The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below.

00:01:13:11 – 00:01:30:22

Richard Carthon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crypto Current, your host here, Richard Carthon. And today I got a special guest all the way on San Diego working on a project you need to learn more about, especially with the ability to be able to interact with over 7,500 Cryptos. We have Collin with Rubic Finance. How are you doing today? 

00:01:31:20 – 00:01:34:06

Collin O’Brien: I’m doing great, Richard, thank you for having me on. Appreciate it. 

00:01:34:14 – 00:01:42:20

Richard Carthon: Of course, man. Well, thank you for joining us. I want to learn more about you and what you got going on, but before we do, let’s learn more about you. Give us some background on yourself. 

00:01:44:03 – 00:02:19:15

Collin O’Brien: Well, let’s see. I have over 15 years experience in sales and marketing. I worked in a number of different industries, from medical equipment to agricultural commodities to real estate to the tech industry. Suffice to say, I have a lot of different experience doing a lot of things in many industries. I worked for a number of successful startups over the years, in addition to a couple of large corporations, and now I am involved in marketing with Rubic.

00:02:19:17 – 00:02:27:00

Richard Carthon: Which is amazing. So, let’s first start with how did you first learn about Crypto and Blockchain in the first place? What year was it? What was that introduction like? 

00:02:28:19 – 00:02:48:07

Collin O’Brien: I’m one of those people back in 2010, late 2010, early 2011, I was looking at Bitcoin when it was $1.79 thinking to myself, should I buy 1,000, maybe I should buy 5,000, but being a naive kid, I did not do those things,

00:02:48:09 – 00:02:49:07

Richard Carthon: Aw man. 

00:02:52:00 – 00:03:46:29

Collin O’Brien: But, you know, I always kept my eye on the industry and when I really got into Crypto was late 2016, early 2017, before the bull run of 2017 began. And I got hooked on Crypto during that time. You know, I sought as much information as I could get, I explored the entire space and I tried to start to get a grasp on, you know, this once in a lifetime transition of our financial system. So, you know, flash forward to this year and the Rubic project stood out for me. I came across it late December of last year, early January of this year, and I saw what they were trying to do and understood the need they were aiming to build, so, I became an investor before I became an employee. 

00:03:47:11 – 00:03:47:26

Richard Carthon: Nice.

00:03:47:28 – 00:04:06:24

Collin O’Brien: So, but just being active in the community and DM’ing them and sending them, you know, my opinions and suggestions on things, they reached out to me and offered me a position. So here I am, and I’m proud to be here with you too.  

00:04:06:26 – 00:04:22:28

Richard Carthon: To come in as an investor first already shows that you’re bought it. And then the fact that you were able to position yourself into becoming an employee and to spread the gospel, if you will, of Rubic Finance and showing how awesome of a platform this is speaks for itself. So, as people are here listening right now, what is Rubic Finance? 

00:04:26:05 – 00:05:19:21

Collin O’Brien: Well, I think first and foremost, we’re a decentralized exchange aggregator. So, what we’re doing is we’re leveraging different AMM’s in liquidity pools. Uniswap, 1inch, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, QuickSwap across a multitude of Blockchain networks to provide users with a seamless, decentralized trading experience. So, what we’re offering is not just price comparisons, but we’re offering cross-chain swaps as well. And it’s a first in the industry because we’re doing token-for-token swaps. So, beyond just being a decentralized aggregator for different swaps, we’re able to transfer value across Blockchain networks using our RBC token to get users direct token-for-token swaps at high speed and at low cost to the user.

00:05:19:23 – 00:05:42:12

Richard Carthon: Which is great. As you know, gas is eating up a lot of people as it comes to anything that’s going on the Ethereum chain. And even as you start to look at some of these other platforms as well, it is very costly. So, one of the things that really spoke out to me is basically how you’re able to lower a lot of these fees. Are you able to speak to like, how you’re able to help with that? 

00:05:42:14 – 00:06:16:27

Richard Carthon: And I’m sure another piece of it that I want to kind of break down is slippage. How are y’all able to help with that? And for those who don’t know necessarily what slippage is, so, if you’ve ever been on Uniswap before and let’s say that you were trying to buy a $100 USDC and you had Ethereum, so, if you technically put in $100 USDC, and you’re trying to get, let’s say it’s 0.1 ETH, technically, you’d only get like ,08 because of slippage and fees and other things like that. So, that’s a little background on slippage. How is it that Rubic Finance is tackling that as well as the fees? 

00:06:18:02 – 00:06:42:20

Collin O’Brien: Well, our development team, they created their own custom routing system, so, it works separately from Uniswap, 1inch, SushiSwamp, all those guys and how they do their routing. And by being able to price compare and taking into account slippage and current gas fees across these different AMM’s, we’re able to always provide the user with the lowest possible rate. 

00:06:43:17 – 00:07:10:13

Richard Carthon: That’s great. Amazing, man. With everything that’s going on kind of in the space right now and people are definitely paying more attention and want access to be able to get a lot of these coins and tokens, they have to go to all these different exchanges. And kind of like you just said, you’re aggregating a lot of different places into one sysynched place, which is amazing. What do you think the benefit is for a person that wants to be able to just go to a one stop shop to get all of the types of coins and tokens that they would like? 

00:07:12:27 – 00:07:54:13

Collin O’Brien: Well, I think it’s just the convenience factor. I mean, if you look at what Amazon or Alibaba did to e-commerce and how that evolved that entire online sector and, you know, bolstered that entire micro economy, we hope to do the same for decentralized trading. You know, right now, everything like you said, it’s so disjointed. You have, you know, this decentralized exchange and that one and then you want to, you know, use a bridge to get across networks and there’s limited tokens that pair with that bridge. The whole process, even for experienced traders, is very arduous, it’s time consuming, it’s expensive. 

00:07:54:29 – 00:08:21:11

Collin O’Brien: So, we’re taking all of that out of the equation, and we’re making it so that new people can jump into this new decentralized economy and feel comfortable trading. You know, the whole goal is to present users and future traders with a very simple user interface where all of the disjointed aspects of DeFi are consolidated into just a really simple user experience. 

00:08:22:03 – 00:08:50:05

Richard Carthon: So, let’s spend time on two different things. First, let’s analyze the bridges, so, I know that that is very unique to what you have going on and a recurring theme that I like to bring up in the past as we kind of expand into the future of Crypto is the importance of all of these amazing companies who have built all these amazing islands. But you got to watch out for the companies that are building the bridges and literally y’all are building the bridges. Can you talk to like, how important that is for the growth of this industry?

00:08:51:20 – 00:09:31:06

Collin O’Brien: Yeah. Well, I think when you have all of these different Blockchain networks emerging right now, you’re going to have some that are more popular doing different things in their micro economies, and you’re going to have different networks that are popular based on different terms for a multiple reasons, for language barriers, cultural reasons, you know, laws in different territories and those will govern the popularity of these networks. So, to have a full global decentralized economy, we’re going to need to merge and have interoperability between all of these different Blockchain networks. 

00:09:31:29 – 00:10:18:20

Collin O’Brien: So, having somebody provide a seamless interface where you don’t even think twice about it, it’s like going on the internet today, you know, it just happens. And it’s something that the user is never confronted with, so they’re not overwhelmed with all of these choices and decisions. It’s just happening all behind the scenes for them. So, I think that that is, you know, a huge part of bridging all of these different islands, like you were saying. And by not only offering different bridges than other projects are offering, but by providing our own as well using our own native RBC token, I think we’re able to kind of encompass all of those bridges and get everything merged in a way that is just seamless for the user. 

00:10:19:02 – 00:10:34:12

Richard Carthon: No doubt. And actually, that’s what I was going to spend time on next, which was RBC token. So, what is the benefit of someone listening right now of using your native token to come on Rubic Finance and to be able to to trade the various 7,500 tokens that they now have access to? 

00:10:35:21 – 00:11:12:12

Collin O’Brien: Well, that’s the great thing is to use our platform, users don’t need our token and I feel like the bot is just another hurdle that a lot of projects, you know, they artificially inject into their ecosystem. So, for people to take advantage of all the benefits of our Rubic exchange platform, they won’t need the token. What the token is doing behind the scene is we’re taking smart contracts and we’re locking and unlocking our native and wrapped versions of our token across different Blockchain networks to move value when people are swapping cross-chain. 

00:11:14:02 – 00:11:50:07

Collin O’Brien: And pretty soon we’re going to be offering decentralized liquidity pools, so, people who hold RBC will actually be able to stake their RBC into those pools, and they will receive a percentage of the commission fee that we’re charging for the cross-chain swaps. And then beyond all that, we have the, you know, the industry standard. We are a governance token as well, which is really cool. We just did a governance vote for our community and they voted for the Phantom Network integration to our platform next and you guys should be able to see that up and running on our platform in the next week or two. 

00:11:50:23 – 00:11:57:28

Richard Carthon: That’s awesome, man. And for a lot of the newbies that are listening to that when they talk about it’s a governance token and be able to do some of these things, can you kind of break that down just a little bit? 

00:11:59:02 – 00:12:38:06

Collin O’Brien: Sure. So, you can think of a governance token same way you would share of stock where it gives you a voice to decisions the company can make. And so, utilizing the token in that fashion, users are able to vote for things like, you know what, we’re going to integrate next and I’m speaking strictly for our platform. Potential fees that will be paid out to RBC token holders on the cross-chain swaps and proposing votes. You know, if they want us to go in a new direction or they want us to focus on something, our RBC token holders can voice their concerns and be heard.

00:12:38:09 – 00:13:20:00

Richard Carthon: That’s awesome. And I see a trend of more governance tokens coming into play because it’s all about the community, right? And giving them a voice and giving them a way to continue to evolve as the product continues evolving and goes in different directions and giving people a voice in feeling empowered to be a part of that process is truly, truly, truly, truly significant, and it really gets people to buy into what you’ve got going on. So, I think that’s really awesome. Let’s say someone’s listening to this right now and they think, Wow, this is incredible, I want to come and use this. So, if I’m brand new, walk me through the process of how I get set up and can start swapping. 

00:13:21:19 – 00:14:06:02

Collin O’Brien: Well, you’ll go to Rubic.Exchange, you’ll need a wallet. So we offer MetaMask, we offer Wallet Connect, which is actually a suite of aggregated wallets. I think it’s up to 68 different wallets now, and we also offer Coinbase wallet support. And so, once you get your wallet, we actually offer an onramp, a Fiat onramp service. So, if you don’t own any Crypto at all, you are brand new and you want to jump in, soon as you get set up with your wallet, you go to our Fiat onramps section on our exchange and we actually enlisted onramp or they’re an aggregate of different Fiat onramps. 

00:14:06:08 – 00:14:38:02

Collin O’Brien: So, regardless of what territory you’re in, you’re going to have different options and then you’ll be able to use debit or credit card. Google Pay, Apple Pay, depending on the service, some is KYC, some is no KYC. For your new listeners that’s know your customer, that’s you need to provide ID and, you know, usually two factor authentication and all that kind of stuff. So, users can do that to jump in or experienced traders, if they need more Ethereum and they want to top off their wallet for performing transactions, they’re able to do that as well. 

00:14:38:24 – 00:15:14:04

Collin O’Brien: But once they have that set up, they connect their wallet, they can just go ahead and swap freely. We have over 7,500 tokens right now between six different Blockchain networks, with three of those Blockchain networks being fully interoperable with one another. We have Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Polygon Network, where you can freely swap token-for- token over 7,500 tokens. And then again, we’re adding a seventh blockchain, the Phantom Network, later this month. But we also offer services for the Harmony Network or Tron and for Dai as well. 

00:15:14:19 – 00:15:38:02

Richard Carthon: That’s incredible. It’s becoming really more robust and before we got on the show, you were telling me how basically this is, I think, a later version. Like y’all have done several versions, keep amplifying and making this grow, can you kind of talk to some of the latest functionalities that the latest version has and what are some things that are coming in the future? 

00:15:39:27 – 00:16:00:20

Collin O’Brien: Yeah. Well, we’re going to continue to integrate additional Blockchain networks and additional AMM’s on those Blockchains. So, you know, we’re going to hopefully have, I mean, the goal is by this time next year to have the top 10 Blockchain networks interoperable with one another. 

00:16:01:00 – 00:16:01:15

Richard Carthon: Wow. 

00:16:02:01 – 00:16:32:04

Collin O’Brien: So, you know, we plan on adding Cardano, Avalanche, Solana, Polkadot, Neo. We’re going to keep going, we’re going to keep expanding and increase the robustness of our platform, connecting as many Blockchain networks as we possibly can and having that free flow of value from Blockchain to Blockchain using our custom RBC token and wrapped versions of it with our own bridge to shuttle that value across those networks. 

00:16:33:00 – 00:16:33:15

Richard Carthon: Man, that is.

00:16:33:17 – 00:16:34:02

Collin O’Brien: And then again. 

00:16:35:00 – 00:16:38:27

Richard Carthon: No, I was going to say, you can continue, that’s just awesome. But please continue. 

00:16:39:27 – 00:17:03:28

Collin O’Brien: Oh, yeah. No, I was just going to say, and in addition to that, we’re going to continually include more AMM’s, so, if you’re doing on chain swaps, you’re going to have a bevy of options to choose from based on a number of factors like liquidity, current gas fees on different AMM’s and just, you know, overall token variance and everything like that. 

00:17:04:22 – 00:17:29:27

Richard Carthon: Incredible. And you kind of started talking about this a little bit earlier, and I want to come back to it because it is so important to the future of Crypto and how we continue to get some mass adoption, it’s interoperability. And y’all clearly have that top of mind. How do you think interoperability is going to shape the future of Crypto and where things are heading in let’s call it the next two to three years? 

00:17:33:23 – 00:19:08:21

Collin O’Brien: Well, I think just the nature of a decentralized financial system is going to require a number of different networks, all kinds of vying for value in different sectors and different industries around the planet. So, really to make that new decentralized economy where the individual retains power and ownership over their data, over their finance, cutting out all the middlemen, getting rid of the traditional central bank and Fiat finance system, requires a multitude of networks working in concert. And that ironically, goes hand in hand with seeing that through, with facilitating that function of this web, this mash of all these different decentralized networks. 

00:19:10:10 – 00:19:44:02

Collin O’Brien: And I think what we’re doing here is kind of helping to usher in this new fundamental shift in how we do finance. I mean, this is a once a multigenerational event that we’re experiencing right now, and it’s both exciting and kind of frightening to be on the cutting edge. But, you know, I’m thrilled to be here and I’m thrilled to be part of a project that has the vision and foresight to understand that and take the actions required to facilitate that. 

00:19:46:16 – 00:20:19:15

Richard Carthon: Agreed. And on top of that, you brought up a point that this is a once in a multi-generational type of opportunity and I 100 percent agree with that. The amount of absolute opportunity across multiple different factors, sessions, wealth generation, you name it, the Crypto, Blockchain landscape is allowing those type of opportunities for any and everyone. It’s a level playing field and truly it’s creating access that most people have never seen, which is incredible. 

00:20:20:01 – 00:20:55:27

Richard Carthon: As we kind of keep shifting in this direction, a lot of people think that they’re late, that they missed the boat. And an example I like to bring up all the time and I’m sure you can understand with having an option to get Bitcoin at $1. You know, once it got to $10, you probably thought, I’m too late. When it got to $100, I’m a little too late and so on and so forth. You know, at the time of this recording, you know, Bitcoin’s around $46,000. So, I mean, what would you tell a person who is just now entering the space? Is it too late? Should they be jumping on it? Like, speak to that person really quickly. 

00:20:58:14 – 00:22:03:00

Collin O’Brien: You’re still early to the party. If you look at the value of other industries around the planet and you compare that with the size of the current Crypto industry and you really start to understand the breadth of how this is going to change our global economy. I mean, it’s still in its infancy. Comparing it to the internet, we’re just now, we’re in the mid-90s in terms of development and look how far the internet progressed from those AOL CDs we all got in the mail back in 1995 to just 2005, when you had YouTube launching and Wikipedia launching. And then, look at how far we’ve progressed over the next 15, 16 years after that. I would consider us to be still in the mid to late 90s in terms if we’re comparing it to the internet and its development. 

00:22:03:10 – 00:22:48:09

Collin O’Brien: So, we’re still extremely early and Cryptocurrency is going to be a multi, multi trillion dollar industry. You know, we’re at a fraction of that right now. I think the industry has a good 100 to 1,000 times worth of growth left in it. So, I would say to you, if you haven’t invested yet and you haven’t started to partake in this, you still have a ton of time. I don’t think we’re going to see the same kind of strides that we saw in terms of development of the internet and all the advent of applications on, you know, mobile phones and stuff for another 15 years. 

00:22:48:11 – 00:23:44:20

Collin O’Brien: I mean, you’re not going to really see Web 3.0 and Blockchain become part of everyday life and everyday vernacular for another 15 years. So, you’re still very early. And I would highly suggest learning as much as you can, not just about the technology, but about, you know, a decentralized economy and how that is going to fundamentally change business proposals and how businesses are run and revenue streams the same way, you know, back in 1995, it would have been very hard to fathom stuff like Uber, you know, and Airbnb and all of the different things that we have now that we just kind of take for granted. I would say have that open mind that we’re going to see a fundamental shift tantamount to that. And it’s just yet to be realized, so. 

00:23:45:27 – 00:24:15:03

Richard Carthon: I agree and thank you for eloquently putting that. There is so much room to grow in this space. And people who are tuning in, this is a great opportunity for you to keep educating yourself, empowering yourself and then slowly begin to take action, just slowly take little steps here and there. And like, it starts to build a snowball and eventually it picks up enough momentum and now you’ve got a full on just absolute momentous opportunity in front of you. 

00:24:15:09 – 00:24:34:09

Richard Carthon: And you know, Collin, you’ve dropped a lot of really good knowledge on us today, and I always like to wrap up interviews with two fun questions. The first being with all the information and knowledge you have right now and if you go impart wisdom to yourself when you first got started either in the Crypto space or just in your young marketing and sales career, what would you impart to yourself? 

00:24:37:26 – 00:25:41:13

Collin O’Brien: I would say to trust my instincts, to trust my gut. There were a number of times I’ve listened to other people after I had done all my own research. That is one of the reasons why I did not buy Bitcoin at $1.79. And I would also say to have some patience because it was Warren Buffett, he said, you know, you can’t make a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. Some concepts in some businesses just need time to grow and develop. Perfect example, I was on Binance before Binance was really Binance, and I saw the BNB token when it was 10, 11, 12 cents when it first got listed and I first bought BNB when it was under 50 cents. I sold my BNB at like six to $8, so, just have the patience to watch things grow. 

00:25:42:18 – 00:26:18:06

Collin O’Brien: And then also, you know, balance your life accordingly, because if you get too into it, it’s a 24/7, 365 industry, it doesn’t stop. And if you don’t have that work-life balance, you can just get out of kilter and tip right over. So, I would say learn when to shut it off so that you can focus on things in life that you know are equally or more important than any of this stuff that we’re doing. I just had a brand new baby girl and so.

00:26:18:08 – 00:26:18:28

Richard Carthon: Congratulations.

00:26:19:00 – 00:26:34:13

Collin O’Brien: Thank you. It’s important to me to have that work-life balance and that’s something I learned over the years. You know, otherwise you stress yourself out too hard with all of this because again, it never stops.

00:26:34:15 – 00:26:35:11

Richard Carthon: It doesn’t. 

00:26:35:13 – 00:26:48:00

Collin O’Brien: It’s 24/7, 365. There’s no holidays, it just keeps right on going. So, those would be a few things I would have told my younger self for sure and anybody else getting into Crypto.

00:26:48:08 – 00:27:06:09

Richard Carthon: Yeah, those are some real gems. I definitely want to echo the last one. I mean, so at the time of this recording, Labor Day recently just happened and of course, you know, the time for everyone to kind of, you know take some time off from X,Y,Z. Crypto didn’t turn off, it’s still going. People on the other side of the world, still going hard. 

00:27:06:11 – 00:27:30:09

Richard Carthon: Like, it really can feel like it never turns off, and you have to have those moments of turning it off or you really can become just overly stressed and just always on. And that’s not healthy. Definitely finding that balance helps a ton. So, I really appreciate that thought. But again, Collin, as we kind of wrap up here, what is a final thought that you want to leave with all of our listeners here today? 

00:27:35:14 – 00:28:15:12

Collin O’Brien: I believe what Rubic is doing is fundamentally groundbreaking for the industry. If you are interested in trading Crypto and you’re interested in retaining control of all your assets, I would highly recommend decentralized trading versus centralized trading. And if you’re going that route, I highly suggest Rubic because we’re going to get you the best price, we’re going to get you the best gas fees, and we’re going to be able to trade your value for token-for-token across a multitude of Blockchain networks and our services and the robustness and breadth of our platform is only going to improve and increase over time. 

00:28:16:00 – 00:28:49:03

Collin O’Brien: So, I highly recommend checking us out. And, you know, thank you so much for having me on. I feel like we’re able right now to compete with some of the big boys like THORChain, who are in the billions of dollars of market cap. And our project is still under 50,000,000 market cap right now. So, I appreciate you having me on. So then, we can kindly spread word and more users can come to our platform and enjoy all the benefits that we’re currently offering people. 

00:28:49:20 – 00:29:06:24

Richard Carthon: No doubt. I think that’s a great final thought. And again, I am very familiar with THORChain and what they’ve been able to do and just to see their journey over four years. And like you said, things take time. And like y’all are still very young and what y’all are trying to do and you’re already able to make a lot of headway, so, I’m excited.

00:29:06:26 – 00:29:21:15

Richard Carthon: I’m definitely going to be following the journey. I’m actually going to go utilize this very soon because I have a couple of coins and tokens that I need to go get, so I’m going to go check this out. But for people that want to learn more about you Collin and learn more about Rubic, what are ways that they can connect? 

00:29:22:27 – 00:29:53:13

Collin O’Brien: Okay, you can go to our Telegram, its Crypto Rubic_Chat. We also have a Medium, Crypto Rubic. Our Twitter is @CryptoRubic and then, we also have our YouTube channel, Rubic Exchange. On there, you’ll see our marketing promotional videos, tutorial videos on how to use our site, how to use different features there. And then, our main project website is Rubic.Finance, but you can enjoy our platform over at Rubic.Exchange. 

00:29:54:09 – 00:29:59:26

Richard Carthon: Perfect. Well Collin, thank you again so much for spending some time with us. And for everyone listening, Stay Crypto Current.