. One time it was like a news channel that was doing a spot on a they get picked up in the background somehow. One time it was like a

news channel that was doing a spot on a corner and someone walked through the background and they were using it as an advertising promotion spot. And so we had to send them the C and D letters, cease and desist. And they sent some compensation. They're like, Oh, sorry, our bad. But yeah, I think there was one famous story recently where I think it was a charity group or something put out an NFT with a bunch of faces and people's likeness and they were really big and they had to pull it back down. But this is really important too, because you're, you know, part of these is designed to not only control your identity, but your IP. That's so true.

Yeah. And I would also like to add anyone who wants to be part of our launch and get into NFTs, please email me at nftatlexit.com. There you guys go. There you go. Give us your.com one more time so people can find you on the website and get involved. Yeah. Oh, give it. Okay. www.lexit.com, and you can email at nftatlexit.com.

L-E-X-I-T. There you go. There you go. Thank you very much for nftatlexit.com. L-E-X-I-T. There you go. There you go. Thank you very much for both coming on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. It's been great. Amazing. And thank you. So many people are just really learning about this stuff. And more and more, we get the word out. It's going to be pretty amazing. There'll probably be some people like 10 years from now watching this video going,

we know all this stuff. We had to quit putting prices in our video reviews because 10 years, 5 years, 10 years later, people will be like, you're stupid. The price isn't $100. It's $5 on Amazon right now. I'm like, do you see the origin data? It's always funny. Anyway, thanks to you guys. Thanks to my audience for tuning in.

Go to goodreads.com for just Christmas. See everything we're reading or reviewing. Go to see the video version of this at youtube.com for just guys. Thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Christmas. See everything we're reading or reviewing. Go to see the video version of this at youtube.com, Fortress Christmas. Also, go to, what, all the groups, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Follow us all over there. Just put The Christmas Show in, and you'll see it there. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

Be good to each other. Bye-bye. Love you.