Eddy Travia on Coinsilium’s DeFi and NFT investments for 2021

0:01i'm ashton addison from eventchain for investmentpitch media and fintech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have eddie trevilla the ceo and co-founder of coincidium eddie welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to be here thank you ashton thank you i'm really excited to dive into our conversation today about coincidium i know you have quite the

0:21background in the blockchain space so if we could kick it off with you know a bit of your background on what you've been doing in the blockchain space and what you've done and how that led to founding coincidium yes sure so i've been in in asia mainly in china since 2004 i'm originally from france and i was working in private equity and investments in this part of the world

0:44and in 2012 a friend of mine told me about bitcoin it took me a few months to get my head around it and in 2013 there were two events that kind of triggered my interest for bitcoin it was cyprus when the central bank decided to take money off some people's account for their own financial issues and then there was an investment in a small company back then

1:05called coinbase it was maybe the first round of investment by external investor it was a small round maybe a few million dollars six million dollars maybe something like that and i decided from my experience in vc funding and my own interest in in startups i was an internet entrepreneur back in the late 90s i decided to look at the the bitcoin ecosystem more

1:28on with the angle of a an incubator helping companies to build the tools so that this whole bitcoin ecosystem could uh could evolve could grow and at the time it was not blockchain yet it was just bitcoin and um we organized the first conference in singapore and basically in asia in this in november 2013 it was called bitcoin singapore i was sponsored by it bit which became

1:51paxos and then i started talking to as many entrepreneurs as i could in the space we decided to invest in uh in six companies that happened in 2014 and we actually invested in bitcoin but because at that time the price of bitcoin was declining it was not such a great um such you know it was not that great for the for the investees because they were getting a

2:14bit less in us dollar value as time went by but those who kept it hopefully um that could make a big difference today obviously so in 2014 we decided to make a move to the next phase which was bringing some legitimacy to the sector and to our company and we decided to create a company that could be listed on a stock exchange we worked from spring 2014 to december

2:382015 and we got listed uh on an exchange at the time called isdx today called aquis in london and our uh ticker symbol is coin coin for coincilium and very recently we announced the fact that we are now listed in the us on the otcb otcqb market so our stock has been listed um since 2015 uh in london and the first investment we made at the time was in rsk at the time called rootstock

3:08it was the first investment as a listed company it was also their first external investor for their round but then we were joined by other reputable companies like digital currency group and and many others um and then so that's basically the birth of coincilium uh 2015 and 16 were let's say quieter years because of the fact that there was you know it was a time when people

3:34started to understand blockchain um but because of the price kind of bloom at the time then there was a bit less interest so we we kept on building and then in 2017 um we had our first exit uh a company called chipe which we sold for more than 360 percent uh profit and then we started as well at the end of 2017 we started doing advisory work and that's when we moved to a more of a

4:01revenue based company which is kind of not usually the case for uh for an investment firm very interesting background eddie and i'm glad that you guys stuck with it through those years where there wasn't a lot of capital injection and then just working away and obviously that has paid off now so that's great to hear now i want to know a little bit more about coincilium

4:23and the operations that you have and the pivots that you've made as well and you know you've sort of pivoted to an open finance uh finance venture operator and obviously as the industry has shifted and continued to grow you also had to shift with that so can you give me a little bit more details on what you're doing exactly right now with coincidence

4:43yes sure so so what happened basically is that we've witnessed for several years that the market didn't really see the same potential we saw in blockchain and at the same time the market had trouble valuing our companies and our stakes in companies so after this advisory work we realized that we could use our network and our uh experience in the field to actually

5:03build ventures in a more active manner i mean we we were not that passive with our original investment but of course there's so much we can do you know it's not a it's not a big team so basically our record has been that we had invested in in 20 companies and out of the top 20 companies we have you know uh one big sus big success i think the major one is rsk

5:26um and then the rest we have um five exits uh and eight that are still uh active today so which is a good uh performance for a for for an early stage fund where you know risk is pretty high but at the same time we believe that it's a numbers game so instead of basically going to invest in i don't know five times more startups we decided we want to focus on certain

5:49fields so we decided to focus as you were saying on open finance which of course includes decentralized finance defy and nfts and as well in in as well in the emerging markets uh mainly southeast asia because that's you know where i'm based and where we have some experience as well and so now we're moving to this more proactive and venture building side of of the

6:13business mm-hmm that's that's really interesting and you mentioned rsk i know they were working on smart contracts on the bitcoin blockchain and that's something that really i think they sort of need to catch up to ethereum with this d5 is getting so popular and as you've been investing for since the birth of ethereum you know d5 has really only just taken off

6:36in 2020 but i'm sure there was some early signs of open finance in ethereum can you talk about you know how you found those investments and how you look for investments uh in open finance yeah sure so um yeah it's true that you know many many new things happen you know at the early stage we're mostly investing in what we call transactional

7:03applications you know remittances wallets exchanges and and of course when smart contracts appeared mainly at first with um the ethereum blockchain uh all the data applications started happening and all the smart contracts are giving more complex financial tools to investors and to crypto traders right so we we follow that market very closely but of course it's until very recently that

7:27we have witnessed everyone the the explosion of interest in defy now there is one part of d5 which is really underdeveloped when you uh think about it and you look closely is a defy on bitcoin so basically rsk is ideally positioned to you know really tap this market you know you have billions of dollars of bitcoin of value in bitcoin which are completely out of the d5 market

7:52because some people don't want to go through the rap btc and you know the centralized kind of current systems and this and a lot of that could go into the tools that you know rsk is building today um one of these tools for example is money on chain dollar on chain which gives you both a stable coin access to a stable coin for these countries where you know you have a very

8:12high inflation and you don't want to see your your your local currency eroded by inflation on a daily basis and at the same time you can get yield on bitcoin which is great um especially for bitcoin holders who already believes in bitcoin anyway so if they get yields it's it's a bonus so you have rsk swap now uh which is based on you know uh it's very similar to uni swap and you

8:35have a new platform coming up which is so-called sovrine which will enable um you know defy lending and yield as well yield farming like like on d5 of course the the defined bitcoin is still um not as developed yet but i think it's going to grow there's huge potential and our own interest in defy as well is the fact that we see that there is a kind of a gap between the

8:58the crypto world and the real economy and we would love to you know kind of bring these two back together and enable uh defy kind of tools for the real economy where people need financing and need yield as well definitely and i'm glad that you brought that up eddie and you know for context the defy space which it seems like it's 90 percent plus on the ethereum protocol right now you

9:22know it's grown from even just in the summer of 2020 one billion dollars of liquidity locked in to you know over 10 billion dollars now and a 10-fold increase in such a short time with a lot of that going into speculation and not really real world use cases that are actually providing you know open finance to the underbanked and the unbanked and people that need loans or they need

9:47in to earn interest with a very small amount of money do you see the d5 moving in the right space with the growth of this liquid of these liquidity pools and what needs to be done to get to those real world use cases yeah i think there is still a lot of work but you know i think the the fluidity the transparency and the the all the benefits from decentralizations

10:11that come with uh defy can really be uh important benefits and attraction and attractive points to the to the entrepreneurs micro entrepreneurs as you were saying or people that may be unbanked that that still have some wealth but that wealth is not recognized or would need some money to finance their their their day-to-day business and operations at the same time there is also a vast

10:35number of people who have cash or may have a you know a full-time job and have another let's say a middle-class type of wealth but they see their options for investing are quite reduced today with the fact that you don't get yield from you know many investment opportunities so as we all know we see now we have enterprises and retail investors who are

10:57really looking closely at um cryptocurrencies and and moving away for example from gold which was usually a traditionally uh the type of investment they were looking at when you know especially when you have like negative interest rates around the world so i think um there is yeah defy can help both emerging markets financial inclusion and as well quite a large retail

11:20investor market too and it does seem fairly early on considering the exponential growth really just happened in the in the past few months do you see this as one of the top trends that you're going to be looking for more early stage startups to invest in specifically in d5 for the next year or the next few years yes so as i was saying in terms of the pivot we

11:46are we're going to do more than investing we're going to be actually active and with some partners we're going to build platforms that can actually enable people to uh take advantage of these solutions and this technology so we're going to move beyond investing to have a more active role uh so it means may for you know less projects obviously but but much more work

12:07and we believe that our experience and our network really really going to help make this a success definitely and that's really exciting i'm glad that you're moving in that direction eddie and there's another uh topic that i want to touch on that's been fairly hot throughout 2020 and it seems like it's going to continue to grow in terms of blockchain use cases and that is

12:27nfts and non-fungible tokens you mentioned at the beginning you know in this year i've seen a lot of nfts be created for the most part from digital art and digital collectibles that are now trading on decentralized marketplaces and again it sort of seems like there's a little bit of speculation in there but there is so much potential for real-world use cases

12:48so where do you see that part of the industry at are you guys going to be building that area as well and how do you see the growth for nfts yes yes we we're definitely interested in that space we believe there is also huge potential we have already announced one mou with a company in vietnam a venture builder in the in the emerging tech space called the red fox

13:12labs and red fox lab for example they developed the most successful is on sale on the wax platform um this is one project that they they have successfully completed already but with them we have some projects um you know being listed company we cannot say anything before it's actually publicly announced but you know we we're working on that but for now we have an mou between our jv

13:38so we have a joint venture in singapore with rsk uh it's called iov labs asia and with that jv we we have done signed this mou with red fox labs at the same time one of our companies of portfolio companies called startup token of which we have 30 they're in singapore they're developing a an art digital uh digital art marketplace called minty.art so that's another one to follow um so we

14:05believe there is a great potential with art uh because of many reasons uh first of all because it's much easier to you know to buy and sell art this way and also it gave this great platform to a lot of artists and creators to to sell they are directly to um to collectors and people who like it um of course there is speculation the period of speculation i can imagine but

14:27that's you know that's both from the crypto space and the art space in the art sector as well but i think we're going to see nfts in much more mainstream type of adoption so for example there are now you know big brands joining with uh you know maybe blockchain uh companies or uh development companies that are working on nfts so you see you know artists

14:50more famous mainstream artists looking at nfts and i think we're going to have to this to go towards this convergence of you know an ideal tool in especially in times like right now with the the coveted pandemic where artists have have to interact digitally with their uh you know with their fans and and and the people in their community and people that follow them so

15:12uh today you know concerts are out of the question and there are many other channels that cannot happen today because there's no physical you know contact and and large events so basically they have to rely on technology and i think that's obviously a kind of a worldwide phenomenon you know everybody is relying more technology today which of course gave more

15:33gives more use cases to blockchain and i think nft is one of those and if this is one where we're going to have solutions for people to communicate could be sports could be music could be you know entertainment in general and i think we're going to see great things in in that space i agree eddie and i think that once that potential is unleashed those artists that are

15:56creating that digital artwork and once they have the platform that like you'll have democratized access and they'll actually have a much bigger audience than they ever thought before so i think it really will unleash a lot of potential when it does reach to that mainstream level so great work in that section and we're running out of time but i want to look forward to next year and

16:18see how you guys are continuing to grow are you looking for just more projects to work with or more team members or more strategic partners yes but to to be clear we're already discussing with more strategic partners correct we we yes i think we have great things coming for 2021. uh first of all as we all can see uh the crypto market as uh is doing well i

16:46mean uh it's more of a market sentiment position than anything else i mean we we don't necessarily need you know bitcoin price at any certain level for us to do well because obviously we are focused on the technology and the adoption of that technology but of course as a market sentiment we have always seen uh you know more interest and even you know valuations going higher

17:07when crypto prices are doing well and so with this wave of the you know end of the year end of 2020 in a very positive uh sentiment uh we're pretty sure that 2021 will be a good year for for coincidence and for the projects that that we're working on that's great and if the viewers are looking to learn more about coincilium what's the best way for them to

17:28learn more so they can go on coincilium.com dot com uh and because we're a listed company they can have access to our uh annual reports and a lot of information there explaining everything we have done so far um and then we have a twitter account at consilium group where we post all the news and of course all our market news are also announced um on on the main financial uh news objects

17:56i will leave those links in the description box below for the viewers as well thank you so much for the time eddie all the best with coincilium and let's follow up in the near future thank you ashton pleasure you