![]() ![]() Once you’ve got that sorted, you should probably begin boning up on the terminology needed to navigate the choppy terrain. “Holding fiat currency will soon be like holding a melting ice cube,” says Henrik Andersson, chief investment officer at Apollo Capital. You’ll also need some kind of strong security protocol that protects your hoard from shark-like hackers who scour the blockchain looking for weak, vulnerable digital wallets. To become a citizen of crypto land, you need to covert real money into bitcoin or possibly some Ether ( the cryptocurrency of Ethereum, a “smart contract” blockchain that platforms such as Synthetix are built on). ![]() If you’re the type of person for whom the blockchain feels about as relevant to your life as string theory, Warwick’s formula is quite an oversimplification. “All you need is a smartphone and access to an internet connection to operate.” “At a high level, we’re replicating what Wall Street does with software and removing counterparty risk and the middle man,” says Warwick, who was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Crypto by Crypto Weekly this year, a sort of Vanity Fair New Establishment List. Its 20,000 members workshop, problem-solve and troubleshoot new derivatives, such as multi-collateral loans and inverse tokens for taking short positions, through a thriving Discord channel. More than $2.2 billion of that sum is moving around the platform that Warwick began working on back in 2016. Even in the gravity-defying parallel universe of crypto, it’s the kind of growth trajectory that turns heads. The total value of the cryptocurrencies sloshing around on DeFi systems grew from $US920 million ($1.2 billion) to $US24.8 billion in the past 12 months. But whereas the so-called Redditors are taking on hedge funds at their own game, DeFi is a collection of hyper-capitalists slowly creating an alternative financial system. This libertarian mindset chimes with those thousands of retail investors organising themselves on social media platform Reddit to push up the price of GameStop stock. ![]() In DeFi, bankers, market-makers, lawyers and all those other ticket clippers are replaced with automated software. Do you want to speculate on whether the Australian dollar will rise or fall? The S&P 500? Gold or silver futures? Synthetix has a derivative for you – and whether you’re buying or selling, there’s no spread to eat into your profit, just a small fee. It’s what is known as a DeFi, or “decentralised finance” protocol. From his beachside house in Sydney’s Bondi, he’s busy releasing wave upon wave of new features for his crypto derivatives platform, Synthetix. Warwick, now aged 40, has since moved on from restringing tennis racquets to restringing financial markets. More than $2.2 billion is housed on the platform – and that figure is rising fast. Sydney-based Kain Warwick launched his crypto derivatives platform, Synthetix, in 2016. And it set in train a lifelong distrust of any system where someone in charge gets to tell others what they can and can’t do. It was a stunning lesson for Warwick in how authorities can stifle business innovation. When he was quickly swamped with orders, his parents – perhaps fearing the dereliction of his school homework – shut the business down. Young Kain saw an opportunity to restring racquets at the family tennis centre. His father, Kim Warwick, toured as a professional tennis player, winning three titles including the 1981 Australian Open Doubles Championship, and reaching a career-high ranking of 15. Kain Warwick’s crypto-anarchist bent began at 14, when his parents forbade him from expanding his tennis racquet restringing business. ![]()
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