From TradFi to DeFi — How to Bridge the Gap (Webinar Replay)
Yesterday, we kicked off the 2nd of our Clearpool Webinar Series with the topic “From TradFi to DeFi — How to Bridge the Gap.”
The Clearpool Webinar Series provides a chance for the Clearpool community to get to know the Clearpool team, Clearpool’s partners and investors, and learn more about the Clearpool protocol product.
The 2nd Edition of the Clearpool Webinar Series included experts from the DeFi space:
- Franklin Bi (Director of Portfolio Development, Pantera Capital)
- David Lighton (Co-Founder, Lithium Finance)
- Augustus (Augie) Ilag (Investor, Sequoia Capital)
- Robert Alcorn (CEO, Clearpool)
From TradFi to DeFi — How to Bridge the Gap Quotes from the Talk
“As the market for crypto has gotten to such a size that it gets a little bit hard to ignore. Many investors are looking at this as sort of a standalone asset class that makes sense to diversify across and consider alongside some of their traditional investments.” — Augustus (Augie) Ilag (Investor, Sequoia Capital)
“Blockchain development is so different from traditional software development in the sense that you’re building oftentimes in open source by default and in the open by default.
Folks are watching you as you build, and they may be passionate about the way you’re building what you’re building. And that community is also going to help you to ultimately grow, oftentimes grow faster than traditional software can grow.
When you talk to entrepreneurs outside the blockchain space, the mentality is often sort of, ‘Hey, we’re going to go heads down. We’re going to go into a cave for six to 12 months, come out with a bang and this fully finished product that people are either going to love or hate.
But in the blockchain world, it’s the complete opposite. It’s Hey, we have this great idea. The community is going to contribute to it. We’re going to contribute to it. But over time, it’s going to become something that is bigger than ourselves. And so looking for teams that can have that kind of mindset, that kind of mentality is really important to us.
I think the other piece that we’re looking for is just the ability to adapt.
The entire tech stack in the blockchain world is still shifting sands. We are seeing layer 2s on Ethereum. New layer ones where developer adoption is real is happening. So be able to adapt really quickly to protocol level changes is also really important.” — Franklin Bi (Director of Portfolio Development, Pantera Capital)
Tweet Promoting the Event:
“…if you look at the basic logic in the technology that the ecosystem is building, we really are inching, you know, inch-by-inch toward a world where we’re going to cut out intermediaries and enable peer to peer commerce. And, I’m afraid, that this is really lost on a lot of the people that are looking closely at the space…
We we want to create an ecosystem where you don’t need to rely on guarantors like eBay or Zillow or these other platform companies that do a really good job at reducing transaction costs for peer to peer commerce.
We want to drive the transaction costs to zero…
And eventually, once the regulators really do look under the hood, I am certain that they will see the benefit in this and that when thoughtful regulation does come to the space, it will be a deeply legitimizing and exciting moment for for DeFi.” — David Lighton (Co-Founder, Lithium Finance)
“I think from from Clearpool’s perspective, our long term vision is is to attract flows from from traditional finance. We know that the core concept of Clearpool will be attractive to both lenders and borrowers in the traditional world.
Right now it is more sort of crypto-centric. Borrowers are mainly crypto trading firms, market makers, hedge funds and our lenders are very much crypto focused as well.
Ultimately, anybody can be a lender on Clearpool. The institutional larger lenders will certainly be the guys that are already operating this space.
Having said that, we have started to see a lot of a lot of interest from from traditional lenders and borrowers.” — Robert Alcorn (CEO, Clearpool)
This is just a sample of the webinar conversation. If you missed the event, or want a refresh of the conversation, catch the full replay of the webinar linked above.
About Sequoia Capital
The creative spirits. The underdogs. The resolute. The determined. The outsiders. The defiant. The independent thinkers. The fighters and the true believers.
These are the founders with whom we partner. They’re extremely rare. And we’re ecstatic when we find them.
We partner early — sometimes when a company is no more than an idea. We know these crucial first decisions can have an exponential influence on the curve of success.
Our style is not for everyone. We push when we see potential. We are direct. Some don’t like our approach. Most who know us do.
Our team mirrors the founders with whom we partner: hungry overachievers with a deep-rooted need to win. Many come from humble backgrounds. Many are immigrants. Many formed or built companies of their own before joining Sequoia. Each shares the mindset of an entrepreneur and knows what it means to walk that path.
We value teamwork over showmanship. Our contribution to a company always comes from several of us working together. We’re skittish about the first-person singular and don’t care to see our names in the press.
Our team is small. We prefer a few people with diverse strengths focused on a small number of companies, and we are always mindful of lessons learned — some painfully — that are eternal truths. Our network is strong. Our advantage comes from four decades of legendary founders helping each other.
Long ago, we made nonprofits the backbone of our limited partner base. Working for these charities brings intense meaning to what we do. It gives us a heightened sense of responsibility.
We’re serious about our work and carefully choose the words to describe it. Terms like “deal” or “exit” are forbidden. And while we’re sometimes called investors, that is not our frame of mind. We consider ourselves partners for the long term.
We help the daring build legendary companies, from idea to IPO and beyond.
About Pantera Capital
Pantera Capital was founded by former Tiger Management Head of Macro Trading and CFO Dan Morehead. Pantera’s global macro strategy invested over $1 billion of institutional allocations. In 2013, Pantera created the first blockchain hedge and venture funds in the United States.
Pantera launched the first cryptocurrency fund in the U.S. when bitcoin was at $65 /BTC in 2013. The firm subsequently launched the first blockchain-focused venture fund. Pantera Co-CIO Joey Krug Co-founded Augur, one of the first decentralized applications built on Ethereum. In 2017, Pantera was the first to offer an early-stage token fund.
Pantera funds provide investors with the full spectrum of exposure to the space, ranging from illiquid venture capital assets (including early-stage tokens and multi-stage venture capital equity) to more liquid assets like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
About Lithium Finance
Lithium Finance is the first collective-intelligence pricing oracle to give precise and timely pricing on private, illiquid assets. It rewards analysts who provide truthful information and punish those who offer false pricing data. As a result, Lithium’s users effectively obtain pricing for all hard-to-value assets such as pre-IPO stocks, private equity, and other illiquid assets.
About Clearpool
Clearpool is a decentralized capital markets ecosystem where institutional borrowers can access unsecured liquidity and where liquidity providers can earn attractive risk-adjusted returns.
The first decentralized dynamic marketplace for unsecured liquidity, where supply and demand always ensure each pool reaches a state of equilibrium in terms of size and interest rate.
A paradigm shift in how institutions borrow uncollateralized liquidity is upon us.
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