Yield — CryptoVerse AMA
Date : 11 Dec 2020
Guest : Justin Wright - CFO & COO
Tim Frost - CEO & Project Lead
Jan Strandberg - Growth and Marketing Lead
Q: Please briefly introduce yourselves and #YIELD to our community?
Jan YIELD : I have been a growth hacker and digital nomad for more than 10+ years and not leading the growth at YIELD. I’ve helped successfully scale-up companies in the sphere and I was the head of marketing at Paxful, now the largest P2P marketplace worldwide. I’ve scaled up Paxful from 50 000 users to more than 4.5 million and from revenue perspective from 100k$ USD to 45 million USD weekly.
Justin YIELD : I’m Justin Wright. I have spent most of my career in capital markets and fund management before moving over to Fintech, this is my first venture in the crypto space. I have spent the last 6 years building out Beehive P2P, the largest SME P2P lender in the Middle East and having been introduced to DeFi by Tim and seeing the potential to really take crypto to the mainstream, I jumped at the chance to be part of the founding team @YIELDapp
Tim Frost : My name is Tim Frost and I am CEO of YIELD.
I have a rich Fintech, marketing, business development, and operations background. YIELD is my 3rd digital bank and I have been a key figure with many successful fintech and blockchain companies. Specializing in early-stage growth, operations, and development. I was part of the founding Wirex team and supported operations, business development, and marketing for the first 18 months. I also joined and helped take EQIBank to market a global digital challenger bank with an average client AUM of $250,000. I have helped accelerate early-stage blockchain startups QTUM, NEO, Paxful, Polymath, Selfkey, Everex, and many others.
Q: Can you please introduce us to YIELD? Who was it made for and what problems does the product aim to solve?
A: YIELD is a licensed and regulated FinTech company that enables anyone to invest in decentralized finance with the touch of a button! Offering an intuitive app and web platform, users around the world can start earning up to 20% APY through our DeFi strategies on the backend, earning returns from DeFi products without having to go through a lengthy, complex, and often costly learning process. We offer transparent governance through our YLD token. Our goal is to go beyond DeFi and provide a more rewarding digital banking experience, where people can easily earn interest on any currency and spend their earnings using our physical debit card, without ever having to think about crypto.
From MVP launch we are offering 1 DeFi investment product. We are making it easy to put you money on YIELD app and your crypto will essentially be invested in dozens of high yielding and safe DeFi products through us. Invest as little as $100 on our platform. We aggregate your investment to maximize your returns and make DeFi easy. We are making DeFi simple. With us we eliminate the high gas fees, we have a team full time analyzing, auditing smart contracts, and searching for the best opportunities.
Our goal is to go beyond DeFi and provide a more rewarding digital banking experience, where people around the world can easily earn interest on any currency and spend their earnings using our physical debit card , without ever having to think about crypto.
One major area is our team. We have built very successful companies and financial institutions before. The other is our approach. We are licensed, insured, and are building a platform to offer clients a secure place to allow their money to grow. Unlike many crypto companies which are anonymous or not building companies that are compliant from day 1.
We plan to have Fiat on ramps and off ramps on Q1 and a card program running in the end of Q2.
We also love educating people and we have very vibrant and open community.
Q: To follow up, you mentioned that YIELD aims to provide a similar experience to traditional digital banking. What does that look like and how will you make this possible in the world of crypto?
A : We see Digital banking as a natural gateway to DeFi. Overall our user base we are going to serve knows how to use a digital banking application. Fiat rails, deposits, current accounts, and investments. We are building a UX to this world of DeFi.
Q: Sounds like a good product! But how are you prepared when it comes to fraud protection and insurance?
A: We work with BitGo for customer wallets that provide an initial insurance layer, we are also contributing a portion of APY to a segregated insurance wallet, this allocation will be conducted on per week basis, it is on-chain and will be audited monthly, disclosed in our monthly fund performance report that includes the YLD treasury rebalancing metrics as well.
We are in discussions with several other InsureTech and crypto insurance providers to bring innovation around the hybrid tier 3 tertiary capital reserve, it will include reinsurance and FDIC styled protections as we grow.
Security is one of our most valued proposals.
We have identified critical systems and will continue to stress-test these alongside market-related technology security scenarios to mitigate and remove points of failure across our operating environment, including DeFi instruments held in our portfolios.
We are building in-house technology solutions and employing industry-leading experts in their fields; data security consultants supported by our various oversight, enterprise, and risk management committees and frameworks themselves adopted from traditional funds and capital markets best practices.
YIELD has a core team of experts, our ‘Portfolio Managers’ who work closely with our technology, risk, and software engineering teams who are developing proprietary automated portfolio allocation and portfolio management tools for safely accessing a fast-expanding DeFi ecosystem.
Also we are working with some of the top smart contract auditors in this space.
Q: Please elaborate more on the YLD token. When will it be generated and what do we get from having it ASAP?
A: Our token generation event is on the 14th next Monday and we just had a private and public sale through TrustSwap, our initial cap was 1.2 million but we OVERSUBSCRIBED 3x. We will also be listed on a Tier 1 exchange on Monday and on a DEX.
With YLD, users can boost their APY, earn interest on their tokens, and support our ecosystem.
In addition to our successful TrustSwap and BnktotheFuture partnership, we’ve already successfully acquired an off-shore banking license to support our launch. Typically it takes time to reach multiple jurisdictional regulatory approvals. We are setting out our intentions from the start and will continue to add licenses as we go for all of our activities. Our long-term vision is to build a bank, and we have already acquired licenses for that. We have also a Credit and debit card planned thanks to our strong relationships with different regulators. The main goal is to get our product launched and Asia will be our leading market!
Q: We definitely look forward to getting some tokens! Where’s YIELD at now? How can the community help and what direction are we going in the next few years?
A: We just finished our token sale through TrustSwap. We are getting everything ready for the product launch alpha version on Monday. We are targeting a global audience from day one, already working with and continuing to build out alliances with other professional actors in the DeFi space. Some of these are technology-led, all of them are knowledge-driven with the aim of constant improvement and to pass the benefits back to our customers.
As for the community, we definitely appreciate all the support so far from both our global and regional groups, please join us @yieldapp and @yield_in. Let’s anticipate the token generation event on the 14th together.
Q: What partnerships are on the roadmap of Yield to be announced soon? With who do you count to consolidate the platform of Yield?
A: We are backed by:
David Johnston (Factom)
Trevor Koverko (Polymath)
Eric Gu (Metaverse)
Tim Bos (Sharing)
Dustin Byington (Wanchain)
DuckDAO
Michael Terpin
Jeff Kirdeikis
TrustSwap
Aside from what we mentioned earlier, we plan to work with different communities and also translate our website into different languages. We will be focusing mostly on the Asian market and building communities around these regions.
Q: Most new DeFi projects are just copies of existing ones, they are just useless. So,
what’s unique about your project & what makes $YIELD trustable as a long term project for users and investors?
A: There are a lot of “DeFi for everyone” projects. I would put us apart because of our team. Our team has built many successful FinTech companies in and outside of crypto. Our long term target market is mainstream users who want to earn high yields. These yields will be powered by DeFi. We are building in-house technology solutions and employing industry-leading experts in their field such as data security consultants which are supported by our various oversight, enterprise, and risk management committees and frameworks themselves adopted from the traditional fund and capital markets best practice.
We are building a bank with fund products at the backend, we will operate a transparent model, we’re building a proprietary portfolio management system. For the 1st fund, we are offering guaranteed returns. What people see now is our launch, we will grow beyond this and admire the work others have done. Do they make it clear if they are neutral or have any risk exposures on directional trades, etc.? Are they building innovation around an insurance product?
Any good business will always have competition, think Starling Bank, Revolut, Monzo…….Same models with different approaches and customer bases. Also, if investors want exposure to DeFi and are worried about risk, there is a valid argument they should split their allocations across YIELD, and others, rather than concentrate it all on one platform.
Moreover, what sets YIELD apart is that we are well-prepared to offer transparent governance through our YLD token. Our goal is to go beyond DeFi and provide a more rewarding digital banking experience, where people around the world can easily earn interest on any currency and spend their earnings, without ever having to think about crypto.
We have more info on our white paper here:
Q: Trust is very important in business. So, what makes investors, customers and users feel safe when working with Your project? And how will you get the trust of many users that have negative thoughts about Blockchain and DeFi?
A: We are a licensed and regulated company. We invest into DeFi protocols, and we are not ourselves a protocol. We are essentially a banking platform with support. You put your crypto on our platform and our job is to manage this.
This is not a fly-by-night project — we have a committed team of crypto, finance and tech industry professionals, who are building the next market leader. We are eliminating all the risk and complexities from the DeFi space. Yes, right now users need to know how to transfer USDT for example, but our goal is to make it as easy as using your average digital banking app.
YIELD solves the gas problem for small-time farmers who want to take advantage of yield farming. We do this by accounting for everything on our own secure database, and we pass the savings along to you. We guarantee the 12%. YIELD makes it so, that, nobody needs to learn how to trade in order to take advantage of trading fees from decentralized exchanges.
We also avoid those projects with insanely high APR that we don’t believe are safe to put our customer’s money into. We spend a lot of time self-auditing protocols and making sure that we’re only investing in high-class, high-value projects.
Q: Yield farming has come to stay in the DEFI space, please tell us how $YLD compares to many yield farms offering high APY on liquidity staking, and why would crypto investors pick it over other yield farming opportunities?
A: In just two months time we have established a very vibrant team, built a community from scratch, and also gotten some of the top names in crypto to invest in us.
We have also gotten ourselves to a new level with branding and expect to launch the product this coming Monday, Dec 14th. I think altogether we are on track with what we are looking to achieve and where we are going. We are always looking for new partnership opportunities and listen closely to our community.
Q: YIELD offers the easiest way to invest in DeFi using crypto or traditional currencies. So how many traditional currencies will YIELD support? And is it necessary to pass KYC at registration?
A: Yes KYC, is required for the different level of investment and withdrawals, we are a licensed and regulated DAO. We know the future of crypto is regulated, and we are building a company that is sustainable with regulations. Acquiring the proper licenses is critical and AML monitoring. It brings safety and trust to our clients who want safe and reliable partners through the growth of our operations. We do KYC for every user and this is to ensure that we can have a platform that is safe and doesn’t produce risk for other users. Our first MVP will though have only USDT and USDC deposits. Fiat will come in 2021.
Q: What kind of unique features does $YIELD have over its competitors on the market? How do you plan to increase the demand of $YIELD tokens in the future?
A:
Q: Typically, investors buy tokens that are likely to increase in price in the future. I saw that, total supply of the token is huge.
So, do you have any plan for burning tokens in the future to reduce the supply of the token and increase its investment attractiveness?
A: No plans for burning tokens. 300M YLD will be the total supply.
Q: Asia, Africa and other communities are Non-English speaking communities, how will YIELD APP create global adoption to more local communities?
A: These are actually some of our target audiences. We do regular AMAs across various regional communities and are working to set up a team in these areas so that YIELD can go global . Our marketing and growth team is actively entertaining different offers for partnerships, listings, marketing&community offers so please don’t hesitate to contact us @yieldapp
Q: Could you please tell us more about your tokenomics? What’s the total supply and what kind of plans do you have regarding the token unlocks in the future?
A:Please refer to our tokenomics :
Q: On moving forward through your roadmap, what are your most important next priorities? Does $YLD team have enough fundamental ( Funds, Community, etc ) to achieve those milestones?
A: Product, Safety, Regulations, and Community are our top priorities right now but here’s what we’re building towards:
Q: What are your plans to educate and raise awareness and adoption among the community to make more people understand The yield technology?
A: DeFi is the crypto equivalent of the toothpaste being out of the tube, we are seeing multiple new iterations of traditional financial products being replicated in the space, and we believe we are only at the start of a multi-year journey. I have traded through and experienced multiple bull and bear markets across many different asset classes, and each time they fade, they come back stronger, safer, and more sophisticated. YIELD.APP will be at the forefront of these changes and trends with our customers’ interest in front and center.
Q: Revenue is an important aspect for all projects in order to survive and keep the project / company up and running. What is YIELD way of generating profit / revenue? What is the income model?
A: We take a fee on the performance of our fund. So the more you earn the more we earn. It’s a win-win situation. We are in this for the long run and know what it takes to build a great company.
Q: I have check through your Website and Twitter pages but there’s no timeframe for when Yield would be launched, when will your platform be launched?
A: Product launch is scheduled for 14 of December. It has been announced on each of our social media.
Q: How are functions such as scalability, workflow, databases, and user privacy protection deployed and handled? Where do you feel need to improve in the future?
A: We have identified critical systems and will continue to stress-test these alongside market-related technology security scenarios to mitigate and remove points of failure across our operating environment, including DeFi instruments held in our portfolios.
We are building in-house technology solutions and employing industry-leading experts in their fields; data security consultants supported by our various oversight, enterprise, and risk management committees and frameworks themselves adopted from traditional funds and capital markets best practices.
YIELD has a core team of experts, our ‘Portfolio Managers’ who work closely with our technology, risk, and software engineering teams who are developing proprietary automated portfolio allocation and portfolio management tools for safely accessing a fast-expanding DeFi ecosystem.
Also we are working with some of the top smart contract auditors in this space.
Q: The site says that to use YIELD almost nothing is needed except money. But, what about the cost of transfers within the network, it can gobble up all the profits?
A: Once your crypto or fiat is on the platform, you don’t need to worry about gas fees. You enjoy the profits and daily returns of the fund. YIELD covers gas fees. We can do this because we run a managed fund and aggregate client funds. So with YIELD, your 1000 USDT is invested in many different positions.
Q: In Blockchain Industry there are 3 core issues: security, scalability and interoperability which will bring competitive advantages to blockchain projects. So, how does #Yield Project will solve these problem?
A: We solve this for our users by eliminating all gas costs. We handle everything on our back end, making it a simple one-step process to enter into defi investments. we think this is how we solve the scalability issue.
Q: The $YIELD token currently depends on the Ethereum platform .But Ethereum Blockchain currently has a lot of scalability issues! Then What are the main reasons behind choosing Ethereum over other blockchains?
A: YLD token is an ERC20 token. Although, put simply, we will be chain agnostic………As we grow we will move more strategies from our sandbox over to our portfolio products……….For the launch and protection of our users, we will start with one foot in front of the other.
We’re building IP in our service delivery model by putting together a front-end simple application that is familiar to everyone. At the backend, we have a team of analysts, quants, portfolio managers, and developers that are building an automated allocation, analysis, and secure portfolio management suite that doesn’t exist today but is designed to maximize opportunity regardless of the pools and farms we interact with.
Join Cryptoverse!
Join the community chat on Telegram.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe us on Youtube.
