beincrypto.com
BeinCrypto spoke to Max, a core member of Liquidify, the world’s first liquidity accelerator for long-tail crypto assets. He explains his journey into crypto and how Liquidify was created.
Max is Liquidify’s Marketing Team Lead, who has been in the cryptocurrency game for about four years. His origin story is unique, and about as odd as most would expect for those entering the crypto world.
Finding crypto at a job fair
“At the beginning of 2017, I was about to graduate and went to a job fair. It totally sucked and I almost wanted to leave. Suddenly I saw a strange-looking guy with long hair in the farthest corner, wearing a t-shirt and a hat. This is not how you normally go to a job fair!” he explains
“This guy was sitting in his little adjoining room and I asked him if he had any jobs. He said “no”. I asked him what he was doing at a job fair. He told me about his website that he wanted to sell because he was doing other business now and making enough money.”
“I was curious and asked him what he was doing. He told me he was trading crypto. Since I was already investing in stocks back then but had heard little about bitcoin. I was interested and we talked a bit. I then bragged a bit about my 70% earnings from my Tencent stock. For me it was phenomenal. He then told me that you can do 70 percent in one day with crypto.”
From making money to believing the dream
For Max, the intrigue of making money in crypto may have been the hook, but ultimately it was the dream and ideal of this space that drew him in.
“To be honest, the ability to make money played a huge role in the beginning. But what immediately fascinated me was the spirit in the crypto room. Back then it couldn’t even be called industry. It was just a group of adventurers, idealists, and fortune-tellers – a strange bunch of people.”
“But I immediately felt that something was going on here and I just wanted to be part of it. The narrative of decentralization and disintermediation, building a better and fairer internet economy, and so on, completely won me over, and I thought it would just be a great vision to be part of,” he explains.
This conviction was so strong that Max dropped out of his Master’s degree and began his own company. As he explains, “to take part in the crypto revolution.”
Bringing traditional finance to crypto
For Max, Lquidify is just an older idea tailored for the crypto market. The decentralized platform is built to improve the liquidity and growth potential in long-tail crypto assets.
“The traditional financial industry knows similar concepts in dealing with non-performing loans. Basically, these non-performing loans are combined with other good loans and then sold to investors. So we just take this proven model and apply it to the crypto market,” he says.
“At my former consulting firm, we actually focused on DeFi early on, since 2019, when it became clear to Insider that a big movement was afoot. Then at the beginning of the year, I just met the right people and decided to join what I thought was a great project with a great use case.”
“I own a fair share of long-tail crypto assets myself. So I can identify with it and would be interested in using such a protocol myself. So why not help build it?”
“There is a huge graveyard of forgotten or unnoticed crypto assets“
Liquidify’s proposition is that it offers a way out for those who are stuck with bad coins and bad investments.
“We just have to look at the current crypto market to see that the concentration of capital and liquidity is extreme. Over 95% of the capital and trading volume are concentrated in the top 100 assets by market capitalization,” says Max.
“Still, there are almost 11,000 cryptocurrencies listed on CoinMarketCap alone, which means there is a huge graveyard of forgotten or unnoticed crypto assets. Some of them are definitely the proverbial “shitcoins”, but some also have great potential for value.”
However, Max and his team have seen potential in these coins, specifically their community resource. By having participation in their protocol, Max sees it as an opportunity to release some of the enticed value in these illiquid assets.
“It would be a huge benefit for our protocol, but also for the crypto market in general,” he says.
“Many people have lost a lot of money on these coins and cannot sell them now. We offer you a way out. You can exchange your illiquid coins for LAT and receive a much more liquid and potentially very valuable asset. As a result, many of the currently lured values can be put back into circulation and put back on the market, which is beneficial for the entire ecosystem.”
“Some people told me that crypto is just too tribal and people love their shitcoins and don’t give up on them and so on, but that’s definitely not always true. People are selling Dust (very small amounts of cryptocurrencies) on Binance for BNB.”
Risk-benefit calculations
As those who bought these illiquid coins already know, the cryptocurrency market is not always kind. For Max, investing requires the understanding that there is a risk.
“Investing in crypto is inherently risky, there is no doubt about that. But with any investment, it is always a risk-benefit calculation, in other words is the potential gain worth risking my capital?”
“Personally, I decided early on that I didn’t mind losing 100% of $100 if there was a chance of making $1,000 or even $10,000 out of it. And that has actually happened to me, both ways, losing and winning,” he explains.
“What I want to say in terms of Liquidify is, of course, there is a risk, as with any (crypto) investment and it is also a very early-stage project, but there is also huge growth potential.”
The crypto market future
Considering the future of the crypto market in general, Max sees this potential here as well.
“For the crypto space in general, I think it has a very bright future, albeit with many ups and downs. The biggest question mark in my opinion is regulation, meaning how crypto will be regulated and how easy and convenient it will be for traditional finance to get involved with crypto. In my opinion, there is still a significant risk that cryptocurrency, as we know it will become a victim of its own success, meaning governments and established companies, could try to restrict and control it.” he says.
“But whether we will have the current loosely regulated anarcho-style crypto market or a tightly regulated market, crypto will certainly not disappear.”