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00:00:05:00 – 00:00:05:24

Trevor Levin: Radio.

00:00:17:18 – 00:00:35:25

Richard Carthon: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crypto Current, Your host here, Richard Carthon , on Today. I have a very special guest talking about some really, really cool things, not just in the defi space, but in everything sci fi as well. Over at Midas Investments, we have Trevor, who’s the CEO. How are you doing today?

00:00:36:22 – 00:00:42:22

Trevor Levin: I’m doing great. Especially much, much more better when I ended up in this podcast. Thank you for having me.

00:00:43:15 – 00:00:51:08

Richard Carthon: Of course, man. Well, we’re excited to learn everything that’s going on over at Midas. But before we do want to learn a little bit more about yourself, can you give us a little background on yourself?

00:00:51:27 – 00:01:29:26

Trevor Levin: Yeah, sure. And so I my whole life, my whole professional life was preparing me for the creation of of our company. Midas Midas was established like five years ago. And before that I was trying my trying my youth with various start ups and various activities in order to build expertise in various topics, not only startups and product management, but also cognitive science, also the blogging, also the methodological thinking and the various stuff and finances obviously.

00:01:30:01 – 00:01:39:17

Trevor Levin: And then in 2017, I discovered crypto made some money over over a few months, then lost

00:01:41:03 – 00:02:14:25

Trevor Levin: almost everything and then started to dig into specific niches for, for, for building wealth. And I ended up in staking masternode ecosystem, which led me to this massive income, new ways of passive income that crypto created. And the company in Midas was established as the hosting platform for Masternode and then evolved that iteration over five years as an exchange, as a floating provider, as investment platform.

00:02:14:27 – 00:02:23:25

Trevor Levin: And now we are see via email merging towards Defi with the opening of the crazy defi disruption.

00:02:24:09 – 00:02:58:26

Richard Carthon: Yeah, right. Well, I mean that’s quite the journey. Kind of similar. I learned about the space back in 18 and you know first got in is like really cool to see different ways to put your money to work and make some money but then also, you know, to see it go down as well into how to weather the storms and how do you hedge against downside and how do you make residual income within this space. And so you kind of alluded to it. You saw different initial ways through masternode staking through other ways as well. So you did a really good job of briefly walking us through that journey of how Midas started.

00:02:58:28 – 00:03:17:25

Richard Carthon: But let’s dive back into that. So when when you first created this, you’ve learned a ton of the amazing features that I think are in crypto into one giant platform. So walk us through like what was the starting point to to where things are today and how people are use it using Midas investments?

00:03:18:13 – 00:03:53:24

Trevor Levin: Yeah, I think the heart of Midas is our discord where it all started. And back then, whether you wanted to become the master and all that staking provider, especially for most adults, you would advertise yourself, among others, discord groups of other coins that, Hey, I do this trail masternode thing. And ah, back then before we had the platform, we were doing the we were doing reporting and analytics and calculating of everyone’s balances in Google shifts.

00:03:53:26 – 00:04:31:15

Trevor Levin: And we got three main legal sets where all our investors got their balances and we calculated all the rewards and did everything ourselves. And then with the, with the expense, we, we developed, not developed but created because I have the thought that capital in this whole capital format, the notes, it would allow other investors to invest small amount of coins and so into my investor notes basically and start receiving robots immediately instead of like gathering a huge pool of individuals that are willing to make a share.

00:04:31:17 – 00:05:02:29

Trevor Levin: And yeah, so it was basically democratized method of coins. Now it sounds really, really funny, but back then it was a really, really growing part of the part of the crypto. And yeah, so it also opened the such features as reinvesting and compounding on top of most of the points and basically allowed many, many investors to make much more efficient investing towards passive income coins.

00:05:03:25 – 00:05:39:12

Trevor Levin: And after this we, we got our platform started to build like and it took like nine months in order to get our first first platform where the users would be able to deposit. Withdraw and reinvest. And yeah, and over years we added a lot of features like I think. I think over 13 various features because building product without without VC funds, without ICOs, without like initial bootstrap capital is a really, really high art.

00:05:39:14 – 00:06:14:18

Trevor Levin: So we, we got the start up way of pivoting, trying various features, build various products that in the most simple, easy way as possible, fast as possible, fail as fast as possible, and gain as much intel as possible around the market. So. So by the end of 2019, I think we got this monstrous platform which was not really greatly optimized and was really, really not buggy, but really not intuitive in terms of using.

00:06:14:20 – 00:06:45:12

Trevor Levin: So because of the feature on top of feature and we did not have a huge squad of developers or product managers or copywriters and so on. So we had to do everything by ourselves and the really small team. Yeah, it was really, really amazing. Journey in top on, on building this stuff. And in 2020 the design appeared and Defi fits the best in the in the terms of passive income.

00:06:45:14 – 00:07:25:20

Trevor Levin: And I, I think that and defi opens up the really new possibilities and it will iterate with this possibilities further as defi tips in the waiting and introducing the new roles of liquidity, providing liquidity management managing because protocols need liquidity in order to to service other users and and by you giving this capital in the various ways and various forms to this protocols, it basically makes your money doing work for for you which is basically passive income.

00:07:25:29 – 00:08:03:22

Trevor Levin: And and we saw this trend it was it was amazing for us because we are because our core product at this time was fixed yield product. So we offer it we offer it like 13% interest rate on BTC and something like 15% on on the cerium plus plus tables obviously. And, but, but we got like really a lot of restrictions against this model. And, and back then the, the yield was produced by our algorithmic team that was doing like trend on BTC, but it was not really sustainable.

00:08:04:16 – 00:08:34:18

Trevor Levin: And once Defi started I started to dive into it. I started to build the team around Defi and in in September, I think in August of 2021, we deleted every feature on the platform but fixed but fixed. So like it was only like to see Ethereum stable and and a lot of masternode coins of the previous generation and and we deleted everything.

00:08:34:25 – 00:08:39:24

Trevor Levin: And back then we got like $25 million efforts under management

00:08:41:10 – 00:09:16:05

Trevor Levin: and it was close to the big in terms of the crypto value and now we after one year we, we are standing at $280 million of assets under management. And it was an amazing journey because, because a lot of users discovered my Midas a lot of, a lot of happened during this year. And obviously when you receive this amount of capital in your in your system, it starts to, uh, it starts to hit the constraints you have, the liquidity constraints.

00:09:16:07 – 00:10:09:19

Trevor Levin: You, you need to develop the risk framework for you to develop custodian solutions in order to safely manage the assets. In this case, we integrated fireblocks and basically we, we pivoted from the I.T platform to asset management or investment funds or hedge fund. I think asset management is the closest and building our inner investment teams and our risk frameworks policy and how we treat Defi protocols, how we dodged the bullets with the with various various low liquidity assets like see if you if you Etherium ETFs basically and you see and and all this all this traps basically on the way and we managed to dodge it with our risk policy and our infrastructure of alerts around the liquidity across the protocol.

00:10:09:21 – 00:10:15:08

Trevor Levin: So we’re really, really proud on this and how we and the top in this case.

00:10:15:25 – 00:10:48:00

Richard Carthon: Has been a huge journey. I mean, each step of the way, you were just adapting to what the best opportunities were at each phase of this, you know, starting in M.A.S.H. And I do want to spend a quick second on saying that you started in this court, you started with community First. You let your community kind of drive and say like, Hey, this is what we need help with. This is what you do and you build a product around that. Then as more tools began to come into market and you could build around that, you continue to add more and more value back to your original users of your of your platform and able to adjust and adapt for that.

00:10:48:09 – 00:11:13:22

Richard Carthon: So, you know, you start in 2017, you you were able to see a bull run, go down to a bear market back into another bull run and now we’re back in another bear. What do you think are the tools that you’ve been able to like? You were kind of alluding at the end of your last statement on your risk profiles and understanding like how to hedge all these different things, but how is it that the Midas investment platform is able to help hedge against current market conditions?

00:11:14:17 – 00:11:33:28

Trevor Levin: Yeah. So the way we think about this during our like was three years, we managed to build two really deep expertise expert business around algorithmic tools and around Defi. So our current positioning and our current

00:11:35:19 – 00:11:37:08

Trevor Levin: outcome at this stage

00:11:38:23 – 00:11:40:14

Trevor Levin: thing that allows us to

00:11:42:02 – 00:11:51:01

Trevor Levin: to provide yields during various market conditions is that we combine algorithmic stuff. And what this algorithms is basically

00:11:52:16 – 00:12:23:21

Trevor Levin: it allows us to allocate trends, reversals for specific during specific market conditions. And it basically is the top risk level which signals to us is the market growing or the market is falling that we need to add risk or we need to reduce risk. And and this this has proven to us to to be really, really efficient.

00:12:23:23 – 00:13:05:29

Trevor Levin: So we we fully de-risked our portfolio in February this year, hopefully not, hopefully, thankfully. And we are we managed to invest a lot of time in research into risk frameworks. And what are risk frameworks. It’s it’s the it’s the alert, the monitoring system on top of every defi protocol that we are using. If we see the debugging scenario and the banking scenario is when the liquidity, for example, in core false is starting to be balanced, we have the triggers and we exit the positions automatically and similar goals to lending positions, similar goals to basically everything.

00:13:06:07 – 00:13:46:11

Trevor Levin: And regarding more risky positions, we we made our due diligence and quant analytics on how the assets to relate to each other specifically Defi altcoins blue chips are correlated to Etherium, so you can basically catch the for example, convex with with a theory of a short really find a feeder Ethereum short on on the trend movements. So we we combine those those two banks in Paris which gives us much more efficient way to generate build and and now we are working on the more complex system of of asset management.

00:13:46:27 – 00:14:21:17

Trevor Levin: It’s like I presented as as a wheel where you have for each for each specific investment product, you have the upside for specific market conditions and you have the downside, the risk basically, and also specific market condition and the way you manage capital, you are basically spreading the risk from one place to another. So and you our goal for the next month is to is to basically create the flywheel of products that will catch each other.

00:14:21:23 – 00:14:52:03

Trevor Levin: So basically Uniswap three is a great for flat markets so like and but it has impermanent loss and you can end up with with really not long liner a problem of having less funds obviously. But if you combine it with trend algorithms that do really well with trend movements, you can actually bear it up and reduce the risk of the both assets of the both products and reach this equilibrium.

00:14:52:05 – 00:15:08:00

Trevor Levin: So we are working on this right now. We are hiring amazing quant analytics in order to solve this equation, basically. And we will work on this flywheel in order to in order to move on this will during the next two years of complicated market for sure.

00:15:08:02 – 00:15:38:19

Richard Carthon: And I think that strategy is is really amazing. And for for all those who kept up and what was happen. These are really complex models that you’re able to blend together, to hedge for upside and downside momentum, and to be able to capitalize in what regardless of where the market moves, do able to make profit, which is ideal when you’re dealing with a fund that is is trying to make sure that not only are you protecting downside, but you’re also able to make as much on the upside as well.

00:15:38:27 – 00:16:00:00

Richard Carthon: And one of the things I saw in here within what you’ll have going on is the new investment tools you’ll have for the higher priced seed strategies here. So if I which is your soft launch on EITH, etc.. He kind of talked through a couple of these because this might be like unique to a lot of it. Even some seasoned investors can kind of just talk through this a little bit.

00:16:00:25 – 00:16:45:19

Trevor Levin: Yeah. So see Defi and everything that we think about Defi is I think the the next step on how these defi industry should evolve after of themselves. His bankruptcy after Voyager bankruptcy, after all the names, you name it. And I feel really really sorry for everyone who will suffer from this mismanagement and this lack of transparency and the mixed inventions of sci fi platforms. And and this is the thing that actually we started to think about this back in February, because what’s next? Back in February, we had a really red market where you got Celsius, Nextel, Crypto.com, Blockfi and so on.

00:16:45:21 – 00:17:38:18

Trevor Levin: It was it was impossible to compete with those. So my idea was, is that each of each of those guys are ignoring defi. They, they just like it does not exist. Like ill brothas on defi does not exist, defi protocols does not exist. Just deposit money to us. We no matter what to do with them, with with your money. And for me, this was really, really mixed mixed intentions. Because in this case, if a company has only has other intentions than the users, so the intentions are not aligned where users want to generate yield with low risk and see if my company wants to generate as much returns as possible and without revealing the risk of of their portfolio.

00:17:38:23 – 00:18:42:16

Trevor Levin: And it creates this black box where where users are now afraid of the see five platforms and I fully understand them. And this is why we are publishing our investment report where we are basically saying what our positions are and how much they are generating, how much field we generate, and then adjust our rates according to this. So coming to see Defi, I really feel that that the only way for this defi industry to become major mature during the next bullish cycle is to partner with defi and CFI meets defi and defi needs defi because if I really really need this transparent ways to generate yield, those efficient models that that allow to reach capital efficiency in order to produce transparent, secure yield, obviously we are we are quite a few innovations away from these from this products to be to be created.

00:18:42:18 – 00:18:59:00

Trevor Levin: But we already have the JLP, for example, from Max, which is a brilliant idea. As for me, it’s a brilliant idea to democratize the use of liquidity and building the product for the users. So basically our idea is to share

00:19:00:22 – 00:19:48:27

Trevor Levin: is to create the strategy, the structure of products built on top of Defi with the specific on chain address, where we manage funds on the specific way, use our allowed system in order to catch from cash from cracks, defects and stop utilization problems. So when the capital is getting fucked in the lending protocols and so on and creates specific directional strategy that both utilize, utilize the defi opportunities that amazing dapps all around the world is creating for us, but but help users to not dive into the complexity of of all this models and just make the guidebook for them for specific structured products.

00:19:49:04 – 00:19:56:06

Trevor Levin: Or as we did with JLP, we simply left to go beyond our platform because, because in terms of

00:19:58:03 – 00:20:36:17

Trevor Levin: because it’s an amazing way to create the ecosystem of products where you can manage it easily and you can always track where the yields are coming from in the case of our structured products and you can always swap in and swap out of them so it doesn’t take. Were you like five transactions with all the two together and five steps where you need to update each of them in order to track your balances and so on. So I feel this as this is where we can be headed towards the future of asset management, where we use this amazing defi infrastructure to build this structured, transparent products and efficient.

00:20:36:19 – 00:20:55:18

Trevor Levin: And during the next cycles it will be in the much more efficient way. And I’m really, really inspired about this. And Defi really needs this because there is no way that they can attract retail liquidity without without CFI. But, but we need to make if I could.

00:20:57:03 – 00:21:28:24

Richard Carthon: Yeah. Yeah. Honestly I think that’s a really will way of like painting the picture of the big issues that we saw between Celsius Voyager etc.. And to, to recap that the breakdown that happened with Celsius, when you are going and putting in money there and giving you yield back, whatever it is, they’re locked. You’re locking into that platform and they’re giving you your yield back. But what they’re doing with the money that they receive ultimately from you is that they’re going and saying like, I can invest is better than you, therefore I’m going to use all this.

00:21:28:26 – 00:22:01:22

Richard Carthon: I’m pulling all the money together, and then I’m making investments on top of it. And because I’m doing better, I can then give that guaranteed yield back to you. But you don’t know how what they’re doing with the money. You don’t know if they’re doing bad transactions. There’s no there’s no transparency. So what you all been able to do is add a layer of transparency of saying like, hey, here’s the money that you put in, here’s what we’re going to you, but here’s what we’re here’s how we’re putting the money to work. Here’s how we doing that? So you have that layer of transparency that we’re in. A lot of things like Defi, when you’re in a defi protocol, you know exactly where it’s going, you know exactly what’s going to validate, etc. You don’t have to guess about anything like, you know exactly what you’re putting into.

00:22:01:28 – 00:22:43:02

Richard Carthon: So like kind of that blend between the centralized finance and the decisions lost finance worlds put together to see Defi as you all are, as you all are saying, and and bringing the the the downsides and the upsides, putting them together and kind of completing the circle of of how this can work in a in a in a good framework and have a lot more protections and transparency. So I think that’s that’s really cool and and I like the the approach I’ll have here. But if someone’s listening to this right so you have obviously your your more advanced investor that you also have your everyday investor like let’s say someone who was in Celsius luckily got out before everything happened and they’ve been looking for something new like this potentially come up.

00:22:43:04 – 00:22:49:06

Richard Carthon: So for someone who’s listening to this, who can become involved and utilize the Midas investment platform.

00:22:49:27 – 00:22:51:10

Trevor Levin: Yeah, I think

00:22:52:29 – 00:23:23:11

Trevor Levin: I truly believe that anyone but I do not want to like sell our product or our platform. I would really encourage people to dive in. So I would do squats, read our investment reports, and to make your rational decision based on all the all the data and all the information we are giving and talking to community members and so on. So the main idea around this creation of my this platform is to is to give

00:23:24:27 – 00:23:56:06

Trevor Levin: financial freedom for making decisions in life. And, and for me, I think that in one in one cycle you can actually make a lot of money for the for the rise of cryptocurrency and simply by accumulating it and and the way I want to build the platform is to give the all that this address that with adjusted risk that has the maximum maximum outcome with adjusted risk.

00:23:56:15 – 00:24:38:25

Trevor Levin: So so in this case my dream would be people living and spending more time with family making following their dreams than following their passions. What they love to do but and quitting their job they that they do not like. And I really want everyone to do the job that they really want to, but not for money, but because they really, really love love it. And I feel that that Midas Midas tried to give this blog for for for you in order to receive income in in, in stablecoins or in BTC.

00:24:38:27 – 00:25:14:15

Trevor Levin: I get to see a complete the theorem. I have this upside opportunity with certified strategies or through the portfolio investing, which we also have on the platform. And our main audience is based in Europe and U.S. and usually it’s like 3540 years old. And I speak with a lot of investors and and they are sharing those stories where they can do what they like because their their money is on Midas and.

00:25:15:18 – 00:25:35:09

Trevor Levin: And many actually dodged the bullet with with Celsius. A lot of people withdrew like in the in the last two weeks before this storm happened. And I I’m really really happy that yeah that that happened. Yeah. Oh Celsius yeah for sure.

00:25:35:11 – 00:26:03:15

Richard Carthon: Well we definitely appreciate the insights and you know, I think there’s a lot of really cool things for for people to go and check out over at Midas Stock Investments. But, you know, as we wrap up, I always like to finish with a couple of fun questions. And the one I want to pose to you first is with all the information that you now have present day, if you could go give your self 1 to 2 pieces of wisdom when you first started back in 2017, what would you tell yourself at the.

00:26:07:25 – 00:26:09:01

Trevor Levin: But it will be fun.

00:26:10:16 – 00:26:44:17

Richard Carthon: And you can make it and that’s it. I would not I would not reveal anything because it’s just a wholesome journey. And I really I know myself, if I if I will give myself the insight about the prices, I would be really, really lazy in this case because. Yeah, so all the struggles and all the tension that we got through building the company and formed me as an individual and I do not want to take away this from myself.

00:26:45:24 – 00:27:24:01

Richard Carthon: Got it. Well, I think that’s a good takeaway, just an encouragement. And sometimes you have to struggle to get to the upside and to to really appreciate the fruits of the labor. Once you once you get there, instead of just cut to the. So the easy route, Right. The path of least resistance. But for someone who’s just coming in to this space, right. So they’ve been hearing about crypto forever. They finally got excited last Thanksgiving or Christmas and they’re like, they finally put in their first little bits of money. They’ve seen it all go down 60 to 80%. They’re concerned, Is crypto a scam? Is it gone forever? What what would you tell that person who’s like in that like, tough place right now because we’ve been there?

00:27:24:03 – 00:27:24:18

Richard Carthon: Yeah,

00:27:26:00 – 00:28:25:09

Trevor Levin: I think there are two, two ways to think about this. And the first way is, is that crypto gives so many opportunities because because of how inefficient and volatile it is. So the the time spent in crypto really pays off and the overall level of of expertise that needed in crypto to be able to do stuff and to have fun with this is really really not not really low but but but it’s it’s really it’s much easier to do stuff in crypto than the current business so do stuff what you like, what you like what what and the the main the main thing here is that what, what triggers your passion, what triggers your interest go towards this direction.

00:28:25:11 – 00:28:56:22

Trevor Levin: It’s the it’s like the the inner core of your soul in order to get this into this sweet spot in crypto that you want to be into and another way for, for like a long term investment and so on. Just make a habit to purchase BTC or Ethereum or BTC and Ethereum each couple of weeks, each paycheck basically.

00:28:56:27 – 00:29:27:01

Trevor Levin: And it will, it will benefit you a lot because this I have a success story from one of our investors that invested in 2017, lost a lot of money and then and then she was like, okay, I’m going to purchase like every every week. I do not care about the price, I just going to purchase. So too. And the market will give you opportunity to to balance out your portfolio and so get into much, much sweeter prices.

00:29:27:03 – 00:30:10:00

Trevor Levin: And still you have the upside on the global currency on BTC, which is the the first peer to peer payment network like it’s it’s an incredible innovation that did not even started out where I might 93 in terms of being for that like 1993. And, and in terms of Etherium, you have this ecosystem deflationary ecosystem of the new defi apps and, and the fees and all this activity and have you come to receive a part of this and all the part of this, it’s an incredible opportunity, one of the most incredible during our lifetimes.

00:30:10:05 – 00:30:21:01

Trevor Levin: And we need to treat it really, really carefully and consciously and wisely, which is basically purchasing each period of financial time. Yeah.

00:30:21:15 – 00:30:53:13

Richard Carthon: Dollar cost averaging. We we talk about a lot on this show. It is it can be your best friend and I’ve I’ve also seen personally a ton of success stories and yes even though things are you know potentially down for the for the things that make sense and you know, you do your own research on whatever projects you feel adamantly about, you play the long game, you just give it time typically when most most times. So I think that’s another good take away. But as we wrap up here, again, we appreciate all the time you spent with us.

00:30:53:15 – 00:30:56:08

Richard Carthon: What is a final thought that you want to leave with the listeners here today?

00:30:57:13 – 00:30:59:04

Richard Carthon: Final thought. Final thought.

00:31:03:04 – 00:31:25:01

Trevor Levin: Everything will be amazingly well, despite all the things that is happening. And you always have your self and belief in yourself and spend more time with yourself. It is the most incredible journey and listen to yourself and you will open the whole new world now.

00:31:25:19 – 00:31:40:02

Richard Carthon: Excellent. I think that’s a great final thought. Again, we want to appreciate and say thanks to Trevor for spending some time with us. You can go over to Midas Dot Investments for more information. But what are some other ways that people can learn more about what you’ll have going on and connect with you?

00:31:41:15 – 00:32:13:20

Trevor Levin: Yeah, I know. You can sign to subscribe to my Twitter. I really, really want to start posting much, much more. And I would really love to engage with all of you and obviously join our discord, Discord, dodgy slash Midas. We have this fancy link. Just. Just come and spend some time with us, have some questions. You can ask a question directly to me or to any team member. Well. Yeah, I would be happy to see everyone.

00:32:14:18 – 00:32:21:01

Richard Carthon: Excellent. Well, again, thank you so much for spending some time with us today, Trevor. And for everyone listening, stay cryptocurrency.

00:32:22:17 – 00:32:46:03

Richard Carthon: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Cryptocurrency Cryptocurrencies, a cryptocurrency and blockchain education platform that’s bridging the gap between curious newcomers for just discovering the space and the thought leaders who are shaping its future. All opinions expressed by Richard Carthon  on the cryptocurrency team and their guests on this show are exclusively their own opinions. This show in any other crypto production is exclusively for informational purposes.