When cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius froze all user accounts amid a plunge in valuations, it sent ripples across the industry raising questions about what happens to user assets if and when a crypto platform files for bankruptcy.
More importantly, what happens now to the entire DeFi market? The downfall of TerraUSD has trembled the market affecting all of the top ten cryptocurrencies. Forbes even released a story earlier this week calling crypto ‘The Biggest Ponzi Scheme In Human History.’
Funny enough, the CEO of Forbes was just at MIT’s ‘Web3 Summit’ this past week, celebrating all of the top thought leaders in the blockchain space, speaking on a panel and advocating for the future of Web3 and crypto.
It goes to show that the media coverage is subjective, but one bad apple shouldn’t spoil all the hard and genuine work that has gone into building this industry. But the media does love to spotlight negative stories further fueling FUD into the market.
Despite all of that, a large share of the market is maintaining optimistic and resilient. In June, 23% of roughly 4,400 U.S. adults surveyed by Morning Consult said they’re considering to buy crypto in the next month. That’s only a smidge below 26% in January.
Blockster, being forever optimistic about Web3 culture, is turning the spotlight today on a DeFi success story which deserves to be celebrated. Meet Dr. Julian Hosp, an ex-professional kite surfer, trained medical doctor, and one of the most respected and successful figures in the blockchain space.
If you’re not yet familiar with Dr. Hosp’s Singapore-based fintech company, Cake DeFi, then you will be pleased to learn that they operate their firm with full integrity, ensuring that customer assets are kept separate from the company’s operating accounts, presenting full transparency on how they earn their returns.
“Simply put, our users get transparency, complete control, ownership & authority over their funds.”
Dr. Julian Hosp, Founder & CEO of Cake DeFi
When I connected with Dr. Hosp, the first question that came to mind is ‘Oh my God… is your company doing alright?’ And to my surprise, he optimistically answered that his ‘company is doing great!’ In fact, they’ve just opened a venture capital arm with $100m set to invest into Web3-related projects!
Hearing that was music to my ears. And that’s when I requested to get the full story behind Dr. Julian Hosp’s DeFi platform, Cake DeFi. To be thriving in such brutal market conditions goes to show that the company is doing incredible things.
Check out today’s interview with the highly respected, Dr. Julian Hosp, CEO and Founder of Cake DeFi, who talks about his fintech company and sparks hope for future crypto investors.
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You have preserved your company’s integrity, as well as, your user’s funds throughout this latest period of market turbulence, while big trusted names like Celsius have faltered. What’s the magic sauce at Cake DeFi?
Thank you very much. Ever since Cake was founded, safety, security and transparency have always been our core principles.
Not all DeFi platforms are made equal, and it’s essential that users fully understand how their funds are being managed and invested before they start putting their money into a platform.
The truth is, many CeFi platforms such as Celsius apply a completely different business model, where most of their activity happens in a “black box”. They offer their users limited transparency and control to other entities other than to itself. A user would not be able to find out where yields are coming from or – worse – if their funds are being shared with the company’s operating funds.
As a Singapore-based fintech company, Cake Defi ensures that customer assets are kept separate from the company’s operating accounts and full transparency on how they earn their returns. Simply put, our users get transparency, complete control, ownership and authority over their funds.
Explain the principles behind your platform. When I make money on Cake Defi, where is that money coming from?
Cake DeFi gives you three options to generate cash flow and a passive income: Lending, Staking and Liquidity Mining – and what’s best, is that our customers receive their rewards twice a day!
For our Lending product, your funds are being lent out to reputable institutional partners, fully insured and risk-free with a guaranteed return: you can see exactly how much interest you would earn if you lend out your crypto. Cake DeFi offers a lending rate of up to 6.5% APY (one of the highest in the industry).
For our Staking product, you can join masternode pools to earn staking returns. A proof-of-stake blockchain validates transactions at every predefined interval and creates a “block” that is appended to the blockchain. If a Masternode validates a block and adds it to the blockchain, then the user receives a reward for staking their coins.
“Our Liquidity Mining product rewards users up to 41% APR for providing liquidity to a liquidity pool in order to facilitate trades on a Decentralised Exchange (DEX).”
Dr. Julian Hosp, Founder & CEO at Cake DeFi
Since Cake DeFi acts as an agent – an intermediary between the user and the actual service – we pass on the blockchain rewards directly to our customers. How much we, as a platform, get is transparently visible on the blockchain as well as on our platform. Our business model is commission based: we only earn when our customers earn as well.
The name Cake DeFi, as in ‘you’re making cake,” right? Tell us your story. What inspired you to build this platform?
When U-Zyn and I founded Cake DeFi in 2019 we were facing a problem: Both of us were invested in crypto, but our coins were laying around and doing nothing for us. So we decided that we have to change that and came up with the idea of a platform where you can earn a passive income on your cryptocurrencies – the rest is history.
But to be honest, I was skeptical at first, but I gave it a shot by creating a simple webpage asking people to register their interest in becoming part of Cake’s masternode network in return for staking rewards. We hit around 1,000 sign ups within 24 hours.
That was the start of a 3 year rollercoaster ride. Every milestone we celebrated–through the emotions–we would share a moment with a slice of cake and cheer. One major milestone was when we applied for our business license in Singapore: we threw some ideas into the hat and it turned out there wasn’t another company registered with “Cake” in Singapore—it seemed like fate! So we chose the name Cake because it’s fun (and because we love cake!).
Why should I use Cake Defi instead of another similar platform?
“Cake DeFi is completely different from our competitors because from day one, we agreed that we should build our platform based on trust and transparency.”
Dr. Julian Hosp, Founder and CEO of Cake DeFi
Unlike other platforms, all of our customers know exactly how and where their money is invested – all the time. You can find all of the blockchain information on our DeFi services on our platform. Putting a spin on Bitcoin’s adage of “don’t trust, verify”, you can trust Cake because you can verify.
The easy to use interface invites newbies as well as experienced investors alike and if you ever run into a problem then our dedicated customer service support team and our multilingual community is always here to help you.
What can a typical Cake DeFi user expect to make?
This really depends on the risk appetite of the user. Our platform offers the right product for everyone. Risk averse investors can use our Lending product to get up to 5% APY on Bitcoin and a flat 6.5% APY on Stablecoins. For risk takers, on the other hand, we have our Liquidity Mining product, where yields up to 41% APR can be achieved. In between those two products – from a risk perspective – is our Staking product that currently offers 26.5% APR with the option to increase the returns by freezing your assets for a certain period.
Have the current market conditions scared away any of your users?
We’ve seen an increase in withdrawals when the news about Celsius and BlockFi halting their services spread. This FUD also affected companies in good standing with a solid business model and risk management like Cake DeFi.
Keeping to our values as a company, we processed 100% of our withdrawals with no difficulties (99% of our customers received their withdrawals within 24 hours).
“Despite the market conditions, we saw an increase in net deposits after the initial wave of withdrawals, possibly because users moved out from competitor platforms and into ours.”
Dr. Julian Hosp, Founder & CEO of Cake DeFi
A lot of crypto investors are scared away from investing right now, and maybe forever. What advice would you give the people that have gotten burnt?
Cryptocurrency veterans are well acquainted with the crashes in the crypto market. In fact, Bitcoin has crashed by as much as 80% in its early days. The lows and highs of the crypto market are considered normal market fluctuations and are the perfect opportunity for long-term investors to calibrate their portfolios.
Facts and information at a particular moment are often used to make investment decisions. If underlying facts change, then investors must reflect on these past decisions and make adjustments. Just like surfing, great investing takes a lot of patience. Bad investors, however, don’t have the patience.
If the prices of crypto are too volatile for investors to be comfortable with, there are alternative ways to monetize their crypto. For instance, Cake DeFi’s Staking and Liquidity Mining services allow crypto holders to generate rewards through decentralized financial services even if the markets are down.
How do you see the DeFi market evolving over the coming years?
Many of the projects in the DeFi industry have been created with specific solutions around TradFi (Traditional Finance) challenges in mind. Currently, there is emerging activity around tokenized versions of traditional financial products (such as Amazon stocks) and the option for lending. However, I expect more asset classes to make their way into the DeFi space.
I believe gaming will be a major innovation and NFTs will also have an important role to play, both in terms of trading/speculation and investment. Over time, blockchain will become even more mainstream. Integration with conventional financial services will benefit the adoption rate of blockchain technology. Cross chain interoperability may or may not be a reality in the future. It’s a crucial development if it occurs but it’s not critical if it doesn’t.
I see the option for traditional financial products entering the DeFi market, like tokenized versions of Amazon stocks for example. The DeFi industry would also seek to monetize (blockchain) gaming/Web3 and NFTs, in the same sense of being able to invest in or against these projects like commodities. Another major evolution is cross chain interoperability. By harnessing the power of a single liquidity layer similar to the SWIFT network, DeFi might be able to resolve scalability issues.
What are your most popular programs on Cake DeFi?
The most popular product on Cake DeFi is staking. This is because it is easy to use, understand, and reliable. All things considered, staking provides a better option for investors to put their cryptos to work and generate returns as opposed to just HODLing. It doesn’t really require technical expertise on cryptocurrencies or hefty investment on equipment, especially if you opt for using platforms such as Cake DeFi.
Staking on Cake DeFi also gives solid returns (up to 30%) with a payout twice a day. No other platform provides a beginner-friendly way to generate passive income with daily real-time earnings you can collect.
Compared to other staking projects that have been active with various development teams for up to 3–5 years, every aspect of Cake DeFi is designed to make crypto investment simple, including marketing and customer service.
Cake DeFi will initially focus on aligning with the top 20 cryptocurrencies, providing functionality that makes it easier for people to invest in the top currencies.
Besides staking, Cake DeFi has another way to get solid returns of up to 8% per year. You have the opportunity to benefit from the lucrative yet safe investment strategies that have long been reserved only for institutional investors. This is done by lending money to major institutions that cover the risks and also guarantee the returns that Cakedefi pays out to you.
What does the future hold for Cake Defi in the coming years?
The future is exciting for Cake DeFi. The next stage of our growth will come from building access to DeFi and Web3 not just for consumers, but for businesses as well. It is our ambition to list Cake DeFi on a public stock exchange in the near future.
As part of our efforts to accelerate start-ups in the Web3, eSports, gaming and Fintech fields, we launched Cake DeFi Ventures, our US$100 million venture capital arm earlier this year. In addition, we also announced a further $1 million commitment to support local CSR and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives.
You’ve just raised $100m to launch your crypto fund. How do you plan to invest that money?
I’m proud to say the $100M actually came from our own profits – we did not have to raise external funds for this. Cake DeFi Ventures is looking to invest in technology startups in Web3, gaming and fintech – especially those in the metaverse, NFT, blockchain and esports industries – that will bring synergistic value to Cake DeFi’s core business.
Dr. Julian, tell us, what makes you a Blockster?
“My vision is to bring blockchain education to 1 billion people by 2025.”
Dr. Julian Hosp, Founder & CEO of Cake DeFi
I am an active speaker for the Washington Speaker’s Bureau and an advisor for the EU’s blockchain groups. I have also written many books to demystify cryptocurrency (such as Cryptocurrencies Simply Explained and Blockchain 2.0 — Far More Than Just Bitcoin).
Most importantly, I am dedicated to bringing financial freedom to as many people around the globe as possible by providing access to decentralized financial services through Cake DeFi. That’s what makes me a Blockster.
We wish you all the best Dr. Julian on your journey to building your empire. And congratulations on welcoming the newest additions to the Hosp family! Wishing you good health and happiness from all of us at Blockster. Cheers!
