João Nuno Simões, CEO @ GenesisLRT

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Graduate Guide. Today we have Zhao Simues with us, who is the co-founder and CEO of Genesys. He has a lot of crypto and Web3 expertise. I'm very happy to have him on. Hi, Zhao.

Hello. Hello.

How are you?

Very happy to be here today. Great.

So let's start right off with your time at university. What was your outlook on careers? What were you thinking you were going to be? What were your passions back then?

Right. So first, thank you so much for being here. Yeah. So about my past and my uni years. Like what I decided that I wanted to do since day one is that I wanted to focus on like real experiences, right? So I wanted to make sure that I was not only book smart, but like life smart, so to speak, right? And what I decided to do since the beginning is I applied for a bachelor that will allow me to do a lot of traveling and a lot of, to have a lot of international experience. So I did my bachelor of 3 years in 3 different countries. So one year in Portugal, the second year I applied for Erasmus in Berlin in Germany, and I extended actually for a little bit. And then I actually got a scholarship to go to LSE to do my last year. So I finished up and graduated at LSE in my year 3. And with this, I was like fortunate enough to travel in 3 years through different, 3 different countries and gain experience from 3 different cultures, so to speak, right? And this at an early age, really, I think it really shapes a lot the way you see things, the way you learn, learn from different people, different cultures. For example, the university in Portugal is very theoretical, very old school, because, well, we are an old school country, very similar to England, I would say. In Berlin, I'll say it's a bit more relaxed and more hands-on. And in London, well, it's hard, right? And LSE is hard. You know that LSE is extra hard. And I remember to have one teacher of mine that every time that we had like exams or presentations, like we need to wear a suit and tie for, for to, to do our presentations, you know? And that I think that it's something that really shapes you from right off the bat from the early years, right? And in terms of career, so I've been like doing trading and working with finance like since way, way back then. Like I started to have a trading, I will say, not say license because it's not a license, but I applied for like do trading online and in banks since I have 18 years old. So I do this even before college. So when I went to college, I already kind of knew who I was already. So it was, I would say, a bit easier for me to choose a career path or to know exactly what I wanted to do and what I want to be, I guess.

And can you explain a bit more what exact trading you did and how that linked with the crypto space?

Yeah, so in the beginning I was doing just like normal trading, like stocks and ETFs. and I also liked a lot commodities, like gold, silver, and all that. And the shift from that to crypto, it's like I discovered crypto by a chance, really. So because, so crypto is very new, right? So it's only here since a couple of years almost, right? And I discovered crypto because I was using a lot PayPal. To do some international transfers. And at the time I was, I did a music label with some friends and I was doing like some international shopping and like sending CDs and LPs like across the world and I get money via PayPal. And so I used PayPal since the early years and I started looking at, I discovered a forum called BitcoinTalk. And when I discovered this, I started looking at what is Bitcoin and what is this about cryptocurrencies or what is this thing about, right? So, and when I discovered it, I started talking with family and friends, like what they think about this, you know, because this seems crazy. This seems like a new startup. Is this a new startup? Is this a new way of doing payments? Is this a payment company? So for me, all these questions were like, I needed answers, right? So I, I was in this forum every day, like looking at answers and talking with people. And so at this time, and this I'm talking about like 2013, like almost 10 years ago, well, more than 10 years ago now. And there was only BTC, right? Bitcoin, like all these cryptocurrencies plural didn't exist back then. There was no Ethereum, nothing, you know? So it was BTC and Then it was like Litecoin, but all the others came after. So, and when I look at these, for example, my father, he works in the Bank of Portugal, he's a banker. And I asked him like, what do you think about this? And he said like, oh, it seems like a payments company and maybe it's nothing, right? Maybe it's a scam, you know? And that's plausible, that's normal. And I asked around friends and everyone's like, ah, I don't know, like maybe that's just a startup that's going to die in a few years, right? But I decided that I wanted to know more and that I was curious about it, right? So, and then right when I got into my first year of college, I started to talk about this to everyone I knew, you know, like to everyone, like, have you looked at this? Have you looked at this BTC thing? Have you looked at this BTC thing? And everyone's like, that's crazy. Like, that's, I don't know why you care about that. But I just cared a lot. So I decided to do like all my first papers in university were about Bitcoin. All my first like research papers, work, whatever, it was all about Bitcoin. Until one day that a friend of mine from uni came to me and said like, maybe we should do a company around this. You know, and that's when like, so I already like have everything prepared in my own mind, like in terms of research about what I wanted to do. But I needed that final push, you know, to have like a kind of a co-founder or something that say like, let's do something, you know. And me and my friend and a couple, we recruited more people and we started the company with like 8 people right off the bat, you know. So that's how it started.

And so you are kind of known or you introduced yourself to me as being one of the first Bitcoin miners of Portugal.

Correct.

Which is connected to your first company.

Correct.

Um, so can you explain more what does it mean to be a Bitcoin miner?

Correct.

And what was the concept of your first?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. So for me to explain that, I have to explain what is BTC and what is mining. So in crypto, so in, in traditional finance terms, a bank, when you transfer money from person A to B, you go, for example, to your bank, you say, I want to do a transfer. This goes to the, the bank APY, and they have the checks to see who are you, who is the person B, to see if this is a legal transaction, how to do it, all the software requirements, etc., etc., right? And then your money is approved if everything is correct and goes to person B. In crypto, because it's decentralized and there is no central bank, that system doesn't exist. So the need for an authenticator of transactions is needed in crypto. These are the miners. So a miner is simply an entity, uh, or in this case, like a computer, is a software that is in the middle of the transaction. So you have person A, in this case wallet A, which is the account, and you want to transfer BTC to person B. When you transfer, you need a middle entity that authenticates and that says, yes, person A exists, person B exists, this is approved and the money is approved to go to account B. And that is a miner. So what I did in a sense was like opening a bank, a crypto bank, you know? So we ran, we have, we had 3 data centers. Like we started of course in the garage, from garage data center 1, then 2, then 3. And what you run was really like banking software for crypto. So as a miner, you authenticate transactions and every time you authenticate transactions, you get a fee. Exactly as when you transfer money in a bank, they charge you a fee. That's the same thing in crypto. When you exchange money, there is a fee to be charged from the miner. They authenticate and the money goes to person B.

And because you were the first one doing that in Portugal and all of your environment, like other students were like, oh, it's a scam or what is Bitcoin?

Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. Like, I think that majority of people really didn't understand what I was doing. Like, not even my family understand, like, what I was doing. It's— it's— they, they thought it was just like a thing, you know? Like, no one really cared much, I would say. But I think that at the time it felt that, like, I was living that very intensely, right? So we were— I can tell you that we mined between 200 to 300 BTC during all the period that we were doing the company. And this at today's money is more than $15 million. And having all the access to this kind of cash since when I was like 20 years old is absurd. At the time, this was not, this was a couple thousand. Today it's $15 million, you know? And like, I think that it was just like fun and thrilling to do that, to really make things happening, to work with people that you know. to, uh, to, to get clients, to all that startup things that we know very well nowadays. I feel that 10 years ago to have a startup is something very different from today. Right. And now you know that, oh, there is the VCs and then you go to the VCs and you get your cash flow and then you have like all these steps. At the time, I didn't went to any VC. I just went to family and friends, got the first money for the first machines. We bought them and there we go, you know, like we find a place, we just did some math on the calculations to calculate the electricity that we needed, put there, and there you go, you know, like completely bootstrapped, completely bootstrapped, completely like the craziest crazy, you know, like literally like garage company to 3 data centers, you know. But I actually wanted to share a story that I also shared on my previous podcast video in Portugal. That is in Portuguese, so I wanted to share in English because I think it's such a funny story. So to get these machines, like again, this is the early days and to get these machines that no one is producing, it was hard. So because again, I was already very familiar with PayPal and I use it a lot. I started looking online like who is producing these first machines because well, I'm not a hardware engineer. I cannot actually produce the machine itself. And probably to find an engineer to produce this. I don't know where to find it. So I needed to find someone that can produce this. And I knew that one of the first companies that was actually at the time starting to produce BTC validators, hardware validator machines, were in Shenzhen, China. And I search online a lot and I actually find one of the lead engineers of a company called Antminer and Bitmain in China. Today is literally a probably trillion-dollar company. And at the time was again 2 or 3 guys in a garage in China, right? And I contact this guy via Facebook, literally writing in Google Translator to Chinese and to send to him like, hey, do you have any ASICs? ASICs is a specific machine for BTC. Do you have any ASICs to sell? And so like, yeah, like if you want, each one is like 5K. You send the money via PayPal, I can send you to Portugal. And I was like, okay, fair enough. And now that I'm looking back, I'm like, did I send $5K to a random guy on the internet? That is insane, right? It's insane. But at the time I was like, this sounds like an amazing plan. Let's do it. I sent, like, I got the money from friends and family. I got one external investor at the time. Got the money, we sent him for 2 machines and we sent it and we waited, we waited, we waited. And at the time I was like, well, I was scammed for $5K and probably we are going to lose all our money, right? And out of a sudden I receive a letter from customs in Portugal saying, hey, you have 2 big boxes waiting for you from China and we think that it's a bomb. And we need you here, otherwise the police will come to your house and take you. I'm like, what the hell is this, right? So I went to customs with one of my colleagues of the company, and I arrived there, and there is like little, like 2 or 3 policemen waiting for me to escort me to a room. And it's like, are you João? I'm like, yes. Okay, so we have a very shady package from China with your name on it, and we don't know what it's inside. And no one knows what's that. So we want you to explain what's there. And I went there and I saw, and they actually was there, the computer machines that I needed. And they said like, can you explain what is this? Because this looks like a bomb. And actually it looks because it's like a server, a computer server full of wires. And it's complete, like it's not a beautiful computer, you know, it's like, it's a server, it's an assembly of several green, called PCEs, is like the plugs with the chips on it and connected with wires. And that's it. It's like a very basic tech thing, right? And they look at it and they say like, what is this? And I was like, well, this is a computer server that is meant to run calculations and to authenticate Bitcoin transactions. And look at me, bit what? Bitcoin transactions. I don't know what that is. Well, In simple terms, this is a computer. And this was the funniest thing of all. So I had like one very old lady, those like secretary ladies there, like looking at all this. And she looks at me and say like, young man, if this is a computer, where is the keyboard and the mouse? You know, and I look at the lady and say, lady, with all due respect, A computer doesn't need necessarily to have a mouse and a keyboard, you know, like a computer is the tower that actually makes the calculations and the rest is just all the details of having the computer, right? So this is just the calculations part, this is just like the tower, so to speak, like the tower to make the things happen. And they look at me like, ah, maybe, man, they talk between each other like, Okay, okay, I guess that maybe, maybe you are right. I'm like, yeah, maybe. This is like, can you turn it on? Like, yeah, sure. Like, can I explain him how to turn it on? Like, you need like a power source, put the power source on, and I turn it on. They say like, okay, it's not a bomb, you know. I told you, like, am I dumb enough to put my name on a package containing a bomb? No, that is insane. If I wanted to be a criminal, I would be a bit smarter than that, right? So, and with that, it was everything fine. I paid double tax. We took the machines home and we assembled it. And that's how we started with two machines after this story. But yeah, like going back to the career and making here the point, like I think that you need experiences like these to grow, you know, especially like if you are a young founder, And then if you are working in startups and stuff like that, you need to have these experiences and to know how to make them worth and how to actually make them— okay, so fire alarm incident. Okay, so I was, I was saying, so you as a young startup founder and people back, back home that are watching this video right now, I think that you need this kind of experience and like, and go to Sometimes a little bit like uncomfortable experiences so you can grow and you can know exactly how your product works, how you want to make it work and how you want to really, even like me explaining to the guys in customs like what it was, like that is already experience that helps you like you are pitching. I was pitching to the policeman, you know, like so it's fun, you know, it's fun. I think so.

So like despite these, you know, funny incidents, you were really successful like in the end at a very young age. Yes.

So yeah. So just going very, very quickly. So what we did, we, we, we run a kind of like a hedge fund. So the clients could invest their money on us and with that money we would buy machines and we take 20% of the yields that they get for us as a management fee. And that was it. So the client can choose to buy like 1, 2, 3 servers, whatever. We take care of all the maintenance, all the storing, everything, and we make a 20% cut on the yields and that's it. And we ran for a couple of years very successfully and we decided to close after a while because— so you have something in BTC called the Bitcoin halving, where from a certain period of time to a period of time, normally between 4 years and 4 years, the rewards for the miners are cut in half. So this is to make sure that the the supply, it goes down and down and down to make the, the coin go, go up in value. So it's a supply and demand thing. And because of that, we saw all our profits being cut— this was 2016— by half. And the expenses still are there. The offices cost the same, like the AC costs the same, the electricity costs the same. And all of a sudden, all our operation is producing 50% less. And that made me think like, I didn't forecast this. So we were just like swimming on money, you know, like going happy. Actually, I thought about quitting university, you know, like we were making good money at the time, very good money. And I'm glad that I didn't quit university, by the way. So, and all of a sudden we see our profits cut in half and I was like, damn, I didn't forecast for this. Like me as a founder and CEO of Bitmasters, like I probably, I should have known about this way before. And that was there, the information was there. So I didn't read it. So it was 100% my fault, right? So, and with that, we saw like, okay, we can still, because BTC keeps increasing in price, so we can still make some good money, right? But with the years going by, Again, electricity in Portugal is very expensive. Well, in Europe in general, I guess, but yeah, in Portugal, expensive taxes on the rentals and electricity and all that. And you have also one thing in BTC called Bitcoin, called the mining difficulty, which is the more miners you have in the market, the rewards are less and less. Why? Because there is a limited supply of transactions, right? And if there is more banks to authenticate the transaction, each bank makes less and less money by authenticating. And at the time, this was a time where China opened up a lot of big mining operations. So I was literally going against billion-dollar operations in China. So I was liquidated, you know, like it was not possible to make money anymore. So I was squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until I was not making way more money. And what I did was I called up all my investors and said that, well, we will stop operations. They already made money. So we promised to all our investors that they will triple their money. Some triple, some double, some made 1x, some it was like neutral, but I wanted to make sure that no one lost money, you know. So we stopped, uh, the, the, in 2017 we stopped, we sold everything, get rid of the offices, and I moved on with my life after that. And in the beginning was that feeling of like, oh, I closed my company, like feel like kind of angry, you know. I was like, oh, I don't want to return to crypto anymore, you know, like this is bullshit, you know, like I don't like this. And this was the time where I went to London and I start working more like traditional finance and all that for a while. But yeah, it's funny how things turn.

Yeah. So you closed your company in 2016 and 2017. And obviously you were still like a young person in university and before you mentioned like you did consider quitting university at some point, which is I think the archetype of a young successful founder, and then you're like, oh, I have no value, I see no value in academia, let me quit. So, and you actually went on to do a master's, right? So what, what value did you see left in academia at that time? Like what did it give you and why did you then even decide to do more?

Um, well, that is a very, very good question. So after London, um, So I learned a lot at LSE. I think LSE, and I don't want to make here like a big advertisement, it is like one of the best schools out there, right? That's why it's in the Financial Times as one of the best in the world. And it really like pushes you in a way that like it's not normal, right? It pushes you to the limit. And I think that is very important. And after London, I worked here. I worked in actually a very famous company called Estée Lauder, probably. Everyone knows Estée Lauder. I was responsible for doing an M&A from a French company called Le Labo to Estée Lauder, and I worked in the finance department with them. Like, really enjoyed it. Was like my first experience working with like luxury and luxury markets and like more like fashion markets. And I really enjoyed it because it was like a bit different from the usual corporate, more corporate stuff that I envision or I was normally more used to. And after that, I always wanted to go to the US. I always wanted to go to the US. Like, I thought that because, like, I don't know, everything that you consume in the world, like, everything is made there, right? Like Coca-Cola that you are drinking, a US brand. Like, probably, well, not the cars, but like there is so much stuff like McDonald's, US, you know, all the big tech companies, US, Facebook, US, you know, like Except very specific brands, maybe like Samsung from Korea, or I don't know, like Nissan or Hyundai from Japan, or some very specific brands, everything is made in the US, right? So I thought to myself, like, as a capitalist myself that I enjoy the financial markets, like, I, I need to go there to see what's going on. So that was the time where I decided that I needed to apply for a master's in the US, and I need— I went to UC Berkeley. And to do, to do my master's. And like, it really again changed my life once again, right? Because not only I was there, and again, to bring back that thing about real experience, for me, like, to meet with American people in the West and living in a dorm and all that in the university, and I actually have contact with real people, that actually changes everything, right? And And when I was there, I noticed that there is several different things that they do that is different from here. First, everything is fast-paced. Everything is really fast-paced. Like, they have those things that you see a lot in the movies, like the finance club, the chess club. And when I arrived there, I immediately went to all. I assigned myself to all. I wanted to go to everything, right? And one thing that I noticed is I signed for two. Finance clubs in Berkeley. And this is very weird to say, but I was the only Caucasian man in the clubs. Everyone was Asian. And it was so weird because they even asked me like, why are you here? You know? And I'm like, because I enjoy finance and I want to learn more. They were like, right. We are not used to have your people here. I'm like, uh, okay. I guess. So that is actually a very funny picture. If you want, I can send it to you guys for you to I can post the video if you want. Like, there's like me and like all these Chinese guys and me in the center, a picture of the club.

They put you in the center.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was so funny. And I made a lot of like good friends there and I learned a lot. And the thing is, at the university, it's very common to have like the big companies headhunting you since day one, you know. Like, there is like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, everyone's like there just saying like, wait a minute, are you doing good? Are you doing something great? Come, you know, I give you an internship. I give you this. I give you that. And I feel that in Europe is way more passive. Like I didn't want, I wasn't headhunted by Goldman when I was at LSE. Why? Why?

You need to hunt them.

You know? Yeah. I need to go to Goldman and knock on the door and say like, hey, like I'm a very good student. This is my CV. And in Berkeley, it was the other way around. They will say like, You are being proactive, you are a good student, good. Here's $6K to do an internship. Like, well, nice, you know. So that's how it works there. And at the time, with all these things and all these things going in motion, I started thinking like, well, maybe I'm going to try to work here and to do something here, right? And I said that, well, since I'm in San Francisco, in Silicon Valley, where is a tech environment, maybe I'm going to try crypto once again, you know, maybe I'm going to try crypto once again. So I started like knocking on doors specifically for Ethereum companies because Ethereum was really popping up a lot. So Ethereum is like, imagine a Bitcoin, but with the possibility of you to creating apps inside. So Ethereum gives you way more possibilities to build stuff that BTC doesn't allow you to build on top of. And By that, I started like knocking on doors like, oh, I want to work in Ethereum company. And but like the interviews were not like really great and I was not feeling them until one guy came to me and said that, João, like we have a position open in our VC, like do you want to work as a VC? And I was like, what is a VC? You know? And he's like, well, you want to work in like a crypto company, right? I'm like, yeah, so here I can give you the possibility of instead of working with one, working a portfolio of 10, and you are managing 10 companies instead of one. I'm like, that sounds really interesting. Like, yeah, so you have already the experience of being a founder, and I know this was one of your questions, like how being a founder helped you going through the jobs. Like, to be a founder really helps you. Like, if you want to, normally a founder doesn't go back to the job market, but if you go, like, there is a million jobs out there because they know that you already have the experience, right? Um, but yeah, and that was that. So my previous boss, he just said, like, you already have this experience, you already manage teams, you already know how these things work. I can just put you to work with me and I don't even need to give you, like, supervision, you know, like, you know how to do everything. So just go with it. This is our portfolio, this is our goals, go. And I started working this VC in the US for a while, and I actually thought that this will be like the rest of my life. Yeah, until COVID happened. When COVID happens, like company closed, like was big turmoil, and I eventually came back to Europe, etc., etc. But coming back to answering your question, sorry for going, taking so many stories in, in between, but about the, the master's and all that. So Again, I did the master's because it allowed me to travel more, to meet more people, and to not only be book smart but also like real life smart. Um, but after that, I, I needed to do my thesis, right? And I, when I was searching about the topics to do my thesis, um, so I— the master's that I did was like a joint venture between UC Berkeley and university in Portugal. Where I did all my theoretical lessons in the US and I needed to do my presentation of the thesis in Portugal. And so I got a guy that is like a very, very well-known banker in Portugal to help me with my thesis. And it was funny that he said that, João, I can help you with everything finance related, but I cannot help you with crypto. So I will give you 100% power for you to decide on that. But everything financial, I can help you. And we worked together in creating a thesis that is about how the crypto market and financial sentiment correlate and eventually was awarded in 2021, like one of the best thesis in the country. And I actually won an award for that. And I guess that when you are passionate about what you do, searching and reading, it's easy, right? It's easy because I felt that I was not really working, you know, I was just like enjoying my life, you know. So of course that a lot of lost nights and sleep and stuff like that, right? But still I was doing that out of passion and eventually like the work is there, you know, is one of the best master theses ever produced and It's— I'm very, very proud of it. And we discovered that actually the sentiment of crypto is actually a completely different sentiment from the traditional finance markets because the majority of the investors of crypto are non-traditional investors, you know? So the way that the market fluctuates, it's actually the opposite of the traditional finance markets, which is something that like, I was proud to prove that in a mathematical way.

Yeah, so yeah, so now that you then like returned kind of to crypto through your thesis and then also afterwards of Genesis Now, um, can you explain how you think the space has changed? Like, you started as a Bitcoin miner in 2013, it was very small scale, and now it's big buzzwords like Web3 and a lot of things get thrown around. Um, NFTs were really big during COVID so What, how do you see the space now? Like, what is it for you, um, for people that don't know anything about Web3 or crypto? How is the landscape now?

Yeah, so I think that I remember talking with a friend of mine, um, like a couple months ago that when we passed through the last bear market, so the down market, he said to me like I think crypto is done, you know, like it's everything going down so much that maybe it's done. Then you have the other people saying like, no, this is just a market correction, is normal, right? And I also thought about that. And now like going up. So first let's understand why it's going up because everything is correlated with everything, you know, like the world itself is connected, right? So We are living in Europe two wars. Well, not in Europe, in Europe one war, but one war nearby also. We are also living in a very unstable political scenario where politicians are changing all the time. People are unhappy. You have extreme inflation. You have the case of Argentina that no one really knows like what's even if they are going to survive or not. You have Venezuela going bad after bad after bad. You have the US political elections going crazy, right? And this is the traditional world. And people start seeing like, wait a minute, I'm tired of the traditional that I put so much faith on it always fail, fail, failing. Let me look what's out there. What's out there is a different system that offers you full freedom and offers you different types of financial instruments, financial, uh, different currencies that each one has a purpose. And not only that, but it's going up and up and up. And the difference is why? Because for example, BTC. It's made in a way to be like gold. It'll be scarce. You know, like the scarcity is go— is increasing, right? Because BTC is as a diff— a limit of 20 million BTCs. And right now it's almost all being mined, almost all in the market. And when it's done, it's done. There'll be no more. It's like gold. When you mine all the gold in the world, it's done. So again, economic rules. Supply versus demand. If the supply continues to go up and demand continues to go down, the price goes up. That's very simple. And people start starting to understand that. And when they think about that, they see like, wait a minute, if I have this versus a currency that is always losing money like dollar or euro, why should I continue to the old school world of dollar or euro where Okay, where everything, um, it's, it's, it's just like a failed currency, right? And I think that and the fact that you can build so much stuff on it, right? Especially with the Ethereum ecosystem, you can build like so, so much stuff, so much stuff. So I think that it's just like a new, a new panorama, a new sense of freedom, a new sense of like you can do new things, the value actually goes up instead of going down. And it's just like because it's decentralized, because it's not controlled by anyone, you know, I think that people feel that they are tired about like the government and the old school institutions and they want something new.

So now, just briefly, as a co-founder and CEO of Genesis, can you describe what you are doing in this space at the moment?

Yes, absolutely. So we at Genesis, we are a financial product. So what we do, we work in a space called— we do liquid restaking. Liquid restaking. So what is liquid restaking? So first let's understand what is staking. Staking is like when you go to do a mortgage. So you have a house, in our case the house is Ethereum, and you go to the bank and you put your house there and in exchange you get money, liquid money. So that's the same thing that we do. So you have your Ethereum, you stake it, so you lock it in a savings account, and for that you get the same amount for you to, to spend. If you want to have back your house or your Ethereum, you repay your loan and you get your asset back. So this is staking. What we do is we double that. So you, with one layer of Ethereum or with your house as a mortgage, you can get a double mortgage. This is a concept that already exists in the US, so to get the double mortgage. In Europe, I believe it's illegal to have a double mortgage. But so we are bringing this thing that already exists in the traditional finance to crypto because in crypto and in DeFi, there is so much stuff still to do that already exists in the traditional markets that doesn't exist in crypto and Web3 that Again, the possibilities are endless, right? So yeah, so what we are doing is that, so we are doing like a double mortgage on Ethereum and by locking in your Ethereum, you not only get your, again, liquidity back, but you also by making it locked up in a savings account, you get interest. So you get yields on your ETH. So it's sweet. It's very, very sweet. You know, like you just get your Ethereum, you get yields. You get more liquidity, so it's good for everyone. And I want to, of course, to go to develop more on this. So one thing that at Genesis we are doing is we are making it in a way that we want it to be very, very simple for the user to use. So we know that crypto is hard, crypto is difficult and full of crazy words. So what we are doing is with Genesis, you can do all this process by just having a wallet and Ethereum. That's it. Everything else we do for you. So we, you go on your, on our website, you have your wallet, you connect your wallet, you deposit as many ETH as you want, can be almost zero or millions. We accept all. Go there and we do everything like the staking, the restaking for you, the yields, and you have a beautiful dashboard where you see everything going up. And if you want to withdraw at any time, any minute, click a button, the money is back on your account instantly. So that's the beauty of it. You know, like we are a financial institution, you know, like we are in the— we are in— we are a financial product 100%. And we are here to make money to the people and to make sure that everyone can enjoy high yields with crypto. So I can tell you that with the restaking option, because like you are adding a little bit more leverage on it, um, we can give you yields up to like 10-15%, which is in the traditional finance world, it's impossible. So that's why again, people are going to DeFi because you have the best yields in the market because of course you have more risk, but you have so much more transactions, you have so much money going in and out that you can actually produce more yields, you know. And another thing that probably everyone is thinking out there at home or you is how secure is it? So we are making sure that we have the best and the most secure app in the ecosystem of, of risk-taking by applying not only we are developing an insurance to be built in on the platform, but we are also using a technology called DVT, which is a distributed validator technology that when we validate, going back to the Bitmasters, the validating things, When you validate, you have a multiple set of validators that are private and that make sure that what you do, and then when you stake, it's 100% secure. So we want to be seen as the most secure restaking app in the market. And I think we are doing an amazing job because no one in the space is building this as we are.

Yeah. So sounds like you having fun on the crypto playground, like with Bitmass and now with Genesis. So when you go back to your time at uni where you're building Bitmass, Master, now Genesis. How do you define success for yourself and in the crypto space, and how has that changed throughout your life the last 10 years?

Yeah, like, I think that, like, this sounds a bit cliché, but I think that success is hard work, you know. It's like you just put in the work, you know. And another thing that I think a lot of people forget with time is the vision, like where you want to be and how you want to do it, and how you want to actually pursue your objective. So one thing that I want to, to, to say here, and we were talking about this before even the camera was on, is like how people with time, they forget the vision or they, they start like to, they do so much stuff or they start doing with going on so many directions that they forget what made them click in the first place. Right. So, and what I wanted to say is I've been doing this for 10 years. So I didn't wake up yesterday and I became CEO out of the blue like that. Like, oh, I'm today, I'm going to become a CEO. No, it's a marathon, not a sprint. Right. So when I started, I made, of course, lots of mistakes. That's why my company closed, you know, like, yeah, we did good, but we did not. So, so we could have been doing way better. Right. So I forgot to forecast, for example. Now I'm not forgetting to forecast for sure. You know, and I think that as you build things and as you enjoy your path and your journey, like, it gets more clear and clearer with time. And I think that's it, you know, like, it's like hard work is to keep yourself very true to your vision and to keep building it and to like wake up every day and work, you know. And one other thing that I want to say is like, because what I just said seems a lot like a cliché, and I don't want to leave it like that, is not everyone needs to have the same road or the same story. And that is very, very wrong. I see a lot of like these people speaking online about, oh, what is success? And like, you need to wake up at 5:00 AM and have like cold showers and all of that crazy, crazy nonsense, right? And that, that is maybe for a one part of persons, but maybe you have a different way of doing it, and that's fine. Like, so for me, what is important is that you are comfortable doing what you are doing and that you know yourself. And I feel that nowadays in a very fast-paced society, people forget to spend time with themselves and really understand why, uh, who are they, you know? Who are you? Like, why you want to make what you are making and why that matters or doesn't matter. And if it doesn't matter, also you need to be bold to switch. And yeah, like, right, like you resonate with that, like, and that's it. So like, don't be afraid of making mistakes. And if you need to switch paths, switch paths. And that is perfectly feasible and normal. And again, it takes time to achieve great things. So it's not like in 1 or 2 years, maybe it takes 10, maybe it takes 20 years. But consistency is key. So I want to leave it as that. I think consistency is key.

Yeah, so stay true to yourself. I think that's it.

Great.

And thank you, João, for being here. We finish it here.

And yeah, thank you very much.

Great for having you.

Cheers.

Bye.

Bye-bye.