Global Investing With Securities-Backed Tokens - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2023

so I want to take on a little journey if you don't mind and I want you to imagine for just a moment that you're a tech worker in Sao Paulo or maybe Lagos or Bangalore you get packages from Amazon you have a smartphone you use Google for searches right you like to keep track of your friends on Facebook and you even love a new release from Netflix but when it comes time for you to invest in some of the companies that you know and love found it as a person outside the U.S it cannot be so many barriers so many hurdles that prevent a great experience when it comes to investing take this guy Miguel silver for a minute our fictional character Miguel he lives in Buenos Aires Argentina he's a pretty good guy and I think we're going to see that his path it kind of exemplifies some of the pain points that a person outside the U.S has whatever they're trying to invest so for instance if he tries to open up an account he may be required to provide a lot of documents like visas social security number open up bank accounts or all types of tax and IRS documents that are really difficult to deal with if he goes to an online broker there may be huge upfront costs and big minimums that he can't afford additionally we've got problems that some some of these Brokers actually require you to come and sign paper documents time that he can't afford to take off of work and when he wants to spend a stable coin almost none of them will take it and for someone like Miguel where the destabilization of his own currency is affecting his day-to-day life stablecoin is how he really wants to get paid all of these hurdles add up and they they call someone like Miguel to just kind of throw his hands up and just say it's not worth it I'm not going to deal with this anymore good afternoon my name is Chaz rampathal I'm the chief legal officer and co-founder of Denari where we are currently right now outside the U.S issuing we're using people can use their stable coins to buy our tokens that are backed one to one by U.S Securities Securities that are names that you know every day like apple and Tesla Nvidia Amazon and Google and even ETFs like the s p 500.

we think that no matter where you are in the world the only thing that's going to actually change markets is unleashing the power of blockchain to open up transparency and to increase access worldwide at dinari we have a mission we want to increase that access we want to increase that transparency no matter exactly where you how wealthy you are no matter what experience you have or where you happen to be located it's undoubtable that technology has and will continue to improve our lives day to day and that can also be said true to the markets as well kind of markets have gotten better but they can still do so much more for instance we've got trading platforms online that people can use and they take trading and put it right into your desktop or into the palm of your hand in your mobile device they've eliminated the need many places for an online broker you don't need that anymore no face-to-face meetings no phone calls and with all of this though take a look at the ownership percentages of stuff of people in the stock market it's almost unchanged in the past 20 years how is that possible well you also have things like high frequency trading what an amazing thing right well yeah it increases liquidity it does a whole lot if you're the kind of person that can benefit from that but for most people they don't have access to that level of of high frequency trading they can't benefit from the day-to-day efficient trades their long-term retail investors they don't need this same goes for AI powered tools they're not available to most people they're available to hedge funds right and we all know what happens when hedge funds when little people typically lose so that's got me asking what is the deal here where's the actual payoff for people like Miguel does he have anything that's going to help him out why is it seemed that technology in the financial markets and traditional Finance is still so far Out Of Reach for everyone well I think you can illustrate this a little bit just going back to about two and a half years to what happened with the game stock Saga and I'm sure that most people here understand exactly what happened at GameStop so I'm not going to rehash the whole thing but I do want to focus on two issues and the first one has to do with the short position that was out there it was shorted about 140 percent more than its actual float which is insane right I am all for shorting stocks whenever you don't have faith in management or no faith in their business model but that's an impossible position hedge funders were kind of hoping that no one would notice it but that led to Wall Street bets turning the tables on them and we know exactly what happened there the second part was when Robin Hood halted trades now we know that ticked off a lot of people right that was not a good thing how did this happen well it was almost a foregone conclusion game the Robin Hood was just under collateralized and they did not anticipate what was going to happen so we also don't know if there was any undue influence from other other areas and the fact is without the transparency in the market we actually may never know what happened there this lack of transparency is continuing to hurt investors and hurting the market inner blockchain is the solution we think blockchain is the solution to bring that sort of transparency it can streamline trades it can actually remove friction in intermediaries and add transparency and security to the system it's no doubt and you don't have to believe me right you can look at some of the quotes that are popping up behind me right now these are from Market insiders and they've been made as early as 2014 2015. they all know and understand the power of blockchain they know what it can do so let's talk a little bit about maybe for a couple of minutes some of the things that blockchain can bring to us and bring to traditional Finance making it decentralized Finance transparency blockchain translation transactions are absolutely transparent they remove human influence they actually help keep and level the playing field make sure everybody plays by the same rules we also know that there's accuracy that's necessary in real-time information this allows the hive mind to collectively share stuff and out Bad actors without fear of reprisal we need to make sure that there's equality as well everyone should know the rules and play by the rules when trading can be altered or it can be changed on the Fly that needs to not be done by humans who are subject to influence but if by code on the Chain not subject to influence and we all know that we need this necessary kind of stability right the certainty of smart contracts gives us that stability and it can also delever during volatile times this is my favorite one and that has to do when we have the building blocks of the financial system put onto a public blockchain we know that globally trading and buying Securities is the type of thing that can happen with increased interoperability and connectivity so we know that there it's out there so what gives why haven't we realized all of these benefits from blockchain right how is this possible why are there still so many hurdles that are there the answer is not shocking because the financial industry is chock full of two things rules and regulations and that also means it's chock full of a third thing and that's Regulators right Regulators like finra whose job is to protect investors and and deal with broker dealers the problem is that finra doesn't know how to deal with crypto companies or blockchain and their slow playing applications this is hurting investment in the space do you have the SEC we all know what's been happening in the past couple years in the SEC from 21 to 22 enforcement actions are up 50 and they're continuing up this year there are also Regulators outside of the United States and these are the types of regulators that see the benefit of innovation but we all know that the wheels of innovation turn super super slow when you're a regulator you once had countries like Estonia that were a Haven for Innovation but now they're being pulled back through the EU regulations we know that the UK finance ministry has a report out talking about the benefits of tokenizing Securities but they have a five-year road map five years is a lifetime when it comes to technology issues around anti-money laundering and kyc very important they must stay here we must make sure we do stop terrorism but they do inject necessary problems into the system and inefficiency add on to that the centralized banking issues that have a hard time offloading and on-ramping crypto and accepting stable coins for payments and this centralized friction just kind of exists and exists and exists so what is it that can actually take this friction and take it away we don't know but there's a rough road ahead we know for a fact that these Regulators aren't prepared to use the tools that they have to deal with the companies that we're creating they're trying to take their old rules and enforce it on a new regime and it's just a bad fit it doesn't work and it's not going to work this creates massive hurdles and it's keeping people with money and keep people who are building out of the ecosystem and and actually making them question whether they should be doing this at all so we all know that when you lose money and you lose Talent Innovation suffers because those are the two things that fuel and drive innovation so why is Denari in this why are we doing this well is it worth it we think it is and we're actually trying to build an ecosystem that's going to make this something that that that's going to work and we're talking about a global solution we're from just about anywhere you can access with your stable coin and purchase Securities now right now we're focusing outside the US but we're working on it and that means working inside of the reform trying to be the voice of reason and speaking with Regulators talking to finra talking to the SEC telling them that they need to evolve and replace outdated regulations with ones that work for all of us this means we're headed down the path to become a regulated broker dealer and we're also looking at eventually having an alternative trading system for the tokens that we're issuing we also are looking for a scale the ability to start buying and swapping and dealing with swapping these things without actually liquidating your assets and then repurchasing but literally doing swaps to swap for tokens that's only going to happen when we're able to get a decentralized exchange that's hands off and in an Innovative jurisdiction that's going to allow it and because of that we're also looking at fractional ownership and kind of what I call kind of custom ETFs that can mini balance portfolios uh do we think our investors are going to want this and are going to benefit from it additionally wealthy right now can access their Investments and and use tax-free debt to lever up and make more we want to do the same for our investors at a much smaller level with the Investments that they have we believe this is going to increase liquidity it's going to increase transparency and it will absolutely increase access to decentralized markets greater than they are today in today's traditional Finance so what do we need to do this is my call to action right now there are innovators in this audience there are innovators that you have met there are probably innovators right now that are thinking of something new that they're about to do we need to have a unified voice we need to call for things like right regulation I use the term right regulation because there's we don't need no regulation this idea that they're not Securities they shouldn't be regulated we should do whatever we want all that does is lead distrust to in the system and distrust in what we're trying to build that's not going to work we need to show real awesome palatable benefits from what we're doing on chain and what we're doing with the decentralized finance and if we do that we need to show the world that this is more than just flash it's more than just crypto bro it's real stuff it's real things that we're building to better our system every single day I want to thank you all very much for taking the time to listen to me speak here I really hope that we can connect later there's a little more information about me a little bit more information about my company and I also want to let you know I have my co-founder there in the Denari shirt back there he and I afterwards are going to be uh we actually have some gift cards that you can redeem for a digital share of Nvidia up to one share some fractionalize is kind of random uh but there's actually no obligation other than the fact that you just need to redeem it on our system so you're welcome I really appreciate it I look forward to meeting all of you have a great rest of your conference and hopefully I'll see you tonight