SPEAKER_00: 0:14

Welcome back to Tez Talks. Today I'm joined by Kevin Mirabi, the founder of Table Tech, a longtime Tezos builder and host of Tezcast. Kevin's been part of this community since before Mainnet, and over the years he's launched projects like USD Tez, Tezfin, and Tez X. He's also been leading Tezos Los Angeles since 2018, building local connections while pushing DeFi forward on chain. We'll get into stable coins, the new genius act, and what all this means for Tezos DeFi. Kevin, welcome. Great to have you here.

SPEAKER_01: 0:52

Thank you for having me. Uh, you listed a lot of things, but uh I need to have a new Tezcast episode. Haven't done that in a long time. And Tezos LA, we should have a local event. It's been uh a long hiatus from that. But yeah, DeFi has been uh uh what I do. That is the job, that's my career. Um, and uh, but really all the other stuff I do, it's in the Tezos world. So from hosting spaces and those are all the Tezos extracurriculars. Uh, but it's all it's all integrated, it's all part of the Tezos economy. So um, you know, when you're in the Tezos universe, you you end up touching everywhere.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27

So let's start at the beginning. Your first impression and some lighter personal takes. Now you've been with Tezos since before Mainnet. If you could sum up your first impression of the community back in 2017 in one word, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01: 1:45

Fundraiser. 2017 was all about the fundraiser. 2018 is when I feel the community really became uh before mainnet, even uh, when I think some people who maybe they don't tune into Tesla's, they hear wherever the biggest headlines are. Uh, they maybe remember, like uh, because Tesla's was the biggest crowd sale of 2017, it was kind of the face of those uh all those uh, or not crowd sale fundraiser, uh, but all those types of uh projects that were going on at the time, um, and of course, like pushbacks that were associated with it. Uh, I think people don't remember how the resolution of that whole event ended up in something really underscoring uh the decentralization of the Tesla's community and how the people really run it. That uh uh the community was not you know happy with uh uh the uh who was the first head of the foundation at the time. So they rallied together, elected their own uh uh sort of rival foundation uh with their own president out of just like uh forums and or chats and everything. And uh that's how Ryan Jesperson, I remember how he was became the president of that. Um and then the very next day, that president of the Tesla's foundation resigned, and the Ryan Jesperson became president of Tesla's Foundation. And so not only did all of that last like just that whole event was just three weeks, even though people still talk about it, and we had a really great resolution from it, and it was almost like a revolution that that happened at that time, but it underscored all of our Tezos values of decentralization and shows how this is not something that could ever be a top-down community. It's always going to be from the bottom up, from the beginning through now. And since then, with on-chain governance, which was really the point of all this stuff, we've shown that again and again how uh contention can be a healthy thing, and uh as long as it's channeled the right way, and uh it can lead to outcomes that are uh better than if you know the resolution were met at the very beginning, that the in the process, in the climb, we we get somewhere even stronger. And and I think you can see that in many different events in Tesla's from art to DeFi and all of it.

SPEAKER_00: 3:51

So, in your estimation, do you feel like that decentralization has really kind of held up over time?

SPEAKER_01: 3:58

Yeah, and gotten stronger, definitely. Um, and and you might even hear like people complaining the opposite, which is a good thing because that doesn't mean that it's the opposite. It means that Tezos people hold decentralization to a high standard, to the highest standard of any community in all of blockchain. So no matter how decentralized we are, there will be always be and should be people who are complaining and saying it's not enough. Let's keep going forward. So I think that that's an important thing to keep in mind that you only grow decentralization and you make things more decentralized and strengthen decentralization when people are just not happy enough with it. So it's a good thing. That's a healthy contention.

SPEAKER_00: 4:41

No, was there a moment where you knew you'd be here long term? Hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 4:48

Yes. Uh I before Tezos and I I didn't like before 2018, like I had thought I, you know, I was part of the I did the uh a fundraiser, I participated in that, but I was looking overall at just all these different blockchains, looking at it's all open source and these technologies are very new. You're gonna have uh a lot of contentious hard forks, and then those communities get usurped by other forks of those. And plus, and like blockchain protocols and code cannibalizing the stuff that came before it. So to me, the idea of getting behind any one ecosystem uh like was just ridiculous. Like it was just not smart to do. It was a very unwise thing to do. That my idea was what I think many people default to when they first come to blockchain, or most people just default to in general, and venture capitalists as well, uh uh more than anyone, and understandably why for a financial way, which is to hedge your bets. Just everywhere, look at everything, be a part of it. Um, and and that that there is some health to that, but there's definitely a trade-off in that you don't you don't get the benefit of any expertise in any one. Jack of all trades, master of none, but still better than master of one. Sure. But like, and when it comes to these technologies that are so you know tumultuous and whatnot, you want to you want to be able to at least at first kind of get your your mind around something. Uh so I knew I wanted to do finance on blockchain. Uh DeFi wasn't a term yet, but I had uh come to be. So it was still like 2018 time. And um, it was when I really read the Tezos white paper. Like I really like I understood stuff, but like I wanted to just like go word by word and really get through it. And I realized it resolved all the issues I had with any one blockchain and also prevented the risks that I felt would be the case if I followed any other blockchain, any ecosystem. Uh, because it was like, well, okay, yeah, I know there will be a lot of things that will be around in the future, um, and stuff will not be around and new stuff will be there. But I know Tezos will be there because of the way that it's governed, because they figured it out with on-chain governance. They figured out to take what are these uh uh democratizing aspects, which are the most evolved form of uh uh social and uh territorial governance we came up with in human society, and figured out how to do it on a blockchain so that it can live forever, governed by the people. And also, not only that, but having a mechanism to course correct, uh to improve the process itself. To me, that's like, okay, that's the recipe. They figured out. And no one else was doing this. So to me, it represented a kind of design that was just thinking many years ahead on a whole other level than any other ecosystem. And also for finance, like they need this more than anything else. When it comes to having that system of like where you stay unified and not having the risk, just the risk of a contentious hard fork. You need that for financial assets. You can't you can't tokenize trillions of dollars on blockchain and then think, oh, well, you know, the validators didn't agree, and then the developers didn't, so there's this contentious hard fork. It's like, oh, well, which one's the real one? Uh well, technically they both are, they both come from the same place. Like, no, no, but which one's the real one? Like, no, technically, uh uh uh in any practical sense, they both are. Usually people just kind of gravitate towards a majority, but that's not always clear either. Sometimes it flips. And it's like, well, then what happens to the assets you've tokenized? Does everyone own half of it? Like, if because the assets do get split in. There are people who are still selling like proof-of-work chain uh uh board apes uh on Ethereum, saying, well, technically those are the original uh uh board apes, and the what you're seeing is on what the Ethereum of the mainstream is the fork. But you know, some things are resolved more easily than others, but the risk gets margins lower than where they need to be for finance, um, and it's just not worth it. Also, uh, when it comes to uh uh just innovation, future-proofing our technologies, what is the best technology? In the long run, you want the thing that is designed for on-chain governance, the thing that brings in ideas and contributions from all over the world, not from a founder or from a team, but from everybody coming in. Um, that's where you really capitalize off of the collective intelligence of humanity. Because it doesn't matter how wise an individual founder or team is, and and how great they contribute stuff and they can do great things, it's illimited. It's ultimately limited in what they can bring in. And so they need the collective, they need that contribution from the outside. So ultimately, you know, we get better and better. Uh, so yeah, and we've already seen, I think, us uh leapfrog other blockchains in many ways, and those dividends will continue to pay off as we go forward with more and more on-chain governance upgrades.

SPEAKER_00: 9:37

Now, you recently posted about a time traveling hipster photo. If you could time travel to any moment in crypto history, just to observe, where would you land?

SPEAKER_01: 9:49

Oh, well, I'd have to say the first uh first transa or the first uh mining operation of Bitcoin where it all began, or the first transaction between uh we'll say the founder that's unknown and uh Hal Finney. I believe it's Nick Zabo. Uh I think there are a lot of reasons to agree with that. But uh yeah, I'd I'd love to witness that. I think that's one of the more interesting times.

SPEAKER_00: 10:14

Um so what do you think people in 2040 will find funny about 2025 crypto?

SPEAKER_01: 10:23

Uh could you believe that there were only 300 some bakers on Tezos? Wow, to get in then, to get in on Tezos then, oh my god. If only I could go back.

SPEAKER_00: 10:39

Now, would you change anything or would you just watch?

SPEAKER_01: 10:44

Um from my own, would I change my own stuff? Or uh or going back in time to back then.

SPEAKER_00: 10:51

Well, I'd want to participate in mining bitcoin uh talking about like looking forward, all of it, man. Would you change it or would you just enjoy the show as it gets there?

SPEAKER_01: 11:00

Well, I I definitely want to capitalize off of mining bitcoin when you could do it without even any equipment or even any scripts. You know, back then it was just a captcha effectively, you could just do addition, multiplication, and then that's how you would mine Bitcoin. Yep. Most people don't know that. They just they don't get how it works. It's like, no, no, it's just guessing a number. Faster to do with all these.

SPEAKER_02: 11:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:22

Yeah. Pretty soon it turned from that to people running scripts that would just guess the numbers quickly to people adding hardware so they could do that even better. And then it just became about the hardware for the most part. Um yeah, but to go back then, and I had a friend who uh he was at Caltech at the time, and they were very early on mining Bitcoin, and they were solving them by hand, they were solving those uh uh mining problems by hand to mine their Bitcoin um because it was faster to do it that way at the time for them. But uh amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 11:56

Now you've you've also been a big presence in the community, both locally in LA and through Tezcast. Let's talk about that side of things. You've run Tezos LA since 2018. What's been the most memorable moment from building that community?

SPEAKER_01: 12:14

Um, well, you know, COVID really derailed what we were going, but we need that's why we need to bring it back. I think uh at that time, I mean it was interesting seeing all these people come together because it was the first time I did a Tesla like a Tezos LA uh type of meeting was uh like that was the first interaction I had with anything in Tezos. It was like I set it all up remotely, and it's like, wow, these are people who are interested in the thing that I'm interested in. Um but also I was running around trying to make sure things were organized. Uh and then, but now the like, and I think this is why it's been taking so long to get something going. I'm still trying to think like what is the right way to do it, because now, um, since like 2021, the Tezos LA community has transformed into something else completely uh in that it's expanded uh because of the art community. Um, at that time, early in the time of Tezos, like before it even mainnet hit, I mean, people were thinking of two things when they thought of Tezos. They thought of this token, you know, and then they thought of this, some of us thought of this governance idea and this global network and all of that. So it was much closer to uh high concept type things, uh, if you want to include the token as part of that. Uh and then I for a couple of years, it was the people who thought of Tezos ecosystem and building this blockchain and all of that. And and then again, really the people who were just about the token. Like if I said Tezos, they were thinking, like, well, what's the price? It's like, what? Oh, you're talking about the token. Oh, well, it's what, but they they see it from that like point of view in, as opposed to how we see it, which is that's an extension of one of the things of Tezos is. But then in 2021, Tezos, you had a lot of people identifying with that word, and it means something that means neither of those things to them. To them, it was a rallying call for to an art community. It meant something like this is a kind of art. It's a it's it's it's the kind of art that rejects like the I think the economic stranglehold they felt before Tezos art came, like the mechanism came to be because you had to pay really high gas fees on the only alternative at that time, which was uh Ethereum. Um, it so and it attracted all these people from all over the world who could not afford to even start or even think about starting on Ethereum NFTs. And then that over time uh uh attracted more people like that. And we sort of crystallized in this very uh I think people early on they called it the punk rock aspect, which to me thought I thought of that as too like, oh, that sounds very niche. I don't know if I like, but then I realized, no, no, no, that's a good thing to be when you're attracting an art community. Art, it's artists, it's countercultural. I mean, of course you want that. What do you want? What's the alternative? You want like the very pop commercial run-of-the-mill, people get tired of it, like kind of thing. And we've seen how that played out for I think a lot of platforms that did chase that. It didn't, it doesn't uh no, you have to keep pushing for the new thing. Um, the place where people come to experiment, uh, the place where, I mean, there there is a street cred to Tezos and the name Tezos in the art community. I think that that's like nothing else. And that's why we have so many people, even still, even without scaling what people thought would be our biggest bottleneck, and it is our biggest bottleneck from scaling it, and that is uh the the DeFi aspect of the Tezos where where the art lives. Uh, but you know, I I plan to resolve that. So once we fix that, I think we'll have the and we'll get to that, but like the kind of uh economic effect that would grow both, both art, the art scene and commerce in general on Tezos, supporting art and or supporting uh DeFi effectively, uh, but as an effect of DeFi first doing what it needs to do to really support and uh enrich the art community on Tezos, which I think has been patient for this for a very, very long time. Um, and they deserve uh that that type of economy and those economic aspects.

SPEAKER_00: 16:05

Now, how has the LA culture compared with the global Tezos scene?

SPEAKER_01: 16:12

Um, you know, I think LA is a different city from well, I think a lot of people know from a lot of other cities around the world. There's no city center. Uh people are very remote. You hear a lot about people have to drive a lot in LA, people are very flaky. Uh, you know, that's not Tezos people are reliable. We're not flaky. Uh, but it that that's been a challenge too. It's uh it's making sure we we get in a place in the city that's it's so spread out that like we're fair to everybody that people can come from different sides of the city, not get stuck in traffic. Um, and we're being equitable in that regard. Uh yeah, so I think in the past we did stuff in kind of that midtown Culver City, which has become kind of a default hub for a lot of LA um tech stuff over the years, uh, because it's just so central. And uh probably we'll continue with that. Um you know, Mass Transit's still very uh limited in LA, but uh yeah, I think uh a lot of the remote stuff has happened. And also we've seen Tezos diffuse into I think a lot of other blockchain events, and people are seeing Tezos stuff happen, which is a good thing, at uh NFT events, uh, you know, and and art events and all of that, uh, so that it's not siloed to this one particular place. Like you go to the Tezos meetup, uh no, no, no, you go to the blockchain web three stuff and Tezos is there. I think that's what really extends the footprint uh uh far and wide. So yep, yep. Uh it's I I would like to have uh if people do want to volunteer to help grow that community, it would be great because uh uh we need more people because I'm doing all this stuff. Uh it can't just be me. We can have much bigger, uh broader events too if we uh uh had more people who wanted to come in and volunteer. So uh yeah, we can get that going. But are there any lessons you'd share with others running local hubs? Um yeah, try to find a way to be consistent with it. Um and then also make sure that you you bring in uh uh support from people who are willing and able to volunteer. So yeah, but yeah, but it's been again, it's been many years since we had an actual Tesla LA event. I think that's the case with a lot of localities, but yeah, we got to get back on it. I would say this to me, the more interesting events that we had in the Teslos world were the ones that we saw out of places you wouldn't expect. And and those places having seen that shows uh just how Tezos is a global community and how Tezos is designed in a way to keep expanding as a global uh community. Um, and and we like what we saw in Sub-Saharan Africa, throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Uh, we saw their pictures and videos and everything. And um, you know, they were uh so they did a fantastic job. I'd love to see Tezos Africa uh get sponsorship again so that uh we can see from all their localities uh throughout many different countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and the expansion plan that was uh in the works, that we could see uh those types of activities again. Because that I think that exalts Tezos and the image of the Tezos uh footprint much greater than an event in LA or New York. Uh, because you expect those things, and everybody does that. Uh it it but if when you see like things coming out of places you wouldn't expect in Sub-Saharan Africa, uh, it's that that says something that's very telling, very implicative.

SPEAKER_00: 19:31

So yeah. Now, hosting Tezcast, you've been on the other side of the mic. So, what's something you've learned about getting good answers out of guests? This one's for me.

SPEAKER_01: 19:45

Um, but again, you know, it's not like I haven't done that so long. I do have to get just like with Tezcast, I have to get back to uh doing Tezos, uh just like with Tezoselli, I have to go back to doing Tezcast. Um, you know, I think spaces is definitely what I've been doing more of than anything else. Um, you know, I think I the way I do stuff, it's more conversational. Um, I just have like than anything else, I just go into it. Um very little preparation and see where the conversation takes stuff. I think that that also helps with uh you know the the guests too. Because they're like, oh yeah, I can what's been your favorite episode so far? I it's been years since we did the Tescast thing, so we've only had like six. So really my DeFi is the uh the thing that I've been working on the most part. So all right.

SPEAKER_00: 20:34

So from community to products, you've been building DeFi tools on Tezos for years. Let's dig into what you've learned. Stable Tech launched DeFi products before Tezos even had the spotlight on DeFi. Looking back, what was the hardest part of being early?

SPEAKER_01: 20:53

Yeah, uh so we made USDTZ. That was the first product we made. Uh, and that was in 2020. There were no exchanges on Tezos, nothing that could support it. Uh, even most wallets wouldn't even display Tezos tokens yet. Block explorers weren't displaying Tezos tokens. We had to go and onboard all the active wallets and uh explorers at the time. I and I think there were only like one or two that I think just the ones like like Galleon was doing it at the time, but like that's because Cryptonomic had deployed uh uh USD TES for us. Uh and like so we had we made little telegram working groups so that people could get the information about uh you know working with FA12 tokens, uh and also just the trust, because people were coming from a world where the only thing, the only asset on Tezos that they knew of was XTZ. And that came from a place where they implicitly trusted everything that came for it to be. Uh, and I think my I thought there would be, I think there was more, I I think I underestimated like the just the natural level of uh inquisition that would come to be. Like it's like, oh, people are gonna welcome the first community token. But then there were people who it's like, you know, you just get one word, uh, I'm gonna, you're gonna what? What is this? A scam? What get the hell out of here? What the hell? Like, and then the same people are like, why do we have tokens on Tezos? So I think that was uh uh a very, but that was a good thing to get primed in because I think it definitely um inoculated me uh for things to come afterwards. Um, so that's been an issue. The other issues were over the years. I think, well, I think some of the successes were definitely once we did launch and get out there, we had a lot of really great organic success with USDTZ on the first decontezos that people were trading it as much as they would trade any uh USD stable coin, that people were doing the spot trading, they were doing the arbitrage, different corridors of uh this is important, of markets that emerged. Because some people were doing, you know, the arbitrage trading, some people were doing the spot trading. Then there were people who were doing sort of the primary market trading where they would take uh you know arbitrage and they'd collect that and then they would do the mintic and redemption, um, or they would be the people who to go to the people to do that. And so there were all these other little economies of people making money in different ways that I didn't necessarily even anticipate all of that, but like they it formed its own path uh through that. And I think that's when we get to I think more dynamic steps uh in uh like what I've been advocating for more recently, which is L1 bridge tokens and L1 bridged LP tokens, also in particular, bridged over to Etherlink so that we can take advantage of the middleware that would support the incentive programs, uh, as opposed to only uh having Etherlink as a destination point, uh, a conduit for exports and imports and not just a destination. Uh so um we'll see start to see different other kinds of markets as well uh that'll be very supportive of that. But yeah, those are the kinds of challenges. And um, yeah, I think there are still people who would be, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 24:09

Kevin, you mentioned uh you you you met a little resistance. Do you do you feel being early helped you, or do you think it hurt the adoption of USD TES and TESfin?

SPEAKER_01: 24:19

I think it definitely helped. Uh, and I think now especially we can look back and say that we, you know, we've been there since 2020. I mean, how many tokens out there can say they launched May 2020? How many contracts out there are launched May 2020? And um, and we can show as now we go in like with the genius, and by the way, the way we designed it was we decided, I decided not to go the uh algorithmic route, uh like Yuve's and uh Calibri. Uh to me, the I thought what was most scalable and what Teslas really needed at the time and uh still does is a reliable reserve back token that would be able to scale without compromise, without uh charging users in a way, and sometimes um without that kind of without it being a debt uh uh uh derivative aspect. Uh so or asset. Um so uh like now we but the design, the problem was that the US was not didn't have any clarity on stable coins at the time. So we had to do it outside the US and not even allow US participants uh so for a US dollar stable coin. So that but we also knew that this was how like incorporating that way and getting started that way was a means to advancing to something else later on. So I think part of the struggle was trying to explain look, there's a difference between this USD test you see right now and the USD test you're going to see in the future. And the things that you're not happy with, I'm not happy with them. More than anybody in the world, I'm not happy with them, but I'm we're doing it this way so we can get to that. So the support that we get, it's instrumental in getting it to obviously where we want to be. So I think um, and not just in terms of like regulatory compliance, but like the things that go around that, advancing, you know, uh, we've had a very strong security model, but we can always make it even stronger and give something to impress USDC and Tether and say, hey, maybe we should be like that. Uh, or particularly on Tesla's, we should definitely be like that uh to lead the in the way in that regard. Um and now also uh so now we can go into that into the US again because of the Genius Act passing and being signed into law. Uh, you know, uh all these years later, over five years of record of USD TES, and now we can finally do what we set out to do. Uh, that was contingent on something like the Genius Act being passed. Uh so yeah, uh we have a couple new steps to come in, but it'll be greater for Tezos. I think it'll be great for Tezos in the US and business development in the US, particularly in the finance sector. Um, it's great for the Tezos economy because uh it's a single chain only. So you know that USD TES assets will circulate in and have a much stronger retention point. Um, you know, it's not the thing you would use for exit liquidity. Uh uh other things you might, but this you can have confidence that, oh, well, this is sort of a uh this is much more lends itself well to a uh uh internal circulation than growing the endogenous economy. As well as something broader and overarching to all of stable coins, which is hey, diversification of stable coins is a good thing. It's not we shouldn't have a monopoly or duopoly, but everybody benefits when this stuff is diversified. The government gets to avoid having these sort of trust issues in the sense of like in having to have eventual antitrust cases. Uh, the people benefit because they get better quality products that are always competing with each other to do better. Uh, financial institutions benefit because they get to have diversified indexes and more instruments to sell. Uh, and even the stablecoin issuers themselves, like, we benefit because we get to learn from the innovation of a lot much larger, more diverse industry. Um, so I think that was some of the pushback saying, what does this matter? Don't you see that US, the Tether and USDC exist? It's like, oh, do they? I had no idea. I thought I was the first one to come up with the idea of a stable coin. Of course we know that. But uh the idea here is that like we're creating something that's best for Tezos and doing that in many ways, and also expanding the ideas of what it means to be the best stable coin for Tezos, and hopefully influencing those other larger stable coins to take advantage of those ideas as well. Uh, so we want we want to be able to grow and uh be a reference point for other assets and like assets that would come in and expand into Tezos.

SPEAKER_00: 28:32

Now, you've always emphasized design and product experience in DeFi. Why was that such a priority for you?

SPEAKER_01: 28:41

Yeah, I think um I think with TESX more than anything, design and and especially the next phase of TESX, that's where uh we're I'm really gonna be uh putting my money where my mouth is in that regard. Uh because it's that's not much more of the consumer product point of view. When it comes to stable TES and USD TES and all that, it's not really a product thing. I mean, the the asset itself is the product and people interact with that. But the idea of like, I mean, when was the last time you interacted with a you know Circle's own minting or redemption platform or tethers? You have it, because I think only two institutions do that for for each. Um, you know, the only issuers they have, it you get it from the economy itself, and the way that circulates is is closer to you. And with uh, you know, TESfin, I think product is of course very important, but it's also important not to, I think, um, to definitely expand and iterate in the manner of like what is the original way in which people get in the door and focusing on that first user always before getting on to very different exotic type of uh assets and features, uh, which just kind of feed the people who are already there, but it just adds to maybe the frictions that new people come in. And we're all all of us. Web3. It doesn't matter how big you are as a platform, you are early, and this is a very small market that needs to grow. So you should still always be thinking about like your startup dealing with your first users. Um yeah. So um, and yeah, and taking a tip from Coinbase that you know they they've done very well as a they're really a design company. I mean, the stuff that they do is relatively was always very simple uh on a functional back-end level, but it was the fact that they made something that was inherently overwhelming to people or on face value overwhelming to people and saying, look, this is easy and it's the way you imagine in your mind. You put in the money, you get the coin you want, and you can go and see that that coin is there. You want to sell it, you can do that too. Boom. Um, and and they did it. It was just simplifying something very complicated. So uh I think that's very important. And and also, as I, especially with uh Tesfin and Tesx, uh, I I don't really ask uh so much. I I like to go towards like the people who are artists and collectors and saying, you know, does this make sense to you? Does this like is there anything confusing here? Because, you know, we did design the initial model of Tesfin to look like compound uh or Ave or things that they are people already used to, because that's all kind of industry standard. But you have to keep in mind that uh maybe the market is not it's not those people, the people you're trying to target, it's not that. So future design iterations will take that into consideration and like more of an artist-friendly entry point because that's the market of people we had we have on Tesos. Didn't expect it when we started the Tesfin project, but they came to be, and you have to adapt to how the market is. Um, the realities on the ground.

SPEAKER_00: 31:42

So now let's pivot here. You you talk about prepare, you've been preparing for this genius act literally for five years at this point. Do you see these regulations as more tailwind or headwind?

SPEAKER_01: 31:57

Uh I think it's more I think it's a first step, uh, but it's definitely one that I'm really I'm really happy with the fact that for one thing, we have the clarity that it's actually done in a way, and this was what people were worried about. Uh they were worried that it would like just insulate the big players now. No, it doesn't. Uh the Genius Act is great for guys like me. It's great for these startup stable coins, the ones that are wanting to compete in the space, because it uh gives us an avenue to compete, and it also limits the activities of those that are like circle and all of that stuff. That if they need to be, if they want to be Genius Act compliant, I think they have another 12, 18 months to to adapt. So they got a lot of time. Uh, but they but like they they can't uh the stuff that consumers have been worried about, I think it it helps in that regard. Uh, but like they can't like lend money in the way that they like collateral in the way that they had been. It has to be towards uh like we all have to use US treasuries. Um and then, but that actually gives a path of revenue that we can, we haven't taken any kind of revenue at all for stable test in all these years. We've just been doing everything at cost. Uh so it's been so we haven't lent collateral at all, you know. Uh we haven't taken any fees for minting or redemption. We've done that at cost uh ourselves. Uh, it's been uh uh very, very conservative, uh, not wanting to affect the track record in any way, because I think that's very important. And when uh licenses and and whatnot uh come to be, or when we have future uh uh like additions, I imagine, to the Genius Act and things that would eat like regulators will look back and see, okay, how do we know you'll you'll be a trusted player? How do you operate? It's like, well, if we've been doing this in good faith, that the Genius Act or something like it would come to be, and we haven't done anything, we've we've lost money, knowing consciously, expect we expected to for this time in preparation for this. I mean, how many others can say that? So I think it's uh I think that's a good thing, and I think that's but definitely also to the Tesla's community that can go and see, like, look, we are trusted actors, we want to do right by you. Um, you know, we're evolving as a stable coin, but we're not like changing the initial core values of that this is for uh the stable for the for the community. And also, I I will say, uh and part of the benefits is that you know, once we pay off our operational costs for USD TES, uh, what happens to the surplus, uh, that's much more open. So we can actually bring that on-chain. Uh, we can use that to uh finance uh different activities on-chain. For one thing, building our own on-chain financial portfolio that can become self-sufficient in itself for a fund for a DAO, uh, as well as to you know, having grant programs, having our maybe our own hackathons, accelerators, maybe having stable TES, USD TES having its own permanent art collection. Uh, the world opens up suddenly in a way that will like we can actually have a new financial battery on Tezos that can have its own uh uh discretionary financing of things. That's it doesn't have to be uh just the ecosystem DAO. It doesn't have to, oh, and support the ecosystem Dow. We can donate to the ecosystem DAO. Uh and it doesn't have to just be Tesos Foundation. It's like and inspire hopefully other entities to say, hey, you can do that on Tesos too. You could be self-sufficient in funding and you can finance things and then have multiple points of uh influence and and uh even venture capital, growing more entrepreneurship. Uh so I that's where I really see uh a lot of the benefit coming to be uh for the Tesla's community, and people will see that over time. Um that, as well as you know, different yield opportunities we can draw from that, can concentrate that to the Tesla's community and Tesla's users, as opposed to thinking about it all everywhere. Um, and and also just showing off like taking advantage of Tesos technical upgrades. That's an important thing. Um, so many things have just like they've been developed by core developers, but there just were no entities to really take up the reins and use those technological advancements, things with tickets, things with uh you know, ZK channels. Uh they weren't really taken up, but we'd be able to do that. We can show that certainly much faster than Circle or Tether would be able to because we are on Tezos and we want to use it in the best way and make sure we're getting the best out of it for the coin.

SPEAKER_00: 36:28

So, you know, all for Tezos. Lastly, on this regulation stuff, do you do you think users care about compliance as much as the regulators do?

SPEAKER_01: 36:38

Uh, not as I don't think as directly uh for some. For others who are definitely want to do everything by uh whatever their uh uh jurisdiction cares about, uh, which is a lot of people. Um just ask anyone who does crypto tax accounting software that there are a lot of people who do that, though that's big business. Um so so they care in that regard. And I think also, especially in the Tezos community, when we get to go around and say and to different US-based exchanges and custodians, on-ramps, things that they would want to have access to uh as effectively marketing and saying, hey, get do you want to get onboarded for Tezos? Because we want you to carry USD TES and therefore TES, and therefore these other tokens, and therefore supporting US users of the Tezos ecosystem. I think they'll see the benefits in that regard. Uh so it's not just what it does for USD TES, it's what the Genius Act really opens up for Tezos overall, even if it's not direct. It I think the greatest impacts will be, you know, uh uh a relationship after that and the many relationships to come. Um, so yeah, a whole new world has opened up because of this. And um, we're we're once we uh do the next couple things we need to do to get ourselves fully Genius Act compliant, we have time to do it, but uh you know, we want to we want to hop uh uh on this train as soon as we can. Um I think people will start to see that.

SPEAKER_00: 38:07

Now, looking ahead, Etherlink and new incentive programs are fueling momentum. How do you see that growth playing out?

SPEAKER_01: 38:17

Uh I see uh the mechanisms in place that can be the most powerful vehicle for expansion that we've ever had. Uh, I think the fact that we have an EVM conduit that can uh for one do two really important things. For one thing, uh provide an ability to uh export our assets from the endogenous economy, from the internal economy of Tesos outward to say, to create desirability to the outside, to the EVM world, saying, look, there's this cool stuff happening on Tesos, there's this profitable stuff happening on Tesos. I know you don't want to come in because it's not on your MetaMask EVM in the way that you like it. Um, here's a way you can. Here's a vehicle for that. I think that is so critical. That is, I think that that's the first big thing. And then the other thing is the the follow-through, which is to attract in um EVM uh uh liquidity and users. Uh so to but to me though, I the the way, the coherent uh way of getting the steps right is to definitely, and I think in the beginning, you know, I'm the last uh co-organizer of the uh DCA accelerator, where a lot of the stuff really began, uh April 2024 in Singapore. Uh so who last organized who's left in the ecosystem, we could talk about this. I think there was a feeling of like, well, we don't want Etherlink to launch empty, and we do need to have some vehicles in place so that you know other stuff can come in too. Uh, I think uh, and yeah, there was a plan at the time to have something like an incentive program, like an Apple Farm and all that stuff. I think we've established that. I think we've succeeded in our ability to establish that essential framework. I think the next step is to now start to encapsulate these desirable aspects of the L1. And one example of a way we've already done that has been with STXTZ, which came from the Youth's team. Um, and this is staked to XTZ. A lot of people don't know, but things like STET is very popular in the Ethereum EVM world, and there are many composable things you can do with that, and they've been doing with that. Uh, it is a very important development. STXTZ in general is a very important development, but the fact that to be able to put it onto uh Etherlink, and I think this campaigns designed around that will be show the most interesting results. Uh, and it creates uh better, it's so there's a lot of reasons to do it this way. Uh, and I would encourage also that we start transitioning the externally or creating a mechanism for bridged uh tether that's coming in currently from a layer zero contract, in which people are bridging from a bunch of different uh EVM chains over to this one instrument on Etherlink, that we take our native uh uh USDT that's kind of been sitting there for a long time, and we start bridging that out. And most people from EVM will still just be able to do it the same way because they'll be swapping between the pools uh to get the native asset. It'll be seamless to them. But we'll also create multiple channels of uh new economies because you'll have an arbitrage economy for those pools. You'll have people doing inner layer arbitrage between those pools. You'll also have this is really cool. You'll have EVM people saying, Okay, I bought I got this from the pool, but hmm, I can get more reward if I could go deeper. Or maybe I want to balance this thing out myself so you know, to correct on the slippage. Or I guess I could get a greater depth if I go to the L1 and bridge it over. I come this far. Let me do that. Once you have them in the door, they're in for a penny, they're in for a pound. Like that's that's how you get exposure from people from the EVM world to the Tezos world, which fulfills this sort of promise that was uh uh set out, which is that this is a stepping stone to Tezos. Um, I think uh because we don't have that in place yet, and this narrative uh well, a couple things. We don't have yet the narrative of uh a bunch of assets from the L1 uh going over to the L2. We did actually put in, we do have uh USD TES on Etherlink now. Uh we did apply for the uh listing on the bridge. So maybe one day soon you'll go and you'll be able to bridge that over. Uh but uh I think interestingly will be the interest-bearing tokens coming from TESfin, from Upana that we can wrap and bring over, or the even the LP tokens coming from uh DEXs on Tezos. Uh so it adds an additional layer of abstraction, which makes it stickier. There's more retention in that way. Um, and it creates dual layers of liquidity on both chains. Where do you see the first big liquidity loops forming? I think between the more basic aspects of well, on the endogenous side, without even thinking of Etherlink at this point, uh, because we can export to Etherlink and build up base liquidity that way. I think think of Etherlink as also a tool for incentive software for the middleware, as opposed to just being a destination you put in an exchange so you can exchange stuff. It's like, no, no, no, well, we didn't do it on the L1 because we don't have the middleware on the L1. We have the middle one, so just bridge it over and then you got the middleware. Very easy. Uh so so that that circumvents the whole problem and uses uh that for a very great use case. But um, so I want to see, first of all, I do want to see the like for TESFIN and for Upana, the stable coin, the reserve-back stable coins, so tether and USD TES, to see those interest-bearing tokens bridged and uh brought over to Ether or given incentive programs for on Etherlink, just so we can build up that, which is a very difficult part to initially build up the USD uh liquidity pools. That is the key stone, that is the catalyst uh or the lending pools. That is the catalyst to growth of the overall lending platforms, uh, in creating a self-reinforcing loop of those USD pools without having to have incentives, uh, as well as for the very critical credit commerce relationship that I believe will happen between things like Teslos domains, uh uh what the semblance of gaming that we have on Teslos, but uh very much, and uh it seems strange now for a lot of because we haven't had this yet, uh, with the art market, doesn't require most artists to do it. In fact, not at all. In fact, I imagine very, very few artists and collectors will. Uh, it doesn't need that. It starts with just a little bit of it, and even just a few participants is enough to get that recursive loop going between the credit commerce relationship, and it will whether people know it or not, it will enrich the bottom line of artists uh and collectors. Uh so I see that as the prime uh way of doing it. Um, and we have definite examples throughout history of cities uh throughout the world that once you added where they didn't have much, we've seen this, it was in Paris and Florence, and uh we saw it in um uh Amsterdam, we saw it in Mexico City, we saw it in Brooklyn, I mean, uh all over the world where there had been um Santa Fe, like they had nothing but fine art. That's it. They had fine art and that was it. Uh and they they didn't really have much other exports, but then you brought in like banking and credit where people could borrow capital and use it to buy things, things like fine art, things like export mechanisms for their for fine art, all kinds of stuff. Uh, and then you started to get a recursive loop between artists and collectors, and that grew that economy enough where they could start taking out capital, like basically renting capital so they could do greater things, and that stimulated the economy uh for compounding loops of growth. Um, but that led to even more cap credit coming in. That's what happens. And then that led to more diversification of the economy in general, until ultimately you forget that this whole thing even started with fine art being the prime export, being the prime uh commercial agent. And it's just you think of that, that those became first class economies, world-class global uh first class economies. And so, what is it about art that lets you do that? Why are we so blessed with art? Like, could it have been something else in commerce? It's like, well, it can't just be purchasing stuff. Uh, it has to like, or just anything. Like it wouldn't have worked with the collectibles like board apes or whatever. It doesn't work like that. Uh, because you need to have a very distributed commerce uh uh vehicle. So art is like that because you have a lot of different artists who all have different kinds of art built, making different things and different collectors that like different things. It's an infinite number of tastes and whatnot. And if you lose some people in that regard, you gain others, and you know, it it keeps growing uh or it keeps continuing. Um, and then the product itself, it's not like for for you also need something that's of intrinsic value, not something you immediately expect resale or or expect resale at all, because once you don't get it, then everybody sours on it, and then it's over, the whole economy is over. But art, for the most, there are people who do resale of art, they do secondary sales, of course, on on object and whatnot. But in the end, there it's not far away from people who want it for their intrinsic value. They just want it because they want it in their collection, and mostly it's that, you know. So this, so it spans an intrinsic value thing. That's very key, that they want it because they want it. And the fact that it it taps into this insatiable hedonic need. People cannot stop, they'll buy keep buying art for the rest of their lives. You know, it's like it's not like okay, they got the collection, like that's enough. Duh, you're gonna keep wanting it. The more you see stuff, you're gonna want it because there's always new and different. So that's it. It's we're we're very blessed on Tezos for to have uh really, and I use this word crystallized a community in that way, stronger than any other community. And people who are part of the Tezos art community, they feel it, they know it, they talk about it, and they even find it challenging to put into words to people who aren't from it. That's like it's different and not in a weird, kind of like airy fairy, like you would say this in, you know, like, oh, everybody probably says that about their own thing. Like, no, they'll say they've been to other communities. It's not like this, it's much more transactional. Uh, so the level of commitment and like the true sincerity and the way that plays out to the economics is very special in in Tezos. The only thing it's been missing has been credit. The one thing they need. And so a lot of the problems of things that of support that artists have been needing this whole time, it's the result of a lack of, or indirectly the result of a lack of credit that would enable that kind of growth, uh, that would fulfill the stuff that they need. Bottom lines getting better and then creating those types of recursive loops. But once we get that in place, I feel that is the thing that triggers the chain reaction. Once we have large enough uh USD lending pools in Upana and Tesfin, uh, we will see this will be an explosion in a bottle. That's the one thing we're missing. Um otherwise, I would say that uh if we don't do it this way, like uh and I think we we definitely saw us, of course, with season one of Apple Farm and like when you don't have uh, and and Arthur uh uh himself had said this at Tesdev that like he and he said recommends uh that uh people like mint on their main token on the L1 and then bridge over, because then you know there's a lot of things I think beneficial about that. But one of the things he mentioned is like, well, I mean, you can bridge it over to anywhere. Uh but keep in mind also that on other, if we're looking at other chains, even Ethereum, which is has very high latency, like 15 second blocks, way longer than us. And the gas fees are so unpredictable and they're generally so high. But people still keep minting on the L1 and they they it's still the preferred DeFi chain, it's still the preferred uh art uh where art is minted and collected. There's a there's sort of a value in the premium of that, which is very, I think, strange, maybe for people coming from a core development end who maybe see that initially, but like it's it's a good thing. I mean, people are really taking this, like this very abstract stuff that doesn't exist in it just exists in the mind, really, and and taking it as though it is these structures in person. Um, and and by the way, if you've if you've seen things like zero contract, which is something else that came out on Tezos, where people are not only uh minting on the L1, but uh the idea is to mint the image file within the L1, uh like itself, as because that has value, because there's sort of a premium to that. Uh, that goes to show where the artist mindset really is and where the economic mindset will be. And I think the truest advantage of uh Etherlink is first our Tesla's DeFi strategy in general is recognizing that, building, understanding we've done everything we need to do on an infrastructural uh level on the Etherlink side, but to make the best use of it, let's encapsulate these value sources from the L1, which caught which starts with just generating growth of it and then bringing that over. And then we create a desirability for EVM to come in. They'll still come in for the other stuff. There's still destination aspects and things like Hanji and and Superland, which have been done a fantastic job. And I was there at their inception back in um in uh in April 2024. Uh, but that it will, you know, it's not like you won't be able to compare it to anyone who does anything rival on other EVM chains, on other EVM L2s out there for that resolve to Ethereum. Uh, you will recognize, like, no, no, this is the key to a specific value source that I just can't even get anywhere else. Um, so it will it'll be able to stand out at that point to really harness the power of Tezos. Uh so that's what I recommend. Uh, you know, uh, but yeah, so but also, you know, so um I will say this we are going to also launch the first ever uh Dex pools, our own DEX pools on TESX. Before we were just aggregating and using pools from, you know, we've done like the liquidity baking dashboard, and uh, you know, we started uh the path to the uh aggregation for stable uh liquidity pool aggregation. But uh we'll be doing our just a couple ones uh that will be from the and we'll be using the uh the dexter v2, the the liquidity baking contract as the basis of how we'll be uh uh building them. So uh you know we'll do XTZ USD Tes, uh, we'll do the classics you like, you know. Um I think tether is is one of those. Uh of course Sirius will still be a part of it. Uh it's another thing. I think Sirius should have a whole host of abilities to export and bridge over to uh to to Etherlink. Um, but I I will also, I mean, I mean put it this way. I for in terms of our own L2 expansion and the platforms we're building, to me, what's most interesting and where I want to take it will be Teslink, uh not Etherlink. I think Teslink DeFi will really be something that will create a level of uh like really be a game changer for uh the whole ecosystem uh and and every ecosystem. Uh because you know it'll be in Mickelson and Mickelson's better, the smart contracts we can do better. Uh and uh you know it's great that we the best EVM, Etherlink, uh EVM instance you could ever use is Etherlink. But if you want the best L2, I think it'll be Teslink. Um so uh we want to build there and really see it as an extension of the L1, um, as Tezos native. And in terms of user experience, to not make it a place that they have to go, uh there's we shouldn't even have to think about the idea of migration. It's because it's not. Teslink would be coming to the L1, Tesla coming to your user experience, so that there's this seamless connection. You'll just maybe it'll be a notification. It's like, by the way, we're now using Teslink. We've extended into Teslink, so there you go. And you can either dismiss it or be excited about it or whatever, but it shouldn't seem like, huh, this is a new thing, because people otherwise they have a very and it's not our fault, it's it's other chains that have led a bad taste in people's mouths in terms of what L2 means. Um, and it's gotten a bad rap from, I think, many years of um, you know, other chains on uh EDM L2s that are uh made it not so savory of an experience. But you know, it's not not condemning them, it's not it's not in a contemptuous way. It's it's early for everybody, so they were the pioneers. They got it wrong, so we could do it right, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 54:12

Love it. Now you've said your Baha'i faith influences your approach to building. What principle from that worldview do you think blockchain needs most today?

SPEAKER_01: 54:24

I don't remember saying that, but I do think that, yeah, I I have been raised uh uh the uh I think um definitely the well people who are curious, because I guess I do have the hashtag in my profile. This is Baha'i. Uh my, you know, my parents they came from Iran as uh uh Baha'i refugees from Iran. And um, you know, raised in the Baha'i uh religion. Uh people might know Rain Wilson from the office. Uh he he has uh does that too, holds a hosts a great podcast called Soul Boom. Um I think the I think it does to the like I try to keep my uh you know the values of this faith uh that I was raised in and everything, uh, as a lot of people do with their own faiths respectively, uh, into you know making sure that you act in a way that's ultimately better for humanity. Um if you're thinking about like what's better for me first and you have a very localized vision, you're not only gonna uh you know fail what could be best for humanity, but you are going to make terrible products too that people don't like. Uh so if you think in terms of like uh you know for me, it's like this has been about like Tesfin, it's like this is an equitable system of lending, of borrowing and lending. It uh circumvents the prejudices that come with the traditional systems that favor you know elite insiders and basically making those who are not pay for it. Uh so when we if we can get to those mechanisms, which we're starting with these things like decentralized lending platforms, I think we can have uh you know a much better society that can uh you know uh eliminate the burdens of prejudices um and whatnot. But yeah, I'd be curious where you uh saw that. I don't know if I that's a quote from anything I said. Um I'm not saying it's not true, I'm just saying like, oh I guess it's true.

SPEAKER_00: 56:17

Do you do you think values-driven designs scale in today's DeFi landscape?

SPEAKER_01: 56:24

I think uh if it's done right, um like it's you won't even notice that it's part of uh a winning DeFi landscape, that it's just a great product that you're using. Um I think it's I I think it gets too um too uh uh kind of conflated with impact entrepreneurship, as though there's this extreme. And when people hear that term impact entrepreneurship, they generally think something that doesn't make money, uh something that's just a charitable kind of project or something that relies on continuous subsidy to even exist. Uh it's like, well, that's an extreme. Can't you just diffuse those types of uh those types of uh of like value sets and benefits in a way that maybe is even more sustainable and more innovative in a manner that uh uh is mainstream entrepreneurship? And yeah, it can make a living for you. You can even get rich off it. Uh but it's not gonna happen because you know you don't make a product to get rich. You make a product that helps a lot of people, and if it happens to work out for you, uh great. I've done things in the past where I think it helped a lot of people. Uh I think of my first ventures, but it didn't do anything for me. Uh, but it except I had a good learning experience. So uh yeah, yeah. Even though I wanted to. So so yeah, I think it's uh uh having a value set that I think is in the service of humanity, um, and how do we leave the world better than when you found it? Uh definitely will make for the best products and services that uh uh and that's your actual path towards success um in a legitimate way, in the legitimate world.

SPEAKER_00: 58:03

Uh yeah. So when people look back in 20 years, what do you hope they say Kevin Mirabi contributed?

SPEAKER_01: 58:14

Uh Jesus. It's like that's like asking, like, Kevin, how about you say something egotistical right now? What's the most egotistical thing you could think of?

SPEAKER_00: 58:23

Right after I set you up with that last question, too. Do you like that? Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01: 58:29

Um yeah, uh everything I'm thinking of right now, it's like, don't say that, that's true. Uh he did, he did, he's a good guy. He did well by us. I respect. He didn't hurt, he didn't hurt anybody and he helped people. I really if I can leave with that, then I think that's a good positive karma for for me and hopefully the people around me. Um, but yeah, I I just want to keep doing that. And because you have to believe in what you do, it's not you, you'll you'll even lose engagement if it's not something that ultimately helps others. And you know, studies will say, tell you, it's like people will always get like the brain lights up more, and you get more of a reward center activation when you do something for someone else more than if you get it for yourself. Um, we do that, we don't always act it that way as humans, but when it does when it does happen, it's true. Uh so it does require us to make a conscious effort to remember that. Uh because uh, you know, we're not always intuitive as uh and acting on intuition properly as humans.

SPEAKER_00: 59:32

Now, before we wrap up, let's finish with a lightning round, a few quick fire questions to close things out on a lighter note. All right, are you ready? Yeah, first crypto you ever bought.

SPEAKER_01: 59:45

Bitcoin.

SPEAKER_00: 59:46

Most underrated Tezos project right now. Tezfin. Coffee or tea? What fuels your building sessions? It's coffee. But I'm gonna try to switch to T. One book, movie, or podcast you'd recommend to the community.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:08

Oh, I mentioned Soul Boom already. Soul Boom, Rain Wilson, Dwight from the Office. It's good.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:13

Yeah. If Tezos LA threw a party tomorrow, who's the first person you'd invite to speak? You blangs. No, don't. I appreciate that, Kevin. Well, Kevin, thank you for joining us and sharing your story from the early days of Tezos to what's next for stable tech and stable coins under new regulations. For everyone watching, you can follow Kevin over on X at KMorabi and check out his Tezcast podcast for more conversations around Tezos and DeFi. That's it for this episode of Tez Talks. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time. Bye.