David Kay / Liti Capital

David Kay on Liti Capital's litigation finance platform

InterviewJuly 7, 202121:36

In this episode

Ashton Addison speaks with David Kay, Executive Director of Liti Capital. David discusses Liti Capital’s role in litigation finance and blockchain, how they’re democratizing access to litigation finance through the WLITI token, the three litigation cases they acquired, and how their using Liti capital to protect people from crypto scams in the industry.

Key takeaways
  • Litigation finance provides funding for legal cases in exchange for a percentage of winnings, enabling individuals to fight well-funded opponents.
  • Liti Capital democratizes litigation finance access through blockchain tokens, allowing retail investors to participate regardless of capital size.
  • The company operates with Swiss regulatory approval and offers both equity tokens and wrapped WLITI tokens for trading on exchanges.
  • David Kay transitioned from private equity litigation financing to blockchain after recognizing the unfairness of restricting investment access to accredited investors.
  • Liti Capital aims to protect individuals from crypto scams while providing private equity-like returns to a global audience of all investment levels.

Transcript

Read the full transcript 3,935 words, auto-generated and lightly edited

For the viewers with just a little bit on your background in the space and then we can dive into liddy capital yeah absolutely so i actually started my career as a lawyer which thank god i left a long time ago i was then an investment banker and then for the last 10 years i was i was one of the founders and the portfolio manager for what was a large

private equity firm based out of new york when i left we had over a billion dollars of capital and we were really focused solely on litigation financing and complex you know arbitrations and litigations that take place around the world so this is this is been in my blood for a long time i took some time off for covet which was which was nice

You know i was lucky most of the people that i know were you know were not affected and i had been traveling for about 260 days a year before that so it was good to connect with the family again and then you know for the last year i've been sitting on boards of some larger public and private entities until i met jonas and the guys and when they told me this idea

it blew me away i didn't know that there was anything that could get me to you know come back into you know this kind of craziness full time but they did that's a great background and i can't believe you've been traveling that much and now being in the blockchain space it seems like you really can be anywhere but i know that your team is working on

a bunch of litigations that we can dive into and i don't think a lot of the viewers are probably familiar with litigation finance and you know a lot of people understand finance but it's rare that they hear about litigation finance and what lady capital is doing maybe you could explain a little bit surrounding what exactly is litigation finance and how is lady

capital involved in that yeah it's a great it's a great question so litigation finance in short is a process by which we help to finance the cost of litigations for people that couldn't otherwise afford it right so the best and in exchange we get a percentage of the upside and probably the best example is let's say ashton that you started a company

think is an issue right you do something small like post the silly twitter picture of nothing with nothing and hugeco claims that you violated the contract they take your company right and they don't pay you now you know you didn't really do anything wrong okay but huge co is willing to spend three to five million dollars to fight you in court for the next two to three years

now your business is gone your income is gone and what do you do and you know the sad thing is you know what with most people what happens is they actually walk away you know this whole idea that the bad guys don't win is actually not true a lot of the time the bad boys and the huge goals of the world even if they do something that's not appropriate they win

sometimes people will put up a little bit of money amount of slight defense and huge code will come in and say look you made your point you know we'll give you two to three million dollars to walk away which is a huge amount of money and almost everybody else takes that one what we do is something different what we do is we step in and we say no that's not appropriate this is

ridiculous we will finance you the full cost of the litigation if we lose or you lose there's no liability for you take 100 of the liability and if you win we'll take a percentage right let's say twenty percent now we stand up to huge co huge cost lawyers know of me and the great lawyers that we get from you we fight them and a lot of the time not

every time but a lot of the time we went and now ashton you know you've walked away with 12 million dollars very happy to give us our three you know and everybody walks away happy so that's kind of a short example of how it works that's a great example thank you and hopefully that never happens with event change specifically in that example but

I don't want 15 million if we win definitely i know big companies when they try to take advantage of smaller companies and just draw out litigations and have expensive lawyers then that's obviously the time when you would need a litigation finance company at like lady capital and now with lady capital you're also incorporating blockchain technology and

cryptocurrencies into it to help democratize access and a bunch of other advantages maybe you can talk about the specifics of liddy capital and how it's differentiated from a traditional litigation finance company yeah it's a great question i mean you know i was telling you i got dragged back into this and i kid about that but really what it was is

you know one of the things that really upset me about the private equity space in the u.s generally is that my parents couldn't invest in my private equity fund because they don't have a million dollars of liquidity my siblings couldn't invest in my private equity fund because as of now right outside of defy you can't invest unless you're an

accredited investor which means you have to have about a million dollars to me that was ridiculous and it was always a problem right i know that i'm not out there saving babies but i genuinely believe and it has genuinely always made me feel proud to go out and defend the little guy and historically i've defended the widow guy to make thirty to fifty percent cash on cash

returns every year for the one percent and the idea of being able to provide private equity for everyone which is my passion here is something that is so game changing and it is so the right path whether it's us at litty capital or somebody else you know this is the right path these types of returns this type of industry i mean google hedge fund their private equity

the returns are out of control and some of the absolute stupidest people i know have more than a million dollars of liquidity and some of the smartest people i know don't and the idea that is the dividing line between people that can get these returns never saturate with me and that's what liddy capital is about litty capital is about providing

these types of returns to everybody all around the world whether you're fifty dollars five dollars or five million dollars definitely and i completely agree and it seems and i hope that the rules are continuing to change because it does seem so unfair that the one percent can get access to these opportunities and sometimes it there's people that are more than

capable and more than qualified to receive opportunities like this but they just don't have access to it so i'm really glad that you're presenting it in this way could you talk more about how you know retail investors and the 99 actually can get access and participate with lidi capital yeah absolutely so the way that we've set up woody capital is there are

there are two tokens there is an there's an equity token which is the equivalent of a share in the company and we're a real company right it's an experience management team you know crypto is flooded with people that have ideas it's flooded with scammers which we should talk about you know our entire team is an experienced management team who's done

this before we're set up in switzerland we're one of only a handful of companies that has actually gotten a letter and an approval from the swiss government from the swiss regulatory authority confirming that what we're doing is acceptable and you can own a share you know a part of us you can be a part of this movement by owning a token that equity token

is then further broken down into what's called a wrapped liddy okay and the wrapped liddy is what trades on the different exchanges that we're set up on and that wrapped witty is what the 99 percent can go out and buy and sell two minutes one minute hold for three years stay with us you know whatever you want to do that wrapped liddy is that liquid mechanism for people

to be able to participate it's a great explanation thank you and that is great to hear that you're also you know registered and approved in switzerland i think that also brings a lot of credentials to the platform so that's nice to hear and now in terms of actually generating the revenues you mentioned taking over litigation cases i was reading that

liddy capital itself already has three high profile cases and you're working on expanding out can you talk about those cases and you know why you chose those or what are the qualifications in getting a case that you think has a high probability of winning and generating revenue for the company yeah i mean it's a great question you know the interesting part about this

is that part that's the easy part right for me for the better part of the last decade i have been diligencing collecting working on and ultimately collecting capital for when we've gotten judgments litigation finance cases that's what i do the new part to me is actually the crypto side and the blockchain side so it's a little

bit of art it's a little bit of science you know just like anything else you get a feel for what's a good case the things that are important to us is obviously who is the plaintiff and who's the defendant there's all these rules around law and complicated statutes but you would be surprised at how many cases by experienced judges and juries alike

that are decided based on who they think is the good guy and who they think is the bad guy right so understanding who is on both sides of it is hugely important where it's being litigated it is certainly much more attractive to be litigating a case in western europe or the united states than sub-saharan africa although we've we've taken on cases

successfully in all of those places and then i would probably say one of the most important determinants and one of the things that's the most overlooked is who is the defender and that's important because at the end of the day a judgment is just the single most expensive piece of paper you've ever bought the game and what our job is to actually get people paid

and the odds of you getting paid does rely materially on the credit quality of the defense so understanding the defendant understanding their ability to pay and ultimately selecting those cases where there's a good plaintiff with a good story in a jurisdiction that makes sense and against the defendant that can ultimately pay you know that's that's basically the secret sauce

now i told you so now now everyone knows that's great and thank you for that explanation david and that does make sense and sometimes it's just the good guys versus the bad guys and there are judgment calls that are made there so it's great to hear that insight from the experience that you have prior to you know introducing introducing the blockchain part of it as well

and with liddy capital and the blockchain part i saw that your team recently closed a 12 million dollar private round as well and i know you're continuing to raise and there's a lot of excitement around lady capital so congratulations on that first of all and i'm curious what are the next steps with that what is that capital going to be allocated towards

yeah first of all thank you we're we're extremely excited we launched about three days ago we had a very successful launch on a significant amount of volume and the support that we've gotten from the community is humbling and we are excited because this is really just the beginning for linear capital i think in terms of the capital that we've raised

you know we've done what we're supposed to do right my job as the cio of woody capital is ultimately to build a portfolio of assets that will generate the types of returns that the industry has done in the last 10 years and that i specifically have accomplished 30 50 cash on cash returns once we get started is the target and the way to do that is ultimately

to take the cash that we raise and buy assets buy litigations and manage them so you're right we've done that with three litigations we've actually spent 10 of the 12 million dollars on those three litigations and this is a really important point that i want to make sure that your viewers understand we are not a cryptocurrency we are an asset based company if bitcoin

goes to a hundred thousand the value of the assets that are in our portfolio haven't changed if bitcoin goes to 5 000 the value of the assets in our portfolio hasn't changed the outcome is still going to be the outcome and the cash dividends and proceeds that go to our token holders are going to be the same irrespective of what's happening in currencies so

you know that is an important piece in terms of the additional capital that we're raising we have a long and large portfolio of cases that meet the criteria that i like to invest in and we are actively diligencing we have a couple of term sheets out now we're hoping and expecting to announce some adding some additional cases to the portfolio in the near future

That's a great explanation and thank you for that and we did talk already a little bit about the w liddy token and how the 99 can get access to that i just want to touch back on that one more time and i think the viewers understand that you know if you're winning the company's growing that's going to relate to the token as well and the asset backed equity

token is there any other functionality or things that the viewers should know about the w liddy token and if there's an interaction with the platform or how exactly that functions and has their involvement in the project i'm so glad you asked that question for me i talked earlier about the passion that i have for bringing private equity to

to everyone and you know that is a passion but what really got me just jumping in this with both feet is part of this project is that the founders and i have agreed that 5 to 10 of every dollar we raise not profit regenerate dollar we raise is going to be put back in the community to find prosecute

and recover money taken by crypto scams and crypto frauds okay so i want to just be clear that if we were able to raise the same amount of money as i had in my last fund billion dollars there would be 50 to 100 million dollars that we would have where our goal is not to make money we're going to get our expenses plus a 10 for our overhead and the remaining 90

will go back to the people who were scammed and it is you want to talk about the time being now the time is now for this crypto fraud and crypto scam is a scourge on this community and right now governments are not incentivized to stand up and do anything about it because crypto is not being regulated individuals and other people either can't afford it where it doesn't make

sense because it's simply not profitable the only way that we are going to stand up is if some organization stands up and says i'm not doing this to make money i'm doing this because it's the right thing to do and with the particular skill set of me and my partners we know how to go get people we know how to find them and we ultimately know how to bring money back

in and so this you know we believe that this is going to be a very material part of the offering and i don't know if you saw it or not but you know we've already had our first successful case with an influencer and friend of mine coach k who is a relatively known person relatively well-known person in the cryptosphere who we got introduced to because he was

scammed he lost 250 000 to a scammer and we were introduced to him and he brought us on the show and within 48 hours we have located a scammer we had located where he was what he had done with the money it's actually worth watching you can go to his channel or any of the witty capital sites and take a look but this is not words words are one

thing actions are another and witty capital is here to stay with that and these scammers a lot of them are going to hear from us really really soon wow that's definitely great to hear david and i'm so glad that your team is focused on that and giving back because it is a an issue in crypto but i don't think it's something that you know people should

be afraid of the no coiners and people who haven't got into the industry yet they hear that this is the main thing it sort of deters them from entering the space altogether but as you've clearly shown with the creation of lady capital there's so many advantages and benefits of having these cryptocurrencies and introducing it and democratizing access to this capital

so the benefits definitely outweigh the negatives but i'm so glad that your team is focused on that as well so that's really great i'm telling you i really believe that it is one of the primary things that are holding back this industry that fear of being scammed and the number of people who have been scammed it's it's poison and we gotta stand

up and say enough's enough you'd be shocked so the people that we're going after generally when we are going after people to repay for wrongs that they've done they do they at least make an attempt to hide themselves and their assets there is no fear among these scammers they are not hiding they are not going anywhere they don't believe anyone is coming it

is it is absolutely unbelievable to me and at the very least hopefully what lady capital will be able to do with the coach k story and the other stuff that's coming on the 9th of july we're going to announce the next three cases that we're potentially going after and only w video holders get to decide which of those three cases we ultimately go forward and prosecute

We're announcing that on july 9th and i think that what you're going to see and our the minimum effect that we want to have is to make these people afraid because i believe that somewhere between 25 and 50 of these cases will go away if there's even the smallest bit of fear to get caught there's going to be these real criminals that will that there will be a problem

for a while it's a deep-rooted problem but i think there's a chunk of it that just comes because nobody's afraid of getting caught there's no downside and we're going to change that definitely that's great to hear and you did mention there you're introducing more cases in early july here for the w liddy token holders also to have a say in can we are running short on time

david but i would love to hear the best ways for the viewers to learn more about doubly litty token lee capital how to get a part of this platform and get involved absolutely so you can come join us on our website buddycapital.com on telegram lead capital official on twitter at liddy capital it is and if you have been scammed you can

email us at scambuster liddycapital.com and please join us if you've been scammed or if you want to be a part of a community where you can invest the same way the one percent has been able to do it best we really you know actually i think i told you at the beginning our goal is to get this message out to everybody everybody has the opportunity to not only should have the opportunity

and now does to invest like the one percent but also to be part of a community that protects its own and woody capital is the place for both and we hope everybody comes and checks us out definitely david and i will leave all of those links in the description box below for the viewers as well all the best with liddy capital and the whole platform moving forward

i'm really excited to see how these initiatives play out and to make the crypto space a safer space as well so thank you so much for that and let's follow up in the near future thanks for having me ashley sure thing you

More interviews

Browse all 1,083 interviews

Get new interviews firstCCS Insider, the free newsletter from Ashton Addison. Twice a week.

Subscribe free