The Wolf Of All Streets - The Great Reset with Raoul Milhado, Founder of Elitium

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Raoul Milhado began his career as an entrepreneur at the age of 19. After becoming an expert in building financial services catering to a luxury lifestyle, Raoul built Elitium, a crypto wealth management service focused on bringing big money into the crypto space. As a macro investor, Raoul believes that cryptocurrencies will save wealthy individuals from the effects of the "great financial reset," resulting from trillions in debt and endless money printing. Scott Melker and Raoul Milhado further discuss taking the crypto red pill, entrepreneurship at age 19, selling mega yachts, bridging old money into crypto, founding Elitium, DeFi velocity, luxury crypto lifestyles, trillions in debt, a failing dollar, an imminent great reset, generating tokens, billion-dollar ICO’s and more. ––– MONEY ON CHAIN Money On Chain brings Bitcoin to mass adoption with solutions to meet the needs of different types of users: a fully bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin (DoC), a bitcoin on steroids (BPro), and a dizzying bitcoiner option for lovers of leveraged trading (BTCx). All this, without requiring the delivery of private keys. Money On Chain - Bringing bitcoin into the mainstream. Visit moneyonchain.com/wolf to learn more --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 9.5% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account. --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co

What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Today's guest is the founder and CEO of Aletium, a next-generation wealth management platform helping people unlock a life of independence, value, and growth. Raul's goal is to build a decentralized digital economy that enables a luxury lifestyle. Being fascinated by the vision of Aletium, I actually became an early investor in the project, and now it's one of my top holdings. I can't wait for Raul to share his motivation for founding Elytium and have a conversation around wealth management in the crypto space. Raul Meljado, thank you so much for coming on the show. No problem, Scott. Nice

to be here, finally. Of course, yeah. We've had this one scheduled for a while, been chasing you around the world. A little bit, yeah, yeah. But great, great to be here. I'm very excited for the session. This episode is sponsored by Voyager and Sovereign. Stay tuned for more information on both later in the episode. So before we get into the questions, once again, you're listening to the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, where twice a week I talk to your favorite personalities in the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. The show is powered by Blockworks Group, a media company with over 20 podcasts in their network.

You can check them out at blockworksgroup.io. And if you like the podcast and follow me on Twitter, you can check out my website, join my newsletter. You can do both of those things at thewolfofallstreets.io. And now to get on to what's important. So I know that you've been building businesses for over 10 years now, which is impressive on its own. But then I found out that you were actually born in 1990, which is about 15 years after me, which makes it a lot more impressive. So you really started young,

huh? Yes, yes. I started my first venture when I was 19. I never really went to university or things like that. I always like to do things, I like to execute. My university was basically moving from Amsterdam to Australia when I was 18. Worked there in the corporate basically and i learned a lot that year from not just the language of course but also to work in a corporate and i i started to learn marketing that was that was when i was 18 19 uh and that's what fascinated me about you know the world of business i was like okay i don't want to go back to school or university whatsoever i want to i

want to get started so i I started really young, yeah. And so what was your first business and how did you eventually get to the point where you decided to build Aletium? The company that I was working with in Australia, they had a very successful company in the field of business centers, like a competitor of Regis

everybody probably knows Regis so and but they were not so active with marketing yet so one of the things that I initiated was a new website and then when I realized that new website which I actually coded myself based on YouTube and based on you know finding codes like it was a lot of templates I have to be honest. I was just copy-pasting them, but I made it work. And then I realized that I made that website, but it was not visible. Nobody knew about this new website.

So that was the first moment I realized, okay, how can I get this website on top of Google? And back then, I'm talking about 11 years ago, it was quite easy to just buy some backlinks online and get the website on top of Google. So that was the first moment I saw like the first golden formula. I was doing it for them. They were getting so many inquiries and everybody in every office in Australia was like calling like the CEO of the company saying, who is this guy, Raul? And why is he sending me so many leads?

What's going on? And because I was basically managing and maintaining the leads that were coming through the forum so well based on that learning based on the experience I was like okay I can I can do this for this company or I can go back to Amsterdam and start my own company so that's the was the first company we offered websites we were doing seo and later on it became a full marketing agency full focused on optimizing business revenue basically by getting them everywhere on google but everywhere on the internet so that was my first venture then i sold the company invested into a mobile app which was with a friend of mine from Germany

actually he moved to Germany that back then in Berlin he was very much active in the startup scene in Berlin so we started to work on an app project so all the money that I earned in the first few four years when I was an entrepreneur put all my money into the app and basically lost everything again. The money, we couldn't really proceed with that project. Luckily, we were able to proceed with a new project, which finally became App Promoters. So we were like the first marketing agency, in Europe at least,

that were going to provide solutions for other apps because it was so hard to get from web to mobile. Not just the app companies, but also all the corporates, they wanted to have a mobile website, they wanted to have an app. So long story short, went into the app marketing space. We opened an office in Los Angeles. We also had a team in Israel. And well, then I started to believe in the, you know, the American dream, right? I wanted to be in the States. I wanted to be the biggest.

I wanted to. So that was also the moment that me, my business partner and I started to, well, have separate visions about the future of our company. So long story short, we, a Russian billionaire woman, we became our investor. She bought me out. I left the company. So there was my second exit actually. And then I invested into a company that I'm still reprecisioned as Boatswitch Black. And Boatswitch Black is like, basically it started off as the Airbnb type of platform for yachts and boats. And that's also the link and the bridge to crypto because I was very early already in Bitcoin. 2013 did my first Bitcoin investment, left it there, didn't really think about it anymore

for many years but i was early in the fact that i was i'm always looking for technology trends and i knew that in the future you know money will become digital so um to go back to the boatster story we we started to accept cryptocurrencies as a payment method with the boatatswain company. So people were able to rent a yacht with us spending their BTC. But we basically accepted top 50 cryptocurrencies. So a lot of people with a lot of shit coins were able to just bring it to us and then rent a boat. So that was the that's the link basically between Boatswain and the crypto space. Right. And then when I first met you,

that's sort of what we were talking about, that the original vision of Aletium quite a while back was to bring that luxury lifestyle to, to, you know, basically people who had become crypto rich, crypto wealthy, and to service that lifestyle. But as we sort of spoke, it became much more. Can you talk about exactly what eletium is now what the goals are yes absolutely so the the the vision in the beginning

was connecting you know the old world yachting world the old money with the new money and that that has never changed but in the first place we were thinking about you know more like a PSP becoming like a payment service provider and then integrate smart contracts and then you know yacht owners would have full visibility and transparency on the contracts and so on but we we realized after one year or so that the yachting market is not ready for that at all right like they're very old school uh besides that fact uh we also realized that we are more like a fintech company because we we don't want to just offer like a payment service we also want to offer value and that actually started like if you look at the journey from the last three years it started with the currency itself which is an ERC20 token we never did an ICO

we went live on the exchanges and we have a complete different approach than I would say 99% of all the other projects because we have been investing ourselves so basically myself my CFO my business partner Colin and Jean-Pierre as well. We've been investing into the company and to the technology heavily ourselves. And then we started to onboard strategic partners in the form of VCs and GDA Capital recently joined as well. So we've been very selective with the partners that have joined the company. And we didn't raise crazy amounts of money in the beginning

through an ICO or a private sale. We wanted to deliver blockchain and people can become like co-owners you know we were brainstorming about it on this yacht and so I started to dive into that I was like okay but then we need to create a security token for it and then I was like okay but then we need to create a security token platform right so how can we do that so that's how we um basically moved into the security token space as well and basically six months ago seven months ago when when decentralized finance became um well became well started to develop household name yeah just defi was there we also realized we need we need to tune into that.

We need to make that available on our platform. So altogether, we're offering different DeFi models in the form of, we call it USD stable savings. We have Paxos Gold integrated with a yearly yield that we provide through DeFi pools. Then we have the Eletium staking, where we offer 6.9%. We have Masternodes up to 28%. In the future, we'll have locked staking with higher yields as well. We're now integrating liquid swap models and lending models. So that's going to be one of the other exclusive features for specific investors.

And we have the tokenization portfolio with signed deals for real estate, art and some other real cool projects. So basically, if you summarize that you as an investor can join the platform and you have access to this you know this number of different basically crypto and blockchain investment types where you can invest in and generate your yields so it really started off like some sort of idea of okay how can we connect luxury and yachting to crypto and three years later we developed a full wealth management platform with all of the different products and we picked the best ones right management platform with all of the different products. And we picked the best ones, right? We take the best of the best.

We put it all in one platform. And our goal is to make it so simple because that's the challenge here, right? We have a different audience. We have the crypto audience, but we also have the yachting guy that I just mentioned or the banker or the family officers, these kind of institutions that would love to join DeFi. But you cannot explain to them what is a flash loan on the flash loan combined with the whole Ethereum network itself. They don't understand. But they are interested in allocating funds to this new world.

And we're creating a bridge, basically, for these type of investors through this platform, which is going live in a few months from now. Right. So I think you just touched on the most important point in general, which is that people who are already in crypto are already obsessed with DeFi. They may even have participated in yield farming themselves and looking for these things and they're technologically savvy and can look for it. But the rest of the world is what we need, right? We need mainstream adoption. We need wealthy

people who realize that they can't get yield in legacy markets where they used to. You can't put money in a savings account anymore, right? We need to bring them into the crypto space. So obviously what you're doing is a bridge to that, but what are like the future steps in general of opening the doors of crypto and yield to that greater audience for mass adoption? Well, I think our strategy is going to solve that problem probably because what we're going to do, we're going to launch end of March.

And then we're going to have a private access to our top 50 partners and investors. And we'll keep it private until we know they are happy. So they join, we're going to collect all of their feedback. And then we need to see how much extra time we need before we can do it in a month. We have a very efficient development team, but we want to make sure that they are happy with every tool and feature that we're providing. And I'm talking about text reports.

I'm talking about, you know, fiat to crypto, crypto to fiat. We're talking about whatever transactions they want to see in the building, like a transparency system where they have access to all of the data that's available from card users to masternode users to basically everything on that. So we are building all of these tools already. But we want to make sure that that top 50, you know, of course, that they have that they will invest and that they participate into our platform, into our network. But on the other hand, the feedback we're going to gather in that month from those top 50 people, and you will be one of them, and then the other one will be GDA Capital, with Shahar Khan, we have already more than 50 investors and institutions from banks to funds that already are listed to join the platform and we need proper feedback.

And based on that feedback, we're going to tackle every problem and then we make it the number one platform. And I'm not talking about in terms of numbers. We don't want to compete with Crypto.com and Nexo and Binance because we keep it limited. We're going to focus on invite only strategy after that month. And then from top to bottom, all of these top 50 partners will be able to select their partners and their investors and their clients to join the platform. So for the first 12 months, for sure, it will be very limited access, but we want to make sure that this is going to be, you know, the gateway, the bridge between the old financial world and the crypto world.

And that we can only do that by putting a lot of time into listening and collecting feedback, collecting data, analyzing, and then make it the best platform. Right. So outside of Aletium specifically, like you're obviously you're interfacing and dealing with these people on a daily basis. Yes. What are the biggest area barriers to entry? Are they afraid of security? You know, are they concerned that there's no insurance on their funds? You know,

do they not understand where the yield is coming from because they can't get it? What are the biggest problems that people see that's making them hesitant in general to invest in crypto, even knowing that they can get yield? I think the few things that you mentioned are completely the things that we're speaking about every day. I'm having every day these calls with these kind of companies and people like you just mentioned. The first question they have is, all right, so you're basically saying you're making yield on the US dollar while the banks are giving you negative interest, right? So that takes usually an hour to explain how that works.

And then still they don't get it because their brain will say, no, but that's not possible, right? So this is really the biggest challenge we have from the traditional world to the new world that actually in crypto you can make these yields right and which are based on collateral loans they're based on on you know someone else paying that interest so it's actually it actually fully valid but they don't understand that usually takes about 60 minutes and then you you have the insurance part, like you mentioned.

We have our own insurance. We're building our own insurance within our own ecosystem. I cannot disclose it yet, but it will be one of our USPs, basically, that we have it all covered within our platform. And I think the other one is basically the trust, right? And I think that's one is basically the trust, right?

And I think that's the most important thing. Well, I'm in the Caribbean right now, but that's because of several reasons. But we are a European company, right? We put our faces on the website. We give full transparency. The reporting systems and the way that you can look into the stats and the data of the platform will be fully transparent. So our goal is to be as transparent as possible to make sure that we can win the trust from

these people. Because for us, there are no hidden agendas. We want to create a platform. Obviously, we need to make revenue because otherwise we cannot grow the company and live. But basically, we want to be as transparent as possible and create a platform that anybody that participates can benefit from. But that trust is not there yet until you're alive, that you can show the data and that you have the right partners involved. So that's why we think that the top 50 partner strategy will work out really well. So I'm curious, having now experienced COVID and sort of a global economic meltdown, are you finding that people are more receptive to the conversation because

they have a more grand awareness of how broken the system actually is this infinite money printing all the problems you know like you said negative interest rates in a bank what do you see in the macro environment now that's what would bring people in and then more importantly what do you think it's going to look like in the next year two years three years as we continue down this uh path well the the interesting uh part here is that for me it's it's the same as i had with the time that i was selling seo right seo was new nobody knew it they were very uh suspicious about everything you were saying because they were also checking their sources and it was the same with apps right everybody was very like yeah we don't need apps and we don't trust apps and but finally and that's the same now with crypto and i mean champierre he was well a little bit younger than him but he was

the one who was installing internet and selling hardware and software in france in 1997 so he even seen that you know that that you know that's part, but from my perspective is it's, it's people are afraid, right? People are afraid for what is coming. Banks are afraid. People are afraid, but they, they, they, if they're smart enough to see what is happening, right? Like the, the printing money issue, it's happening right now. I think there's like $145 billion printed every day right now. And that's not a conspiracy. That's not a lie.

That's just a fact. I mean, the dollar, like the value of the dollar, well, we all understand what's going to happen to that. And there's a World Economic Forum talking about the Great Reset, which you will not read in mainstream media, but it's happening. So what I'm trying to say is that you can't ignore it anymore. Even the most pessimist people that I have met in the journey, it was like, I will never invest. They're investing now. They're knocking on my door. I wrote, okay, I've seen your articles. I've seen your interviews. I read about

what the governments are doing with stablecoins and their plans. How can I invest? Or because I believe in you or I believe in the project, you're doing something unique. So basically to answer your question is that this is just the start. I think we're not even on 1%. I think we're on 0, 0, 0, 1% of where crypto will be. And for me personally,

it's so important to like provide a product with quality because one thing I'm sometimes a bit ashamed of is the crypto industry in general, because so many people just take money from other people and just, you know, take advantage of that. They were lucky that they were able to build a token, which is super easy by the way, but just that they were, you they were able to build a token, which is super easy, by the way. But just that they were, you know, and I don't like that.

Like the whole industry has a bad name. And I really believe in so many good projects now. DeFi is really like amazing what is happening there. Tokenization, I think it's also just the start of something really, really big. So I think we're just here in compared to where we're going to be in three four or five years from now and for me i've said this before you as a investor or you as an individual have the opportunity to go left or right and what i mean with that left will be government will be banks will be how do you call them the universal income programs where you probably get maybe you get bankrupt or you lose your job because of COVID. So the government will have a plan for you, but it's not going to be a super friendly plan.

It's just a very basic program like they and then you have crypto. Right. So there's an opportunity for people to become super wealthy now by educating themselves, right? It's all about education now. You can't always go for the simple direction and stay part of the system. But this is the escape. This is for people to thrive. This is the moment that you can decide.

You take the blue pill or the red pill. You can go left or right. And this is the moment where we're in right now. Right. And, you know, obviously, obviously, I'm on that same page. But to play devil's advocate, you know, a lot of people who have a lot of wealth obviously aren't going to just throw all their money into crypto, right? So what are you seeing as a percentage or recommending even as a percentage of wealth that somebody who comes and is interested in exposure to crypto, but obviously doesn't want all of their money in

crypto? What are you seeing is that proper balance with people you're talking to? Well, what I would recommend is if you look at the, just talking about Illithium in the first place, that's why we're offering USD stable stable savings right so you turn your dollar into a digital dollar which is usually t with a daily volume of 80 billion dollars so your money is safe it's backed by the real dollar whatever value it has but it's backed by the real dollar and um it's it's basically your digital dollar where you can generate yields on and if you want to cash it out bring bring it back to your bank, you can do it. So I think that's a pretty safe, like there's no risk of inflation and, well, not inflation, sorry, volatility, what you have with other cryptos.

So I think that's a pretty safe model to invest in, which I wouldn't really call just crypto. It's more like a stable coin. coin yeah and you know generating savings accounts that we had as kids that you just put your money away and you let it grow indefinitely yes i mean that's that's one thing but still people will be like okay what you know they want to understand the logic but we we can you know we we are able to elaborate on that. The problem for me right now in the world is that you don't know what's going to happen with this great reset.

And I keep bringing this subject up because I know it will happen because I read what I read. And what I'm saying is that the financial system as of today is dead like there will be a new system. As a simple example, besides the money printing and the debt of hundreds of trillions of dollars, which at one point cannot survive anymore. I mean, you can't keep printing forever. Of course you can. But that's that's not a sustainable model. And then only the corporations will just, you know,

stay alive and the rest will die. And nobody will, you know, and that's why they're talking about the Great Reset. It's just a matter of when. It's not a matter of that it will happen. It will happen. And I have the feeling that it will happen sooner than we expect.

And that means that probably all the money you have on your account you have to exchange for a digital dollar like a stable coin from the government with an exchange rate and nobody knows what that exchange rate is and that means at that moment your money is on the blockchain of the government which is fully controlled by the government. So no decentralization, full centralization. And I think that's the chance you still have now today. You can still start to educate yourself and learn more about the alternatives,

which is, in my opinion, well, not blockchain that is centralized, but more companies that offer different solutions besides the government but coming back to your your question i would definitely recommend to put you know 20 30 percent into different crypto models invest in real estate and put your money in those kind of projects to make sure that whatever happens with the great reset, you have that invested. And I mean,

Bitcoin, silver, gold, these are always good backup plans. And then the rest you can leave in cash. Right. So I think it's all about diversifying and spreading the risks these days.

And a lithium is young. So it's, I would never recommend to put 100% of your money into Elytium. Or anything. In anything, right? You diversify. And that's what we're creating with the platform as well. We create so many different asset classes through tokenization where you can invest in.

It can be real estate, it can be an athlete, it can be art, it can be anything. As long as it has value. Then you can put some money in taxes, gold savings, lithium staking, you know, so we are creating that kind of platform where people can decide and allocate their funds to the different models, making sure you maximize your yields, but also that you, you know, you have a healthy portfolio. Discover Bipro, a token created by Money on Chain that allows you to earn a rent on Bitcoin positions and gain free leverage. With MOC liquidity mining, Bipro holders also get MOCs every day. So yes, with a Bitcoin on steroids like Bipro, DeFi is definitely for

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That's S-C-O-T-T-2-5. You talk about art, real estate, athletes, right? And we've seen Spencer Dinwiddie tokenize his, right? And we've seen, obviously, NFTs exploding and digital art. But what does the future look like where all of these assets that were that exist in the world effectively become tokenized i mean is that what you see for the future i think the yes and i think the uh one of the top guys at the sec even mentioned that in the future because of the complexity versus the simplicity from blockchain that all shares will be tokenized

which for me makes sense, right? To bringing the stock market to the blockchain. So I think that's going to happen. That will take time, like a lot of time. But I believe that, you know, maybe if I heard, I don't know if I've never read it. Someone told me that people are now even tokenizing outstanding invoices

so that people can actually pay those invoices. And when you get paid, you have to pay them some interest. So, I mean, that's an invoice. That's crazy. Right. So I believe more in the bigger picture talking about projects and, you know, like more like you had in the crowdfunding versus, you know, realizing projects, you don't have money. You have a great idea or you have great project and you collect people to, you know, help you to finance those projects. So for me, it's all, again, connecting these worlds where we have a very extensive network in the hotel and real estate business.

But everybody in the world right now is looking for liquidity. So if you have that network of investors, let's say in 12 months from now now our goal is to have at least 5,000 active investors within our platform and all high net worth individuals to institutions to funds etc that means that we can go to any project in the world saying we have this group of investors behind us whatever you want to tokenize we will you have the liquidity. We can raise the funds. So for us, once we have that in place, and personally, I want to focus on impactful projects. I mean, we're not doing it for the money. We want to make an impact.

So once we have that powerful network of investors behind us, we're going to look into, let's say, real estate projects, but they are environment friendly, right? They use certain things that we want to have in that project in place. But we're also going to look into projects that are connected to charity or projects that will have an impact to make the world a better place. So that's eventually again, the goal to connecting these different segments, right? And especially when we have that network of investors, you can really make a difference and we have all the technology and tools in place to do so. It's interesting. You talk about the idea of the great reset. Obviously,

you know, you touched on central bank digital currencies. It's already happening in China. They're being experimented with all over the world. You know, many of the islands like the one you're sitting on have already tokenized their currency, I believe the Bahamas. So what's the worst case scenario of this great reset? I think maybe a lot of people aren't familiar with the concept. Does that mean that the slate is wiped clean, everything becomes worth very little and you start again? I mean, what does that look like? I mean, I don't have all the information and knowledge, but if you read between the lines, there is a possibility, and I've never read this somewhere, it's just my own logic sense, but that, I mean, they're using now the pandemic to expedite the process of doing this great reset.

Like nobody ever heard of the reset before the pandemic, right? So there's a connection. So, and you see that things are moving so fast right now, like things that you would never imagine are happening now, sometimes in a day or in a week, and then combine that with technology that's moving so fast. So worst case that can happen to answer your question is that there will be this exchange rate and the dollar that already has this low value because of the inflation that happened.

And basically, they keep printing and they say, okay, now it's enough. This doesn't work. We have done everything we can. Printed so much money. System has failed. There's also a famous book about this. The dollar is dead dead it's called and um and then they replace it with a new system there were rumors that xrp was involved there were other rumors i don't know about that i mean uh we'll see maybe they uh they tried but

they didn't make it happen but my answer is there can be a very bad like ugly exchange rate there and that you don't have a choice that they say okay bring your money to the bank and then you get a qr code connected to your app and then you get your digital money in return and automatically with a blockchain that they will probably set up at the end of the month your your taxes are being paid you know and everything becomes automated and i don't know where it's going to go to but if you look at china with point systems and restrictions when you don't behave and things like that there is there is a connection between all of these things right and that scares me

right so it's not just about the money and the value of your money which i think you can you know invest in many other things which are going to make your life in the future looking a lot better. But it's for me also the scary part where they're really talking about incentivize people for good behavior or whatever is happening with all these COVID things. I don't want to end up in a world where, you know, you, you, you cannot do X, Y, Z. And if not, you know, your, your balance is going down or you have to betrayal someone because he's, he's not wearing a mask or I don't know, you know, whatever. And, and,

and I, I surely will think that will never happen because we are too intelligent, right? We are too advanced we're even shifting to a higher consciousness so this will not happen but this is what I said the worst case scenario that they're trying to push for a system which is fully controlled which has a very well bad outcome for your dollar right now and that it's it's based on point systems and incentivize systems based on your behavior

where there are already patents like registered for Microsoft. So it's a very interesting topic. So we all view crypto as a great hedge, obviously, against all of that. That's sort of one of the main ethos of Bitcoin, of course, right? The other side of that is if the government intends to do all of that, and if there's a great reset, isn't that also a threat in some way to crypto and to Bitcoin? Because they'll try to regulate to make sure that people operate within their

system and not opt out to our system, so to speak. Well, I mean, I'm a big fan for just side note i'm a big fan of regulation right so we we we're now going through a whole new setup with our company in gibraltar and um you know we i'm a fan of regulations and licenses let's say that let's put that first um and they're like it's open market like just a stock market so i don't believe that the government will go that far that they will, because they would have done it already anyway. Right. So, and they've done that with people who did ICOs and stole money from people

and were not able to keep their promises. I think that's a good thing, but it will never like make it so difficult for, for people like you and me to not trade or to come up with great concepts. But I do think what will happen that in, let's say, 10 years from now, there will only be 20 or 30 real cryptos, right? And the rest will be maybe labeled like they do on Twitter now, when there's misinformation whatsoever, but it will be labeled as negative or bad or whatsoever. But I do believe that there will not be thousands of projects at one point because of, well, like you said,

maybe they make it very strict from a regulatory perspective and they maybe give penalties for companies that don't behave or make stupid mistakes whatsoever. But I don't think we'll get ever in a situation where they completely ban a trillion dollar industry, which is just starting to rise because they will not be in their own benefit. And they are heavily invested in Bitcoin. I mean, they can't ban it. They just can make it really, really difficult to get your dollars in and out, I think.

But yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question because we know that they're going to want their peace. At the end of the day, it's like you said, it's in their best interest, but only if they're getting their peace. And they are, right? I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, if you look at the, yeah,

and they already, you know, integrating the tax models in Europe and in the States. And again, yeah, that was about to happen. So I don't think that's a bad thing. What I think is funny, if you look back at the history of Bitcoin, every time the big banks say it was bad, that if you look at the, you know, that's the funny part about blockchain, that they were actually having investors every time it dropped.

So they're so involved and yeah they're playing dumb but they're not and well there's another possibility that when you think about governments and and smart people in power that maybe they're already 20 years ahead right 20 30 years ahead and they have their own solution but then again that's the great thing about innovation is it cannot be stopped because six months ago defy was not existing and now defy is growing like hell right so it's like you cannot you can try to create your own roadmap but because it's open source and because you create uh the possibility for others to innovate as well it's unstoppable

right so that's i think the beauty of this time it's it's not you cannot stop it there are too many people working we talk about the velocity of defy and it's insane how many projects come there's a ico you know in 2017 a project would like they'd have a white paper and they'd have a raise and it would be months years before you saw saw a project. In DeFi, it's like you hear about a project, they come up with an idea and two weeks later, it's being traded on centralized exchanges, right? So the velocity of how fast it happens. And that goes back to something you talked about earlier that you touched on that I want to explore. You said, it's really easy to create a token. Yes. I've never actually had anyone on who talked about how easy it is to create a token

or what that process is. Can you touch on that? Because I think that's really, really interesting. Well, yeah, of course. Well, a token is nothing more than a smart contract, right? So it's a piece of code. And you can compare it with when I made websites, I said it in the beginning of the conversation, I Dreamweaver and Dreamweaver was very cool because you were able to see

and the HTML and when you clicked on the button you would see the result already without you know publishing it live etc well the difference is that with the smart contracts you don't actually see nothing more on the other side because it's just you know addresses and codes so um the smart contract of a lithium is very extensive but what we've been doing is you know collecting codes from existing ethereum smart contracts putting it all together uh into into a final smart our team did actually pretty pretty great. I think we have one of the stronger EFC20 smart contracts because it's important to have these small security things in place, have that in place.

But if you compare it to, I will not mention any names, but even the bigger names in the industry, if you look at their, the way they have created their token, they've literally done that in five minutes there's even a token generator if you google now yeah something else yes you change the ticker you change the amounts you change the i mean you take a token economics

to do brainstorm 10 minutes you have it and um and and that's a bit dangerous, right? I mean, that's where, not the regulators, because that's not maybe, but what I'm saying is that in a later stage, there will be discussions about this, right? When is your smart crack? Now it's validated by Ethereum, but maybe later states, this will be by authority or by regulator.

So it's very easy. You can just Google Ethereum smart contract generator. And in five minutes, you have your own token. But it is crazy. That's why we see rug pulls. And that's why people are so scared. And that's why there's so many tokens. And so it's sort of a bad thing.

I mean, as easy as it is, you you know you don't want anyone being able to create a token and then build a narrative around it and go sell that to actual people right yeah no not true but then then the complexity comes in the in the cyber security the complexity comes in market making listed on coin market exchanges so it's not i mean so those steps of credibility basically that which a lot of people, yeah. And that's where the mistakes are being made, right? That's where the hacks are taking place. Like 99% of all hacks are either internal

or by stupid mistakes, right? So, yeah, and that's the point. I believe we need more quality projects. We need to make sure that these flows, like creating a smart contract or having all of these securities in place. At the end of the day, you're a financial product. And a financial product has to have certain rules. You cannot just let investors invest in your. But basically don't have protocols in place to protect your investors

because that's what you need to do. It's not your project only. It's also investors that put their money in their savings. They have a family, right? So they also need to make sure that they are protected. And I think that's sometimes missing. People are just so, you know, they don't care. They just want to sometimes just steal the money.

And I kind of hate that about the industry. And that will change over time because more and more good projects are now being live. People are focusing on investing in these and not just in the hype. I mean, right. And scams are not unique to crypto. No. The same scammers just find a different way to scam people or steal money. They've been doing it since, since, you know, the 17, 18 hundreds and thousands of years before that. Right. So,

I don't, I don't really buy the like crypto is a scam market because we all know that scammers are going to scam regardless. But it does go back to something you touched on earlier. You said that maybe after this great reset in the future, there's only 30 to 50 coins. I mean, do you think that we see, the answer is kind of there, but like the dot-com boom of the 90s, you saw thousands and thousands of companies with these great crazy overvaluations and then most of them have just sort of you know natural selection has removed them and they've disappeared is that kind of what you see coming for i mean we can't have

thousands and thousands of these cryptocurrencies succeed no i think i think it's i think it's very important to uh understand why i said it because it's for me it's not important to understand why I said it, because for me, it's not about the number 30 or 40 or 50, but just like you just said, there's no room for so many different cryptos. On average, people use seven apps on their phone. So that means that all these millions of apps that are being developed are not useful

or nobody's using them. And that's the same with crypto. You cannot have endless amounts of cryptos or platforms that are going to be used. That's why specific niche platforms and blockchains will be implemented and then less will be used for other reasons

besides the fact that you can invest in it. But what I think is also a very good example here is EOS, right? They raised $4 billion in ICOs. They did private sales. I was super impressed, right? These guys were the best. The raise is insane.

The raise is insane. And, I mean, look at the numbers now. I don't even know the exact numbers, but from their previous market cap to what they have now i think they lost already a few billion in market cap over the past year or so and why i'm saying why i'm giving them as an example is because they they never came up with the real product right so that you can raise billions and still today you know you're losing money you're losing value and and you're losing. So it doesn't matter if you have raised 4 billion, you can see that maybe in three or four or five years, you can be dead.

And I think that's why I'm mentioning EOS. I know they have a very strong community and people trying, but I have not seen a working product to be honest. Right. I don't think they have network traffic. I just don't think it's being used widely. I mean, I can't speak to the exact numbers, but you know, hard not to notice. But Scott, can you imagine if someone would, you know, would give you $4 billion? I mean, I would have changed the whole world already.

But that's the huge problem, though, is that people gave young entrepreneurs with no experience these huge amounts of money, they didn't know where to put that money besides partying, a lot of them. And then the market crashed and all of a sudden that money was effectively gone. And so it was just a perfect storm of disaster. And I will say that your model, obviously spending your own money and doing it privately and not doing a public raise. And even a lot of these smaller DeFi projects, they raise very small with really low market caps and they're lean. It really is a much more responsible model in general now,

I think than it was three years ago or four years ago. Yeah. But it's fine if you raise $40 million and then, yeah, if you use it in the right way if you develop projects the problem as well was that what i've seen from some projects that i know for example from london that they they raised 40 million and then they you know rented the office in the middle of the city they started to work with 12 developers well you know how expensive developers in london are and so on and so on so they they spend like four or five million dollars sometimes you know per expensive developers in london are and so on and so on so they they spend like four or five million dollars sometimes you know per quarter but then it goes fast you know and

that that's just like you said unexperienced entrepreneurs with a great white paper with without any experience in whatsoever um and and they make the business look bad and and and again i think within our team we have a smaller team uh you know less fancy advisors and all of all of these names we are really like we have a very strong uh management team with champierre he has been in blockchain since the first day that it exists uh and colin my cfo my partner as well he's been in finance for 30 years. Right. So this, we have this combination of skill sets already in the core team. And our goal is to, like I mentioned before, to create that piece of software that's going to add value to people's

lives. So do you see a future where 50% of wealthy people in the world are exposed to cryptocurrency? Yes. Or 100? Well, yes, absolutely. I don't know 50 or 100, but let's say between 50 and 100. Like I mentioned earlier,

I think we're on 0.001% of this new world. And it also depends how you determine crypto, right? Because if we're talking about Great Reset, we're talking about digital dollar, stablecoin is effectively also a crypto, but I would then distinguish the government crypto versus the open crypto. I'm not counting digital dollar,

not the official one, at least. I'll count USDC, USDc usdt right of course um but yes because um like the old system is not coming back right so the eventually the dollar and the financial system with printing money and the way our things that things are set up right now will be replaced and i cannot say if that's one year five year ten years but definitely definitely not longer than 10 years so that means that we're all going to digit yeah it is it's a big change but look around everything is changing and things are happening which were not happening before like never because there were not happening before, like never, because there was no alternative. And now you see with this whole, you know, what happened with GameStop, right?

This whole, I mean, there's a reason why this is happening now. And that's not because of crypto or anything like that. It's because we're in a shift. People are going to change. People are done with what is happening. They are done with the institutions telling them what to do. People are not taking it anymore. So this group on Reddit, which are just a bunch of guys trawling and just making fun of this situation,

but it's serious stuff what's happening because this is part of the shift because this means that that the wolf wall street guys are not safe anymore uh in what they have been doing for the past 30 years so this this i don't know what's going to happen tomorrow like if these guys decide tomorrow like that's what i'm trying to say this it's very unpredictable if so many things are changing. What's scary, though, is, you know, they're gonna hold on to power for as long as they can, and by any means necessary. So I kind of, you know, scares me is wondering what that big money is going to do now to make sure that the little guy and these people that are trying to find their way are unable to do

so. Well, I'm pretty sure they are in a different Zoom meeting right now to discuss what the hell is going on, because they didn't see that coming. And that's what I said before. Maybe, well, whatever, how, you know, I don't believe in fairy tales. So I don't believe that Satoshi was the creator of Bitcoin or whatever. I mean, there must be another story, but what I'm trying to say is maybe they are more involved than we know, right? That's maybe possible, right?

Yeah. And, but more importantly, maybe they have their plan, right, their own roadmap, but they maybe couldn't think of a technology like DeFi would come up out of nothing, which basically kicks out the banks, literally, right? Yeah, it's a better bank. Yeah, it's a better bank, decentralized, like power to the people.

But they couldn't think of that when they started this whole new technology. And they could also not think that they will work with some group of a few million people on a forum like Redditdit which they even never thought about right because what is reddit they only think about twitter and etc and now reddit is there i mean reddit was there many years i know but they could not predict that these things would happen so they are also scared they also don't know what to do that's why they will do will make pendant decisions they will make yeah what they're gonna do is make more regulations that are for the little guy,

but actually protect the banks. But you cannot stop people, right? You cannot stop an army of Reddit guys. They can block Reddit, they will go to Discord, or they will go to another channel, they'll go to Telegram, whatever, right right they will keep moving and they will keep fighting because this is just the start and i i don't want to be involved in that war at all i want to create a bridge right give me let them fight i'm not involved in that i i really don't want to be in those kind of fights

but i do think that it's time for a shift and that's necessary because they are you know like um how do you say introducing the great reset anyway so why not building a bridge between that old world with the new world and and giving them the access i believe that that should happen and but i also believe that it's time for a shift like the big guys cannot just stay the big guys forever it's it's you know it's time for yeah i mean every every uh civilization falls every every leader is eventually knocked off the top of the mountain i think that that's uh somewhat inevitable whether in our lifetime or otherwise but you know history always uh proves to to play out that way it just really sucks for the little guy, right? Because you talk about that system is now broken.

We've seen it over decades, but your average person who doesn't know how to invest or know what to do is really stuck because you just can't hold money and hope that it's gonna work for you, right? You have to buy some sort of assets. You have to find another way. You have to go at it on your own. People, there is going to be the difference between the poor and the rich is only going to get bigger.

And I'm not able to stop that. You're not able to stop that. That's just happening because of what is happening right now in the world, in the financial crisis and pandemic and so on. And that's sad to see, right? That's going to take decades and decades before that will recover. So how do you say like that yeah that makes me sad sometimes to see that nobody's paying attention to it right so again i don't know what we will do with the lithium or how we will do it but definitely we we you know

we want to make more impact uh once we have that platform and network in place because sometimes I'm just surprised that we're not paying attention to the right topics, right? We're just talking about political agendas and so much bullshit they talk about. But what is really important, right, in life? And why are we not talking or just ignoring certain subjects? We're all humans, right? And I believe that with all the technology that we have in the world like from from in in every basically different

category we are able to all become wealthy and and doesn't mean we all have to be you know a millionaire but we can be all wealthy and and be rich and and education, have water, have proper food and income. And that's what nobody is talking about. We're going towards like a new kind of capitalism system where the rich only getting richer and the poor just let them starve. And yeah, I don't know. It's a different subject, but I think we should definitely pay attention to it because there's so many bad things happening in the world right now

that it's really important for us, in my opinion, to become more pure and to share knowledge and to firstly become the best version of yourself, but also really try to help others in what is coming. Right. And that's why we, you know, we like to educate people like you are doing because the crypto space is an alternative is an opportunity for even the poor people to, to get out and to, yeah, get rid of the system and don't fall further into the,

into the situation where they are in. I hope to live in a world where everybody is above the poverty line and has some level of wealth or comfort and stability. So hopefully crypto can provide that and we can help down the road. So after this, where can everybody check out Elytium and where can people follow you? I'm active on YouTube. We're going to do more and more YouTube videos. I've been very, very busy with the teams, but I'm actually want to do a weekly update on YouTube. You can see all my old videos there. Next week, we're planning another PR campaign. So you see a lot of news coming up about the platform that we're going to launch soon you can follow us on twitter elitium and dash eum follow you can join us in the telegram group as well if you have questions and reach out through contact at elitium io if we do also like

otc deals if people want to make special deals with us either for a masternode or OTC deal So basically the main channels like the social media channels, I'm active on Twitter and LinkedIn you can also have me on LinkedIn and we're doing more and more there as well and well, our goal is that we Really depends a little bit where where are we gonna be next month? But probably I'm going to stay this part of the world a little for a little longer um so our goal is to do um like around the launch we're going to hire camera crew and we'll be like really like uh filming a lot and um potentially there will be a big name connected to that future documentary as well. So we're working on some cool, cool stuff there as well.

Wow. I'm jealous that you're sitting on an Island right now. I was lucky enough to see your background before we started talking, but yeah, you're sitting by a beautiful infinity pool overlooking the ocean. And I hope that the whole world is that way soon. So thank you. Thank you so much for... Yes. And one more thing, because you asked me where can I find it.

And the lithium is obviously on several exchanges, BitMart, Stacks, FedBTC. But you can look us up on CoinMarketCap. You'll see it there. But I appreciate it, Scott. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much. Enjoy the pool. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much.

Enjoy the pool. I work a little bit and then definitely.