DeFi in LatAm | Jesus - HODL, Sajan Rajdev - Corn, Andres Fleischer - Ripio, Ana Belen - Eigen, Cush

[Music] hello hello good afternoon um so we'll get we'll keep it rolling uh for our next panel uh Defi and latam topic that's actually near and dear to my heart um and so I'll introduce our moderator Kush thank you everybody um well uh I'm glad you all first managed to find the stage cuz we were we were walking around for like 40 minutes trying to find where this place was so thank you all for being here U really appreciate it so so my name is Kush and um I'm really excited to have a really diverse set of panelists today who are all going to go ahead and introduce themselves before kicking off I want to just start with a really quick anecdote on why Define in Latin America and and this will be you know I think the the the question that kick us all off like just at a really high level like why are you excited for Define Latin America but um I I wanted to buy a car a couple of years ago and I was looking around like hey where can I buy a car okay cool I found a car and then I was like how can I get a loan you know maybe s you're smiling cuz I think you've heard this story before um and so I was I went to my bank and I was like Hey Bank can I get a loan for my car like yeah sure you know you've got some money in the bank account and yeah it's a 22% interest rate a year and you know it's going to take about 3 weeks to issue you the loan and I was like oh okay all right well let's see what I can do in defi so I went on liquidy um which is one of my favorite defi protocols and I took out um an interest well interest rate free is what they pegged themselves as but really it's a 0.5% interest rate loan um and you know that that in and of itself even just like with the on and off ring Etc ET is like an order of magnitude better experience than um taking a loan out with a bank and and I think that's just like one anecdote and one example of why defi is super important in Latin America right it just allows us to and I think just generally defi is important but I think particularly in countries um across Latin America where Financial systems are just absolute you know I mean sorry for the the language here but I it really it's um it's it's pretty horrible right like the financial systems we have I mean Argentina right Mexico has seen huge inflation recently Venezuela um you know and uh so yeah I'm really excited for this conversation just like a really you know and please if you have any questions as well we'll leave some some time for questions at the end but with that I'm going to go ahead and just pass it down the line here and you can all introduce yourselves um where are you from what are you doing here and why are you excited for Define Latin America awesome yeah for sure well I'm Anna I'm Community lead grow growth lead for aen foundation we are supporting the aan layer ecosystem and and yeah well I'm from Mexico I've been in the ecosystem for four years I believe or five I've been growing communities ER in Latino America I started eor Mexico and support the foundation with a lot of communities across latam and then I was part of the arbitrum team for two years and now I'm in I am foundation and I am excited for defi in Latin America well I want to share something personal as well like I used to be a freelancer so one like one of the times that I was getting paid in US Dollars basically I was super exited because I what that was my first a um interaction with with this ER I used a platform and that took me like $20 just for that transaction so that is a lot so then I learned about crypto and now I'm realizing that I can get any amount any time whenever I want for just fees like H for dollars like0 five cents or something ER or even that $1 but compared to $20 imagine that like H these $20 for families in Latin America can me means can mean h like one er a full meal of per day or maybe for a week so this is Super impactful H so yeah that's one of the reasons I'm super excited about um Andres feser here from Argentina I'm in the crypto space since 2012 so a long time ago I'm part of ripio Rio is one of the largest crypto exchanges crypto company let's say in in Latin America born in Argentina but now well spread across Latin America um I also lead ripio Ventures with is which is our Venture side um and well thank you for in inviting me here um I would like to differ Argentina used to have serious economic issues and now it's getting better our currency the PES argen Argentino appreciated like 40% the last year something like that of course coming out from the floor but but still uh but yes we suffer a lot of inflation like almost 300% inflation last year uh so that's probably the reason why in Argentina there's a huge adoption adoption of of defi Solutions um part mainly I I would say for crossb payments um the even though Argentina's Financial system is getting better and fintech uh products are getting better and more used in in my country um there's still a lot of friction for crossb payments which uh what then companies are um fixing this using stable coins and then investing with those stable coins uh and then borrowing from lending protocol so that's what we are seeing right now in Argentina uh that is trending I have some other things but we can talk later hey everyone uh my name is sash I'm originally from Mexico and and um yeah my my name is my name is not Mexican at all I'm half Indian half Mexican um I've been in a space for four years I joined in late 2020 to work for uh Badger Dao you may have heard of uh it's a dow focused on bringing Bitcoin to defi um I kept the same Mission but then I transitioned recently to to work for corn over here it is a a layer 2 you may have heard of as well uh it is a etherum layer 2 but it's Bitcoin focused it uses btcn a synthetic Bitcoin as gas token and then there some other Innovation it it it's built and designed to be the best place for BTC F to flourish um and I'm very excited for for defa in latam well I am from there and and I've SE the in efficiencies of the system as as we've uh heard here is something everybody in latam experiences um and you know through building in in this in this ecosystem for a while you you you learned that there's other ways of doing things and also you learned that fundamentally the you know economic machine in the world General it's broken in many ways and we can learn from from the way the fundamentals work in crypto and and uh yeah Latin America has different different countries have all sorts of different issues and I think crypto in general can make can help a lot but defi specifically right now it's already helping a lot of people it's empowering and you know I'm excited to to be helping push that forward because it'll it'll just unlock lots of potential um hello my name is Jus I'm originally from Venezuela uh but I'm living in London I was I've been in the space a part time three four years but I've been fulltime for a year before this I was a director of a structure products in a large Bank in London a I am currently building a protocol called hudle protocol where we are opening access to everyone to top hedge fund institutional cred strategies that so far have only been uh offered to the lead on W Street and in London so what we're trying to do is uh instead of you having to have one five million and having friends in the hedphone industry in order to be able to invest in one of these strategies we want anyone with a wallet to be able to access to any of this across the world and the reason what I'm excited about defining Lam is towards liquidity aggregation I am from Venezuela country that many of you know that is a felt State these days and among of the things one of the big problems there is is that there is no access to literally any banking product there is no even credit the only way you can buy a house in Venezuela is with cash and guess what who has cash basically no one especially in a country that is bankrupt and you can search this online if you don't believe me you can buy for $7,000 a two bed two B apartment in the front of one of the best beaches in Venezuela for $7,000 because no one is buying anything because there is no credit now um if you have defi the beautiful thing about defi is that you finally are cre creating a unique Global platform where you can get a loan from someone in Colombia Argentina Nicaragua and actually have access to the financial products that you need in order to buy a home and to have a normal life so in countries particularly like Venezuela and many cross Latin America aggregational liquidity will lower the price of the car the the of the loan of the car right because it was 22% because you were only able to get a loan from banks in your country but not from banks in Mexico or Colombia or United States defi solved that nice so um we got a really diverse set of of folks here on on the stage and across literally the entire um region the the other use case so we mentioned inflation resistance we mentioned stable coins we mentioned payments liquidity aggregation credit as well the other really interesting one is tokenization and and you know I think one of the I so we bought a piece of land like three years ago and I 3 years later I'm waiting for one damn piece of paper from some stupid Court in my country country that hasn't been processed yet for us to find L details it's stupid and so it's just like all these inefficiencies that I'm so deeply frustrated by um when it comes to just governance and financial systems in the region uh I think a question maybe I think andless you've been in in this space for super long time you guys look at a ton of deals uh you work for one of the biggest crypto companies in Latin America what do you think is the biggest challenge for us to scale defi adoption and that America def adoption or real world assets adoption I think across the board right like I'm curious to get your your takes cuz you guys look at a ton of deals with Reef Bill Ventures as well right like where where where are the main friction points and a lot of the kind of problems that you're seeing no that that's a that's a good question defi adoption I think the main challenge is for people to get in so probably better ramps to Defi and better infrastructure is is a is a is a way to do it ripia for example is is offering uh people right now to access a defi product in in a couple of clicks which is typically impossible in for an Argentina for example to invest in a def protocol I mean you need to have a lot of knowledge of what you are doing and and um handle wallets and protocols and things and bridges and uh a lot of things that are not easy to do um and in the case of real war assets I would also want to reply to that uh I think it's lack of Regulation um because that that's what you said you depend on a bureaucrat to and to give you some paper to do some things tokenization can help with that absolutely but the problem is that you also need uh the first it has to be a regulated company because it's typically assets that are already regulated um it still early in arent in Argentina and Latin America for real world assets I guess uh not as in the us where we have a lot of adoption of real war assets but I hope it changes soon nice yeah I think regulation it's coming I mean I feel like regulation definitely every day is is is is coming online and um we see a lot of movement in Brazil Mexico is a really strong regulatory body when it comes to crypto Argentina seems to be wanting to bring a lot more uh robust regulation to crypto or deregulation perhaps you might say um the other interesting item specific to Latin America is Bitcoin right so the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender was a salvor I was just up there a couple of weeks ago practically no one uses it um in fact they hate using it um but s give us like some insights on like why Bitcoin why is it taken off in the region you know and what like what do you think is the opportunity for Bitcoin in L time yeah I think I think my perspective in Bitcoin is probably not the hottest St um especially because you you know you just you just gave an example of of you know um the application of Bitcoin in the way that people intended you know Bitcoin as a payment method it's not the what Bitcoin is the best for uh I I don't think Bitcoin has a a big role to play in Latin America as a store of value you know as as he has in the rest of the world um we we have spoken about about places with hyperinflation places where um just you don't know if your retirement will be there by the time you retire you know because there's corruption there's there's just infrastructure that just breaks and you cannot trust so having access to an asset that you know is just the best store of value ever created um and and giving that access to to people is I think a big unlocking force and I think is is already one of the biggest uh drivers of of crypto just in general in in Latin America I just learned today that um it is the largest by far uh held crypto asset in in Mexico which makes a lot of sense right it is the largest crypto asset so I you know you can tell in it's proportionally in all countries that's that's the case and uh but yeah I think I think by itself Bitcoin it's it's just that great store of value but as more people starts holding as more people starts to get exposed to it and and you know um you know count on it as as a means of uh preserving their their Heritage their hard work um value generated and wealth I think corn and and defi through through corn can play a big role in powering It Forward um corn what what what it is is as I said a layer two that that it's based and focused on um you know being the best place for Bitcoin Finance to flourish it uses a synthetic BTC as gas token what that means is that it puts Bitcoin at the gas pedal it it means that Bitcoin is a protagonist it means that Bitcoin has the largest liquidity and uh means that Bitcoin can have the most applications at scale uh we we partnered with multiple of the most established uh protocols to launch there there's curve Unis swap you know Moro um uler Avalon so the the the money Legos are there so that you not only have the efficiency of an arbitr morage chain so that people can use a synthetic Bitcoin asset you know with with you know cheap gas fees and speed but also you have a very strong foundational defi money Legos so that you can do so with trust with security you know with the liness that these provide and that's what we want to enable right um through corn we can scale a Bitcoin uh economy especially for these places they're already counting in Bitcoin as that value and they're using Bitcoin as that entrance to to the crypto world right so yeah I think that's my my ti nice how how do you all see Bitcoin being used in like your respective countries any insights on how what role Bitcoin plays in this whole defi world in the region yeah well for Mexico to be honest like there is the the most important ex change in Mexico is called bitso so bitso like most of the use their users a like 70% I I guess they are holding Bitcoin and and yeah this for to me this makes a lot of sense to be honest like of course this was the first H blockchain like if you go into Google and you type crypto the first thing you see is educational content about Bitcoin and educational content about crypto and Bitcoin you see a lot of this in Spanish so that's one why and of course there is a lot of like K or influencers like one of the richest P people in Mexico Salinas he is like the biggest KO about Bitcoin in Mexico so that's that's making a lot of sense to be honest but yes I just I want tip for everyone here and your protocols create content in your language or in Spanish so people when they are doing a research about crypto they see your content there so yeah that's a that's something everyone need we need to be working on um so yeah about the role of Bitcoin in in Latin America especially in 20178 Bitcoin paid the bills uh during the worst times of the Venezuelan uh decline of a lot of developers a lot of hustlers because and it wasn't only just because it was an asset appreciate value I mean these are people that had to pay the bills day to day the beautiful thing about bigcoin is because it's an asset that you didn't really need to get the permission of a country or an exch or a country an exchange to buy people that were creating creative like mining Bitcoin uh there a lot of now great solidity developers from Venezuela because they learn how to then with ethereum then RIS SM contracts but that were introduced to the ecosystem through Bitcoin a lot of people both trading Bitcoin you know also to make a living and a lot of Venezuelans that actually created otcs uh in order to help other Venezuelans and Latin Americans haschanged Bitcoin to Fiat so it's it's it's an asset that because it was relatively easy to access compared to a stock to a bond Etc it a lot allowed a lot of hustlers in Venezuela to get a job and to pay the bills so it has been really a survival Tool uh through the years it still is nowadays but during those dark years it was especially especially useful nice there's an interesting anecdote on Argentina in fact Brian Armstrong was in Argentina when he first found out about Bitcoin right and I correct yeah so like all I mean obviously coinbase played a huge role in in catalyzing this entire industry so it's cool to sort of see that yeah Argentina I started in crypto in 2012 by 2013 there was already a big Community there are like six companies many of them are still alive then came much more uh but Argentina and Venezuela powered by hyperinflation and distrust on the government so on uh Bitcoin came as an alternative that you can trust uh something that that is still there that is not controlled by anyone that can spoil it and uh and then can well don't want to say bad words here but uh with your money um and so yeah I think that's that that drove a lot of interest and still the best asset uh class on on the crypto space that you can hold uh even though stable coins uh now means a big part of the pie because of the usability um when it comes to bitcoin I think it lacks that part uh so that's why stable coins it eat that yeah there is no second best um I'm just kidding uh so stable coins like uh tether recently announced that they're going to soon sh ship uh um tether on light the lighting Network literally the timeline was soon um so there's something really really interesting with stable coins right the world's largest REM Corridor is between Mexico and the uh the United States the United States of Mexico $ 60 billion a year 10% of that you mentioned beel is processed by beel um I do want to like switch to stable coins and dive a little bit into that because I that's like one of the use cases I absolutely think is fascinating and I think it's where crypto has really found pmf what are you what are you looking forward to in the Horizon for stable coins and and how can we leverage stable coins and defi ecosystems to bring more value and more utility to to defi for people in the region Mountain protocol which is founded by Latin Americans is really exciting um there number of other players are trying to engage with the region local stable coins are launching now right there's a lot of movement in stable coins in latam let's let's talk about you know what are the opportunities you're super excited for for stable coins in the region take take go all right uh well I think I think you you called it in Argentina is already making making uh you know so many changes because it is it is a fantastic use case um yeah there's so many inefficiencies every anytime you try to do any payment even I'm I'm based in Canada and I try to P something slightly above my my you know the the the allowance my bank gives me and I had to go in in a Cod for like an hour to to let them use my money and pay you know I'm always always say like crypto sols this and I work in but I still forced to this you know so I think one of the challenges is for for regulation to allow for more people to use it I think there's also need to be there also needs to be innovation in in the uh custody side of things because it is it is a a virtue of of crypto you can have self- custody but also I think it's sometimes a downside because I don't think everybody nor needs it nor wants to have self- custody of all their funds right so I think that there needs to be more trustless ways in which people can access they can be they can be and through regulation you know trust in that secur security so that they can tap into this technology and use it reliably there needs to be more people wanting to accept it and I I think that's that's also a product of having the right regulation the right government intervention uh but it's an effort that will have to happen in parallel in all these countries uh and we need to be pushing that for sure I have one uh that I think is typical just like he said stable coins are are amazing but I think there is a friction because there are so many stable coins and there are so many blockchains so there's so many stable coins in so many blockchains uh for the people I've been talking to uh that want to use stable coins like regular people that are not in crypto like us for example uh they got completely crazy when they want to use the stable coin because uh you can do usdc on Solana but but is it bridged is it not you know so I think there are a lot of project trying to solve that but uh a pro the project that can solve that and make it really useful for anyone because when you use for example in Argentina everyone use dollars hard dollars like physical dollars dollars in the bank but it's just dollar I mean it's not they don't even use Euros they just dollars so when if if we can solve that so people can use stable coin one stable coin or just a way of doing that uh without that friction I think we can help them a lot don't know if it's possible but yeah nice yeah I'm I'm like stable coins really really exciting um we've got we've got about six seven minutes left here let's talk about Builders defi builders in Latin America Anna you spent a lot of time working with a lot of Builders and now with igen even more so right so I'm curious like get your insights on like learnings on kind of biggest pitfalls for builders in the region like how can we get more defi built in Latin America and used in Latin America yeah sure well a context about builders in America is that like Builders are growing very very fastly and this is because we are sharing the same language and also Portuguese like 46 countries in Latin America and all all all of those speak Spanish and there is of course the big the big or or the biggest one as well Brazil that speaks Portuguese and it's very similar as well we we are talking to each other in portol um we are very connected to each other so that helps that is like it's like a like something that is like moving and and getting faster because ER one day you have 10 Builders but tomorrow you have 50 so that that is H actually Latin America is the region that has been growing is the second fastest growing region in crypto every year year to year is growing around 40% so for sure ER you need to take a look about what what is happen happen in Latin America and yeah that's one of the highlights and uh some learnings I I guess if we want to see more defi projects in Latin America or crypto in general I guess one thing that we need to support our accelerator accelerators um yeah bring mentors to to the to the community Mark people in marketing in growth so they can build their projects and also for sure hire someone from from Latin America to keep H to build to help you build your project um yeah what else you can also create initiatives with universities that that are focused on engineering or also business and then you can also create a hackathon yeah these are the ways that I've been um I've been learning that has been helping to help to grow the the Latin America the crypto ecosystem in Latino America and for sure as I I told you before create content in Spanish like with a local news newsletters or newspapers so people in Latin America when they H make research about crypto they find your project and they can see your project linked to a a local newsletter that they see or local local newspaper so they have more confidence in your project so yeah that thank you and Jesus you are a up coming Builder right and so as a sort of in fact is going through our accelerator program right now tell us more about your journey as a Latin American founder operating in the region like how can you know what do you need and what do other Founders similar to you need to scale 100x from here money more resources no no but aside from money aside from money no Yokes aside um so um like in Latin America because it's a very even though we speak the same language it's a very fractured region different jurisdictions different governments one time you have a right wing government another time left wing government and they all change regulations economic policies and it's difficult to build a business that is scalable across the region um so and also I think because of that there is also non entrepreneurship type of uh you know like uh mindset because it's difficult to really build an scale a business and be successful so the first the first building in La American businesses were you know people like Andre that they were already entrepreneurs and they build so businesses now what I see is a wave of Latin Americans that have been living in the US and Europe that learn how to build businesses and now they're bringing the knowledge to Latin America which is my case because in my case like I left Venezuela 12 years ago I worked in banking for 10 years and I saw around me how many of my friends were in London in Europe becoming entrepreneurs I learned from them I eventually got a mindset that really allow allow allow me and one of my partners another Venezuelan to build the business that we have these days so definitely uh education is needed the accelerator program has been really a a blessing for us and this is the type of programs that really allow Latin Americans to teach look there is a network that can help you to grow a business there are examples like Rio uh there are businesses from Latin America that now have reached High scale and they and there are people and mentors that can help into how to get there right um so education and I think a better entrepreneur entrepreneurship like mindset is needed but you know education eventually will definitely get us there and also having examples of successful entrepreneurs will bring more people into trying something from a scratch nice awesome thank you thank you so we have a couple minutes left uh if there are any questions in the audience feel free to put your hand up and and ask away go for it I was just curious about something kind of broad ter at outside the US just to Progressive in the crypto and you know until Rec all there's a lot of issues a lot of econom needs would you say of like DES in terms of yeah so we had a couple of hands up so desperation go for it okay cool any other questions will we'll take one more and then we'll just go ahead and answer those wherever necessary go for it how important is the invol okay so youth Ai and crypto and are people desperate to use this technology feel free to take it I'll take AI crypto quickly um yes absolutely very much interest still uh very much looking into it I think there's a lot of things we can uh we can do with defi that's it I think the desperation bit um so you don't know what you don't know uh L America have been used to be to not have access to a lot of things and you don't know you don't have access to those things until you suddenly oh wow I haven't seen this before so it's yes desperation is really what drop a lot of Venezuelans into crypto because how do I earn money but these days is it's more about it like there are a lot of resour financial products available across the world people in Latin America don't have it and once you offer them to this this to them they're like oh wow this is changing my life I didn't know I could have access to this easily yeah well I'm taking about the AI and crypto H yeah for sure like there are some a lot of startups in Mexico working in AI already and now they are starting to learn about blockchain so they integrated uh and about desperation ER well it it depends because each country in Latin America is different H so you have Venezuela you have Argentina like 46 in Mexico I have a I see a lot of opportunity in terms of that people now have an option to get access to US Dollars and because of their remittances and now they can also access to H yield veryan stable coins which gives them a a yeld by only holding usdc for example I'll be brief I'll Echo what we said here on on desperation agree um there's there's definitely desperation in in the sense that you know people suffer from the inequality the the lack of infrastructure and and and tools but I don't think that the desperation is necessarily targeted to crypto because they don't they just don't know that it could be a fix right but I think that educating and showing them that uh could could definitely satisfy you know um tackle that desperation and and tied to that to to the youth um I think the access that the youth is having in Mexico and and all of Latin America is definitely going to be a a Big Driver of of adoption because they then they can educate they they can show hey parents you've been desperate all your life here's a solution let's make our governments regulate this so that we can access it in the way that we Des serve it right this this screen is saying please wrap up please multiple exclamation marks um so just just quickly to answer your question I think the youth is super important I think education is at the foundation of this entire ecosystem and super bullish on that again thank you all for coming there are rumors of a really big conference happening later this year in wenos ites to be confirmed check the prediction markets I don't know um but again thank you all and a big round of applause for the amazing panelist here thank you thank you thank you thank you