In case you’ve missed the DAO Maker AMA session with Max Krupyshev, we have an article for you with all the questions and answers!
During the discussion Max answered the questions about the upcoming SEED SHO, the $CPD token and the project itself.
Questions by DAO Maker Analyst Tote
Answers by CoinsPaid CEO Max Krupyshev
Tote: Welcome folks, we are going to conduct an exciting AMA with @Mkrupyshev, CEO of Coinspaid. He will help us to gain a deeper knowledge of his well-established and profitable company and the new DeFi tools this will offer.
Max Krupyshev: Hey everyone, pleasure to be here today. And thanks to everyone who came online to participate.
T: Thanks for coming, Max! Let’s move swiftly on with the questions!
M: Let’s go!
T: Can you please introduce Coinspaid in general to our Community?
M: CoinsPaid is one of the biggest crypto payment ecosystems in the world. We work with over 700 merchants (or groups of brands), and so far in 2021 we’ve processed 2.3 billion euro’s worth of crypto. Apart from our main business, which is processing cryptocurrency payments, we have business and personal wallets, a SaaS crypto gateway solution, and an OTC desk, and now we’re building a DeFi ecosystem as well. You have to understand that our clients are classic businesses, so we are actually bridging existing business models with crypto.
T: Those are staggering figures, my sincere congratulations. Which problems is Coinspaid solving, and what solutions are currently being provided?
M: The key problem we solve for merchants is high payment costs, primarily because of acquiring fees and chargebacks. With the CoinsPaid gateway, clients save 70–90% on payment fees, and there is zero risk of chargebacks and credit card fraud, because these are impossible with crypto. For end users, crypto payments also solve an important problem: often you cannot pay with a card issued in a certain country, or your card is refused by the processing bank. But you can always transfer your favourite crypto, and it will cost the same no matter where you are.
As for our DeFi tools, we’ll be among the first to target businesses (primarily our merchants). For them, DeFi protocols are a very interesting alternative to the investment opportunities in the traditional markets: for instance, a merchant can stake part of their crypto funds and extract additional income of up to 20% API — then withdraw the funds in fiat to a bank account when needed. The same goes for lending: it’s much faster and cheaper to borrow through the CoinsPaid crypto lending feature than through a bank.
T: Many of us have suffered this problem several times, so glad to know you are solving it. When and under what circumstances was Coinspaid born?
M: It was a long story, but i try to be short 🙂
All started out as an internal payment solution within the larger business structure of a software provider SoftSwiss and Merkeleon, a leading global supplier of iGaming software solutions and crypto exchange engine. SoftSwiss was the first company in its market to start working with cryptocurrencies in 2012, 2013. CoinsPaid became a separate company in 2018.
T: Born in the bear market and now a successful company, hat off!
M: Thanks Tote, there were ups and downs 🙂
T: I can imagine, I remember the bear market very well… But the best companies are born in bear markets. Please, let us know about yourself and the other Coinspaid executives.
M: All started in 2013, I was introduced to mining by my friends. And it all escalated quickly.
I was exploring the subject and looking for options of business case application of the protocol (was before stable coins, with USDT would have been easier, lol). The most interesting has always been the implementation of technology in the business/financial sector. I got fascinated with the idea of decentralization, freedom from intermediaries, and the proposition of the whole world open. Moreover, I liked the equality and fairness of the blockchain organization.
Since then, for almost eight years now, I have been engaged in working with exchanges, pools, wallets, crypto education, and precisely the last five years I have spent in payments.
I have been fortunate enough to work on some of the most significant BTC mining projects in my professional career, including Cex.io and Ghash.io. In addition, I was a reasonably active blockchain pioneer and founded organizations such as the Bitcoin Foundation Ukraine and Satoshi Square Kyiv.
And finally I was invited to CoinsPaid as a co-founder, and in 2019 was offered to continue as a CEO of the company.
Our CMO, Dmitry Ivanov, has been working at CoinsPaid since 2018. He was involved in business development and marketing from the beginning, and he is entirely focused on marketing only now.
At this moment the CoinsPaid team is presented by 130 employees located in different countries.
Our Chief of Growth, George Paliani, has arrived from a diplomatic background. Blockchain technology and crypto markets promise a more equal and liberal world, which is exactly why he has become interested in this industry. He considers blockchain technology to become a disruptor for the old system with lots of setbacks and establishing a better, more transparent global data transfer system. Blockchain technology implementation is happening quicker in the finance sector, in which he has become involved since 2017.
Also I can not mention our Commercial Director — Irina Valentovich, she managed to create a team and process where our services are sold like a charm.
Most of our colleagues are presented in Linkedin, so you can find more information on them there.
T: I haven’t seen many companies with this impressive roster of veterans.
M: I don’t want to start with a tech team even 🙂
T: I think our community already knows you have an all star team. Hehe. Can you please explain your company’s go-to-market strategy and the primary target markets?
M: In our coin processing business, we’ve had a very successful go-to-market strategy from the beginning: offer safe and cheap crypto payment processing with a 100% acceptance rate in the industries that need it most, like iGaming, and at the same time offer comprehensive support for fiat, such as direct withdrawals to a bank account, so that merchants don’t have to deal with crypto directly unless they want to. So most of our clients don’t have a deep knowledge in crypto, as our solution makes it really easy for them to deal with crypto payments, while not even understanding how it all works. We were also the first to offer recurring crypto payments in crypto. This approach helped us build an ecosystem with over 700 B2B clients.
With the launch of the DeFi ecosystem, the strategy is to bring together CeFi and DeFi in one much larger ecosystem, where payment processing, crypto wallets, DeFI staking, liquidity mining, OTC exchange, media services etc. all will exist together, connected by one token, $CPD.
On the one hand, our merchants have been asking for DeFi tools like staking, and on the other hand, with our huge experience in this market, we can offer safer, better-quality DeFi services to retail users. The key element of the strategy here is that we are building upon the foundation of a big and successful working business.
T: You will provide many services, great! Could you explain to our community members the different DeFi tools you will bring to the market in the following quarters?
M: CPD liquidity mining will be the first DeFi tool we’ll introduce in the coming months, followed by classic staking. Just to remind our audience about the difference: with staking, you lock up a token — in our case, CPD — and get regular rewards. In liquidity mining, you deposit tokens in a liquidity pool for trading or lending and get a derivative token, which you stake to get rewards. So with liquidity mining you get two types of rewards, not one. The planned APY is up to 20%, and while many DeFi dApps offer more, remember that here you’re dealing with a DeFi ecosystem built on top of a large business with big traction, so you aren’t facing all those risks normally associated with token staking. We think our APY is extremely attractive for that level of security, especially for merchants, most of whom haven’t even considered such opportunities before.
Once staking is up and running, we’ll add the possibility to swap crypto tokens on various decentralized exchanges, where you’ll find many tokens that aren’t listed on centralized exchanges and that can offer large gains. We are also working on a lending feature — once again, very interesting for merchants, many of whom may decide to lend their extra revenue in CPD for additional income.
Worth mentioning is the creation of a DEFI aggregator for clients, so they can place their funds in different protocols even if not CPD connected directly. Which should help all DEFI space.
I’ll also remind you that all CPD holders — and especially CPD stakers — will get big discounts on all our service fees.
T: 20% is a better APY than any TradFi solution. Please, explain to us the different utilities the CPD token will have? And why, in your opinion, should it accrue value?
M: CPD is the backbone of the whole ecosystem, both the DeFi and the CeFi part. This makes it different from other DeFi tokens. If you hold and/or stake CPD, you’ll get discounts of up to 50% on all CoinsPaid services: payment processing, OTC, wallet transactions, media, everything. Add to this attractive rewards on staking and liquidity mining. So I assume all our clients will buy CPD regularly to get discounts (the same way BNB worked before BSC).
We’ve also thought a lot about long-term sustainability. Our IDO is actually very special, because it has zero sell pressure: all the tokens are vested for different periods, so users can hold the CPD they bought at the IDO without worrying that there will be a dump.
In addition, the supply of CPD at TGE (token generation event) will be only 3% of the total, and once all the CPD are in circulation (And this is only DEX liquidity, so zero sell pressure in first days), we’ll have monthly burn events to have a gradual supply decrease after all tokens are released.
T: That’s a proven business model, yes! What are your competitive advantages and how do they give Coinspaid an edge over existing top players?
M: There is an as-I-call-it “gravity effect” when big business attracts other clients easier than smaller competitors (Look at Uniswap — first big player, a lot of liquidity, trust, reputation — everyone wants to trade there). As I’ve said, our biggest advantage is that we already have a big and successful business with 700 B2B clients and a turnover of 2.3 billion euro in 2021 along. We grow by 18.8% on average every month, and many of our merchants are really excited about the new DeFi opportunities we’ll give them, so there is a ready B2B audience with ample resources to deposit in DeFi. Compare this to most DeFi projects, which start out without any traction and often with very limited business experience. And by the way, if you look at other crypto payment providers, none of them offer DeFi tools
Another advantage is that we already have a solid security system. CoinsPaid is the only crypto payment processor that successfully passed two independent security audits, one of them by Kaspersky Labs. With all the DeFi hacks that keep happening it’s crucial that we can give users a product that’s been audited by the leading experts.
I should also mention compliance. CoinsPaid is a fully licensed company regulated in the EU. So we’re in a much stronger position here than most DeFi platforms that could face some serious regulatory issues in the coming years.
T: I completely agree with your last sentence. Sooner or later DeFi companies will have to be regulated if they want to operate within their borders. Many of them won’t be able to acquire the licence, so you have a great competitive advantage. You have already proven Coinspaid to be a solid & sustainable project. Could you elaborate on the different revenue streams derived from the $CPD usage?
M: Marketing, community, partners, advisors, ambassadors — only a few things that we get from CPD launch. This all helps business to grow and as a result we need more CPD -> demand is created.
If you mean the revenue stream for us as a company, CPD is more of a long-term game. We make money on transaction fees (processing, OTC, wallets, SaaS, etc.), and CPD holders will get huge discounts on those fees, but on the other hand, we expect a big inflow of new B2C and B2B clients into the ecosystem, so in the long run the revenue from fees will grow.
A lot of DeFi projects make money selling their tokens once the price goes up, but as I’ve said, we’ll release CPD into circulation very gradually, and there are long vesting periods and lock-ups on most allocations, so we definitely aren’t trying to make a quick profit on CPD.
T: Yes, I think the $CPD will help your business to tap into the B2C segment and increase the user base.
M: And worth mentioning, this is not a fundraiser for us, all collected funds will be spent for CPD ecosystem creation. Not for software development or other salaries.
T: That’s an important note! Can you describe your Roadmap and the current state of the expected DeFi tools in development?
M: Sure. First of all, soon after the IDO we’ll activate CPD liquidity mining (yield farming). Staking rewards for Strong Holders :). Implementing CPD in all business flows, it is being done just now. Then we’ll launch the cross-chain protocol (it’s now in beta) that supports three chains: Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon from the start. Finally, we will deliver to our customers simple and convenient DeFi dashboard operated on different blockchains.
We’re also putting a lot of work into CoinsPaid personal wallet. We will release a mobile app soon and will add subscription billing between wallet and merchants. On the next step, we plan bank card support, integration of our DeFi services, and more.
T: Who have you partnered with until now, who is backing you?
M: We are lucky to have a stellar roster of strategic partners. One of the best-known is Master Ventures, a billion-dollar blockchain incubator and venture fund based in Asia that supports Tier-1 projects. Then there’s DAO Maker, a platform that redefines venture funding networks for startups; one of our IDO rounds will take place on their launchpad, DAO Pad.
Then we have Finery Tech, a company that develops financial and trading software, as well as supports innovative fintech startups.
One more venture capital firm we’ve partnered with is AU21, which invests in projects built on Polygon. As I mentioned, Polygon is one of the blockchains that our cross-chain protocol will eventually support.
As for our advisors, we are happy to work with Antanas Guoga, also known as Tony G in Poker world, CEO of Cypherpunk Holdings Inc. and a former member of the European Parliament.
We are announcing a few supporters every day now. Don’t want to spoil it 🙂
T: Good backers!
M: Talking about DAO? 🙂
T: OFC! haha.
M: Great guys 🎉
T: Yes, indeed! Ok, next question! The DeFi space is a young, but fast-growing market niche, how do you see it in the next five years? And the challenges you will face to become a top market player?
M: I think we’ll see a lot more regulatory pressure, and here we’re very well positioned — as I’ve said, we’re already licensed and regulated, and have a strong compliance team. Also exploits will continue to be a problem, and projects have to step up their game in the area of security, too. If you put all the hacks together, DeFI is bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars, and you can’t have a healthy industry with such crazy security risks. Here, too, CoinsPaid’s services will stand out, because we’ve passed two major security audits, and we’ll do more audits as we prepare new DeFi features for release. Our policy is a security audit every 3 months.
I think in 5 years crypto will become a market standard for international payments, and more countries will understand how to regulate and support it. You see what is happening in the Corporate world. They are all curious!
But apart from these challenges, I see a bright future for DeFi. The TVL is now at $80 billion, but we’ve seen nothing yet. It can easily go to $100 billion this year, and $150 bn in 2022 unless we suddenly enter a bear market. We definitely want to be part of a $150 billion-dollar industry.
T: $150bn is a good mark but I think the DeFi industry will be larger than that in the near future, so it’s a great time to be in space. The Smart Contract risk is one of the biggest threats to crypto projects and even more to DeFi projects? How are you addressing this issue?
M: Yeah, we have an AAA-grade in-house security team, which is indispensable in the crypto processing market, and we do extensive internal audits of all new code (some of the of the guys have nuclear plant security experience). Then we order external audits, like those we did with Kaspersky Labs and 10Guards. Our token smart contract was also audited by Hacken. Everything we roll out DeFi-wise will be comprehensively audited as well. To be honest, it just shocks me to see how many of the exploits stem from really stupid mistakes, like copying and pasting another project’s code with a typo, or simply don’t botherto check it for bugs.
T: Good to know you are not copy and pasting but taking this important issue, very few companies have an in-house security team. I am sure our Community wants to know about your token metrics, please share them with us.
M: The total supply is 800 million CPD, and the project valuation is $16 million (which is even less than our yearly revenue). Only 3%, or 24 million CPD, will be released at the token generation event, and these are all allocated for market-making and DEX liquidity only. Next is the IDO, which we’ll hold on two launchpads, SpacePort and DAO Pad. The IDO will take place on three blockchains at once: Ethereum, Polygon, and BSC.
The allocation for both IDO rounds is just 2% of the tokens at $0.02 per CPD, and they will all be vested and released gradually over 4 months. So there’s zero selling pressure, like I said. We’ll also launch liquidity pools immediately after the IDO where we are putting the majority of collected funds.
All other allocations — team, advisors, private sale, partners, etc. — have not only a vesting period, but also a lock-up period. Our priority is to avoid flooding the market with CPD, because we’re thinking long-term.
There are not many similar projects on the market to compare Market caps, my goal is 1B valuation for CPD. Soon we will know how fast we can get there 🙂
T: You set up a very modest valuation for such a well-established and profitable business, I see good upside potential. Are you planning a CEX + DEX listing? Or will you opt for only DEX at the beginning?
M: At first CPD will be listed on Uniswap, PlasmaSwap, SushiSwap, and PancakeSwap, but we plan a CEX listing in the near future. In any case, the short-term priority is to ensure that the token market is strong after the IDO.
Almost 1.5M liquidity altogether.
T: Thanks! This was the last question. Max, we appreciate you having taken some time off your hectic schedule for the AMA. Keep it up with Coinspaid.
M: Just in time 🙂 Thanks Tote!
T: Welcome! As the Brits say, in the very very nick of time. I can’t say goodbye without giving a big thanks to our beloved community. Thanks for your great and continuous support!
M: Thanks a lot everyone who joined! 🙏
T: Max, if you want to share your socials! Just a reminder, Coinspaid SEED SHO will start the 22th at 12:00pm UTC.
M: “mkrupyshev” pretty much everywhere.
I have a very unusual last name, so should be easy 🙂
All IDO related links are here:
T: Thanks! Max and pals, I wish you a nice weekend!
M: Thanks! Likewise.
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This is the end of the session. Join us on social networks so you don’t miss the announcements of new AMAs!
