Special Guest: Hussein Kanji.

We dive into some company drama that unfolded during Aqua's fundraise, especially as they opted to do an inital coin offering (ICO). In this episode Anthony's shares:

• How not to do an ICO
• How he fired his CTO
• How he made a good situation out of a bad one
• The hotel and hospitality inudstry's current problems
• How Aqua is out to solve them

We loved this story Anthony shared because it showed outright the true colours of how certain individuals can be manipulative for personal gain, and more broadly exposed the intention behind most ICOs.

Special Guest: Anthony Gelman.

Woodstock Fund is a new and emerging crypto fund based out of India and Pranav delves into how their fund operates, in particular, their 3 core focuses, which include:
Public decentralised ledger technology
Decentralised finance
Web 3.0

Pranav shares his experience of co-creating creative solutions in sales and distribution and how his learnings through creating this led him to create the fund he is running today.

Ahmed sets the theme for the episode which focuses on the right investment vehicles behind cryptocurrencies and assessing the optimal token models that make sense.

Starting off with public chains, Pranav explains their thesis behind the investments they made in Holochain, Casper Labs and Elrond. From a decentralised finance perspective, Pranav shares why this emerging sector is not just important for the new value it can bring but how it’s solving problems that currently exist in traditional finance. Web 3.0, according to Pranav, is all about being more human and unbundling of the human potential wherever you are in the world.

Pranav expresses that the right economics has to come into play before any consideration of investment. Ahmed is intrigued about what is the right vehicle when investing in these projects as the investor can invest in equity, tokens and convertible notes. In the past two years, countless projects used tokens as a way to raise money without necessarily thinking about how token economics will play and pan out in the future.

How do you define the right instrument when building out a project? Pranav argues the business model should drive this decision and currently, in this cycle of the crypto market we are seeing more projects using the right instruments during fundraising.
But the question still arises, should investors go for equity (which has legal recourse) or go for tokens which are still largely unregulated with not so much legal recourse.

Running a pro token investment fund, Pranav gives many suggestions to the above, from a dual equity-token structure, or raising through an STO which can then be converted to a utility, or the project themselves having to bootstrap the project until they find minimum viable utility where a token is the right instrument in this case.

Tokens as a unit of trust
Ahmed and Pranav then discuss the different ways to assess token models and how an investor can discern whether a token model makes sense or not. Pranav shares his experience with the 6 investments they have made and that a token model should be looked at from two important aspects: Ecosystem and adoption.

Someone can create the best technology ever, but if the ecosystem is small and there is zero to little adoption, then what is the point? Pranav also shares a technical-economic response between demand and supply and how the right economics should facilitate more adoption in a perpetual enforcing cycle.

All of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guest: Pranav Sharma.

The episode starts off with Ahmed describing his experience at the Binance Fair in Singapore where he gives a few highlights and takeaways as well as a general landscape of the region.

Use cases and investments

The show then dives deep into Aly’s background and what the Blockchain Founders Fund actually is and what it does in the industry. Having an investment arm, incubation arm as well as a consulting arm, Aly reminds us all as to why blockchain is beneficial and cites many cross-border use cases.

Ahmed asks what type of companies the fund has already invested in and what are they looking to invest in going forward. With an interesting and diverse portfolio, this episode brings to light the unsung no-hype projects that are solving real problems and making real use cases.

2019 focus: Finding transformative solutions and UN Impact report

Aly also delves into their different focus points for 2019; one of which is contributing to the written publication of an Impact report for the United Nations. Having different stakeholders, in particular funds, contribute to social enterprise and social impact causes are crucial in moving the industry forward. Do make sure to listen in on what exactly this report is all about!

Investment criteria and the Lemonade video!

Faisal questions Aly on the Blockchain Founders Fund’s investment criteria and philosophy where he describes how their fund operates, their thoughts on tokens and the different brackets within their investment strategy. Listen in to how their fund tries to find the right balance between obtaining the highest ROI and making sure to have a social lens too.

Let’s ban the term STO

As Aly is an advisor to Polymath, he talks about his thoughts and concerns in regards with security tokens and security token offerings.
He highlights the fundamental fact that the underlying does not change; where a company, or a project is not more valuable because it’s done an STO.

They also talk about the benefits of STOs as well as the challenges of implementing an STO now, where they cite that implementing a security token could in fact add extra layers in the process rather than making it more efficient.
The three also touch on crowdfunding, the decreasing popularity of public fundraising and more on this exciting topic!

As you can see, we talked about a lot of things and so all of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Source:
Lemonade Video!

Special Guest: Aly Madhavji 穆亚霖 .