Illuminati Round Table Call Notes: Emerging Narratives

Russian DeFi
February 26, 2023

The SEC Is Trying To END Crypto.

Regulation Could Be Fatal.

After $BUSD News... We Sat Down For 100 Minutes With @SaisonCapital To See If We Are Still SAFU...

Introduction: @SaisonCapital

Sharvin started crypto in 2017 and was anti-crypto.
Didn’t see any fundamental logic behind crypto ‘currency’ back then.
Was simply exploring crypto exchanges where he could short everything.
Realized that the market made zero sense when it kept hitting ATH in 2018.
Emptied his bank shorting crypto from the 2018 bear market.
He then came across some derivative DEXs and invested in one of them. It’s currently one of the biggest DEXs in the space.
Then looked for faster chains after realizing crypto wasn’t going anywhere, and once his investments did well, he became a DeFi maxi.
Identified Solana and Avalanche and invested in many Solana projects in 2020.
Got involved in the ecosystem
After leaving that role, he joined Saison Capital in 2022.
Saison Capital is an investment for one of the most prominent financial institutes, Credit Saison. They’re known for wholesale lending (cheap debt), non-banking lenders, and many other financial borrowers.

Sharvin believes that this was inevitable.
Mentions how he closed his short positions from 2021 but that these CEX stablecoins are unnecessary and governments will oppose this.
While he thinks it’s been inevitable, it could hint that the CBDC could be near.
In India, almost 50,000 merchants accept the digital rupee, which is likely a path America is looking to take on too.
We shouldn’t be surprised if governments come for on-chain public stablecoins.

Sharvin believes that there will be two versions of DeFi. One will be the regulated version of DeFi and then the unregulated.
If people want bigger institutions to come in for lending or other purposes, regulation needs to come in.

Sharvin was impressed with Solana in 2020 after networking with the team.
Realized that the foundation wanted to push the NASDAQ on-chain narrative.
Community-wise, many TradFi people were getting involved with Solana compared to other projects like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Left Solana core because the NASDAQ on-chain narrative faded away as people started focusing more on the NFT and Gamefi space instead.
He mentions how Solana fixed priority fees, which improved the transaction speed.

Sharvin says that in regards to L1s, to stay away from lots of noise.
Suggests that many narratives can trap people, cause fomo and loss of funds.
TPS(transactions per second) and TTF(time to finality) is important to him when looking at chains.
Investors focusing on this should understand that most applications nowadays will prefer better TPS and TTFs logistics.

Sharvin discovered that more than 40% of the crypto TVL comes from Korea.
More than 50% of the non-EVM validators originate from Korea.
The Cosmos community was the most significant community.
People need to look at Korea to find any crypto regulation blueprints. Government officials in Korea are moving to crypto projects because they see the potential.
Crypto VCs own even the nightclubs in Korea, and workers are paid partially in crypto, so adoption is prevalent in the country overall.
On Aptos, Sharvin says that after meeting a lot of devs and CEOs at Aptos, he understood that a lot of retail and big institutions are contributing a lot of capital to the TVL of Aptos primarily but also the overall crypto market, as stated before.
The Korean government is the most active in regulating space.

With regards to DeFi in Japan, Sharvin doesn’t see many users in Japan but highlights that many proficient devs from Japan have moved to Singapore because it is more acceptable for the space.
With Japanese corporates who wish to have a presence in the space, he believes they need to be more friendly as a country.
NFTs are the biggest use cases for consumers in Japan, which could be related to the anime audience.

Expects the NFT market to propel as long as GameFi’s popularity increases.
Links the NFT market to NFTfi and attaining NFTs to real-world assets such as real estate.
Crypto hype aided people into investing and the PFP hype helped investors see a ‘trend’ phase in NFT projects.
Expects NFTs to have a greater use case and potential.
The culture will eventually evolve for NFTs and the crypto community.

Expects institutions to adopt and invest more in crypto once regulation occurs.
Emphasizes that they will do most well when projects are versatile and not ‘against’ regulation.