Tarik Moon on Alpine’s DeFi platform for emerging markets

0:00i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investment pitch media in the crypto coin show and today on blockchain interviews we have tarik moon the ceo of alpine tariq welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking the time yeah thanks for having us ashley you're very welcome let's dive into the world of defy continuing to grow at a rapid rate however there are millions and

0:22millions of people around the world who still aren't familiar with never mind defy cryptocurrencies as well and there we need platforms to get these guys more financial inclusion more inclusion just in the world um and i know alpine is doing a great job with the blockchain solutions that your team has been developing so let's start off our conversation with just a little bit

0:44from you tarek on what is alpine what blockchain solutions are you bringing to the space and then we can dive into the details yeah 100 and thanks for thanks for asking the question so we're super excited we we are a team of uh experts that are that are building alpine and alpine and the chorophil is a savings protocol so basically it enables people to use um some of the primitives

1:10that we're building and to use that to enable like next 100 million people to connect to the worlds of d5 and remove necessarily the barrier to the unbank so that's what we're trying to build and just to get a little bit deeper into it so if you if you have heard of general um some of the decentralized finance protocols what they enable people to do is they remove some of the

1:35middlemen and some of the barriers right so we have seen in the in the past few years uh products such as you know the compound ave all of those that came out and they are attracting billions if not hundreds of billions of dollars of assets into the space and the reason is it really is making the whole process much more efficient much more inclusive

1:55much more seamless for uh end user to get get loans so i'll give you a very quick example um personally i wanted to get it get a loan for my personal personal expense and some other other use and uh to get it from the bank it took me more than two weeks uh even though i had all the paperwork ready right so just that kind of shows whereas like you know to get it get a loan like

2:16with collateral buy my crypto from a crypto protocol it took me 15 seconds to get it right so that kind of shows the power that this kind of product can provide so ultimately what we're trying to build in a very simple terms is we are a savings protocol we allow people to have their money grow and have the money work for for them and that is completely

2:38powered by crypto so that is what what we're trying to achieve incredible well yeah there's definitely a need for it and you're right about ava and compound they're bringing so much capital in but i feel like there's some educational barriers or just there's just a gap between what people are used to in traditional finance and moving their funds into a new asset

3:02class and there's still so many people that have yet to make that jump now with you know with ave and compound personally i've found that if you're somebody who's financially illiterate or not into finances it's a bit of a daring jump to go into a 400 centralized protocol that where you govern your own funds and if you press the wrong button they might be gone right so

3:27yes alpine improving on that to ensure the safety for people that are not familiar and not financially educated uh to the extent that they're going to control their own cryptocurrencies how are you helping those people yeah i think that is a great point that you bring up ashton and i we believe that the main reason d5 has not achieved its potential one of the main is just

3:51the ux or ui ux problem that we call it right so it's a user interface or user experience problem as you kind of mentioned you need to like again like i don't want to i don't want to bad mouth any any specific product but we have seen various different crypto wallets right that we have to use we have to manage your own private public key and at some point it

4:11becomes so complex that unless you have a computer science degree and you understand what cryptography works right like how to manage your key like you're probably not going to be able to do that right so you're very right that that user experience is not ideal for for the end user right that you know like just think of our parents or grandmas like can they

4:30use those products 100 not so so that's where alpine comes in and we are we are really trying to um use some of the more advanced i would say like kind of almost a second generation of uh onboarding technology for example one product one thing that we use is you can connect your email address and still get a non-custodial wallet so just in plain terms

4:52you still have control of your fund but it is connected to your email so you don't have to manage the key but you have to obviously secure your email just similar to other products that you would use like say like a coinbase or um you know like any other exchange so once you do that and then the second part that we have also seen is things like oh like

5:08you have you have to interact with some protocol now you have to go buy some specific token like ethereum you know like you have to use ethereum solana you have to use solana token or polygon for polygon like matic token right so those also creates a lot of friction for end user so we are also introducing something on that we call guest list transaction

5:26so we have already partnered with some of the technology vendors that help us to enable that so that now that if you think about it our product while it's a completely decentralized under the hood um and also like it's a web3 native product but when you sign up you sign up with your email you don't have to have your like own wallet necessarily and have don't have to manage your key and

5:46then the second part is that you don't have to pay the gas necessarily in that native token so it gets denominated in us dollar that you're gonna put and because we are using some of the advanced technology that i'm happy to touch more on um we are basically we can actually provide our end user with almost free transaction cost um so those all of those three combined right like

6:09whereas like some of the things that you mentioned that oh like when you're doing it on ave on ethereum you have to probably pay hundreds of dollars of gas fee right to do those transactions to deposit or withdraw so all by removing all of those barriers necessarily we believe that we can adopt uh the next generation of or or rather like next wave of default

6:29adoption so one quick number that i will end and deal with which is which sometimes surprises me quite a lot personally given i'm in the space but you know like in in if you think about like currently how many people have crypto it's that on the order of like several hundreds of millions are on the globe right we have like about um you know like billions six

6:48seven billion people in our in ark so crypto still is obviously not saturated even but if you think about like a d5 adoption there are only four million people or four million wallet addresses because we don't know even how many people so most likely there's on the order of like only a million people that are using device right now and uh deepa is a huge runway to grow right but

7:10we believe that we need the right kind of product right kind of user experience right kind of pricing structure at the end of the day right like because we can't really expect people to pay hundreds of dollars in transaction fees to to do d5 right so with those three problems solved we believe that with alpine we're trying to solve all of those three and we believe that we'll be

7:28able to untap that that market necessarily i like it tarek and with i first of all you mentioned the um the the user experience is super important and then removing hexadecimal addresses to make it easy for user names and paying the gas is a huge one especially for retail investors people in emerging and developing countries as well to have a protection fee that's that's under a

7:56dollar versus hundreds of dollars you know maybe it's a few cents uh and and if you're paying for it on top of that that makes it even easier uh for for people to get involved and now i'm curious a little bit more on the main products that you're looking to drive in because defy can have a lot of different products where you know if you're having savings as you mentioned

8:17you can be earning interest on your coins but it's also possible to take out loans and use it as collateral and it's also possible to do swaps and liquidity provision and other advanced wi-fi functions as well where is alpine focusing most of its attention towards right so so ultimately we are building two buildings blocks or primitives if you will right so our first primitive

8:41that we're building is is the savings product that is denominated in usdc because that is the most easiest for most people to understand because you you again we don't want to compare with with uh with the bank but if you go to a bank for example you deposit your money you get interest right um so so that is kind of the first primitive we're building where you basically get an

9:01interest out of your usd usd or usdc um like you know deposit in this protocol necessarily and this is completely decentralized and one of the main things that we are bringing is um the fact that we are so transparent because ultimately at the end of the day and that's where we believe we are more powerful than many of the centralized incumbents is that people can come in and they can

9:26really see where their money is going so it's not going to like a some shady exchange or some some third party or trader where you don't really know where your money is going right it's not a black box it's completely transparent so that's the first point i would mention uh so that's the savings usdc denominated product right that i mentioned and the second part is

9:46actually for the people who are maybe more crypto bullish maybe they want to hold some crypto right so that that could be a savings vehicle as well so we're basically building kind of a bus we call it basket right so this to combine bitcoin and ethereum in some fashion and uh initially market get equated and then you buy into that so basically what that gives you is it

10:08gives you kind of like a broad market exposure um again we don't want to compare it with like a traditional finance because it's like a completely separate different dynamic under the hood it's almost like if you think it's like a s p 500 right like it's like instead of buying smpf like buying 500 different top us stocks and having to rebalance it every every week or so on right like

10:30you're just buying to this like exchange fund that's what we have seen in traditional finance um and that's what drove the adoption of users in traditional finance right um so that's kind of the path we're taking and we're making it super simple for people to save using those different like a volatile i i again like i mean not exactly i should say like volatile it's

10:51more like a unstable coins right um that that kind of assets as well so those are the two primitives we're building and um the beauty of the whole system is that it it gives people kind of like they can be as hands-on as they want they can like choose between how much allocation they want and they can like you know rebalance this every week or so on or they could just depend on

11:13the kind of the dow that that can rebalance it for them as well right so those are also bringing a new layer of simplicity if you will for the end user that's great to know and thank you for explaining that tarek and now for the customers that are using these products and you talk about getting the next 100 million people involved i feel like in this day and age there's a lot of

11:38people in emerging countries or countries that are under you know regimes where the currency isn't doing well and they're starting to resort to cryptocurrencies to actually store their wealth because it's working better than their national currency are you seeing any trends or are you focusing on certain emerging countries uh for the platform yeah so i think i think that's a great

12:04question um so just to kind of like touch on that like like i say the greatest question like on genuinely because that is one of the topic that is very dear to my heart um because i i have friends in some of those countries like for example i mentioned a couple of them like in like a turkey venezuela or uh you know like we're seeing war in some of the parts of the world right now

12:26right like ukraine russia conflict and yeah like even both sides are being impacted like a normal citizen of those countries right um so so in all of those cases what we have seen is that there are big adoption of of general like crypto in general like people are just like buying crypto because their currencies are underperforming severely like the fiat traditional currencies

12:48right like um compared to crypto so so we we do want to capture those and that's where we believe like once we release our phase one i think that's where we'll probably focus on some of those specific countries um and uh yeah so 100 some of those countries are definitely in our radar um one thing i would also mention uh which i kind of touched on is uh

13:08our transaction cost is necessarily almost free it's like and the reason we can achieve that is that we use um uh currently is polygon blockchain but we're also going to do solana so both of the blockchain as you know are very fast and that transaction costs are basically fractional sense right so that gives us a very very powerful way to adopt the d5

13:31to to various end user and that's how we we believe that we'll be able to win the market um because ultimately what we're trying to build is is almost like an abstraction layer if you want to think about it like what we're saying is that you don't have to worry about which protocol or chain you want to put your money in you put your money in in polygon or solana

13:53on alpine and polygon or solana and that that that money gets moved across different chains and different protocols um through the system that we're building so so that's a very very powerful statement we believe for that option amazing thank you for that tarek and you mentioned their phase one let's talk about the future and the roadmap for alpine and how you're continuing to grow can

14:17you talk about some of the milestones and what's coming up next for 2022 and what you hope to have out by the end of the year yeah 100 i mean again like you know as as the development happens obviously we cannot exactly put like exact data on it but um as we're thinking about it like yeah like uh you know like as we're as it is in our roadmap we're thinking of

14:40launching our first public product uh sometime later this year so currently we have a private product that it will that was intended for our you know early adopters and um investors and you know friends and family that we we are using to do two things one we believe that security is going to be one of the most critical element so we're trying to ensure and

15:01we're actually getting formally audited by several security firms right now um for this product um so yeah so like that's that's the first part that we're doing to kind of get people's feedback and test the security of the of the protocon product and the second thing is we're trying to also like really fine-tune the user experience right because we have talked

15:20about this user experience where we have this protocol under the hood and then we have a product on top of it right so this web app that that we have but we also have this protocol right so so just from that perspective um yeah like we are trying to make sure we really nail those two so that's why we are bringing the product to the you know public public market uh sometimes

15:43sometimes very soon this year great to know and now looking further down the road achieving your goals of getting in millions of new people into cryptocurrency with the product launched um you know by the end of this year or later and you're continuing to grow what do you think the key factor to success will be in ensuring years from now that there are millions of people

16:08using alpine and it is a success yeah i mean i think that's a great question and that kind of keeps us obviously awake every day is like um you know like that that's what we're that's what we're kind of working towards and i believe that ultimately um we are a product that is user-centric right like we believe in making sure that that users are getting not only the best experience but

16:35they're also getting the best price and that's why we have again like this is like a very web 3 concept that might not be familiar with people outside but we're really building a protocol under the hood that we owned by the community right so the community will have the power to make sure that even if i as was called the ceo of this like wallet product necessarily right uh

16:55wanted to change the peace structure i would not be able to without the community's buy-in necessarily right so i think that's a very very powerful mechanism that will help us to get people's trust in in a much better and faster way the second thing that i want to mention is that ultimately again decentralized are not decentralized it almost doesn't

17:15matter if we don't give the people the right experience that they want if we don't give people what they want out of this d5 products we will not succeed right so i think that would be again i just want to be very frank and honest about it like we're a product that has not reached the public market yet right so i think being honest and humble about it and being like talking to our users

17:37and making sure we we cater to them and they they love that product is going to be our main main priority in the next coming months as we launch definitely well i really like that answer and i do agree um having the community have a say and and control uh through you know democratization decentralized governance i think it's super important as it continues to grow

17:56out and once the foundation is built and understanding the customer needs and then you know giving the customers what they want um so i really do like that tariq now for the viewers that are looking to get involved with the community early as you mentioned and follow up in the updates towards the phase one launch what is the best way for them to learn more and to

18:16stay involved yeah um so first of all we have a website that is live with all the demos that are engineers beautiful demos that they have created so you can go to try alpine.com so try try a-l-p-i-n-e dot com and you can also follow us on twitter and you can follow us on alpined5 and my twitter handle is tarek moon if you want to kind of you know like

18:44basically basically connect um separately we are going to we have it on the website we have a waitlist that's where we're getting our first users from um and just to kind of mention uh on the record even we have about more than 50 000 users who have already signed up so we're super excited like you know that kind of shows like that keeps us you know like so pumped

19:04about the product that so many people want it right so so yeah so like please sign up and uh you know like uh please follow us on twitter and if you have any questions please any viewers can reach out to us via twitter for now amazing that's great to hear about such a large list i will leave the link to try alpine website and the alpine socials as well

19:27in the description box below thank you so much tark for coming on to speak about alpine all the best with the continued growth of the platform and let's follow up in the near future sounds good thank you so much thanks for having us really a pleasure coming to you