Everest tokenizes $20M in emeralds from Limitless Mine

0:01I'm ashon Addison from the Crypto Coin Show and today on blockchain interviews we have back with us Bob Reed CEO of Everest Bob it is a pleasure to see you again and I'm always excited to learn about how Everest is bringing in merging banking traditional Finance with crypto web 3 there's a lot going on right now yeah absolutely great to be

0:24back with you glad we're in the same part of the world too makes time zones work out wonderfully definitely you know I saw some recent updates of what Evers is working on something really exciting over Twitter and I feel like now is a great time for expansion into something like this we can dive into it U but I feel like with the ethereum ETF around the corner more institutions

0:48more traditional companies are getting excited about integrating blockchain and just seeing the benefits of like hey you know t0 more liquidity things like that so I would love to sort of high level into Everest in you guys do a lot but what it pertains to this new update that your team has just announced maybe sort of give a high level and dive in a little

1:14bit into that sure so look ever we've been around since 2018 headquartered in Malta so I like to put it those 500 companies that showed up for blockchain Island six years ago we were one of the 10 that got the custodial license and we got lucky in that the vfa regulations out of Malta became basically 98% adopted for the ma custodial for pan

1:43Europe we're unique in that not only are we custodian we actually have our own evm chain which functions either as an L1 to tokenize things permissioned or an L2 to for example you know ethereum main net in some cases so because of those capabilities we've been tokenizing Fiat I think stable coins but we also tokenized crypto not only our own but

2:11also info tokens like here's zero knowledge proofs of identity again on our chain and other chains Bridges out to polygon and such and even tokenizing on ethereum Main net and so what that leads to is you can really kind of come in and out of Fiat crypto and anything tokenized all in the same platform and to sort of put a bow around that

2:40for tokenization what that means is we're one of the few in the world that can actually think about the big things in you know activities for tokenization you to take custody to something right money debt assets something then I have to tokenize it tokenize it on Main net or it's a financial instrument and it's kind of do it on a permission chain and

3:07then the last piece is you actually have to do some sort of you know exchange capability people can buy sell trade whatever you took into custody and coast and so Everest does all three of those so we're kind of what I would call like a turnkey super shop organization wow that's amazing I feel like it's there's still 95 plus per of people that need to have better on

3:36and off ramps for Fiat into stable coins and you know having all the licenses to sort of move money around or transfer to across borders but the tokenization part as it pertains to real world Assets in the rwa space I feel like is the market cap is like in the quadrillions when you tokenize almost everything in the world and there's a lot of things that have very

4:02low liquidity or you know something that's worth $100 million a building any asset that's just a block you need one person to have $100 million who's specifically interested in that and the barriers to entry are so high that tokenizing on the real world asset side is going to change the game I agree I agree we've seen a lot of it so you can imagine like we've been

4:28tokenizing things for four years now right and to your point like well let's go back once like when people tokenize and there's a lot of tokenization going on right now typically you don't get all three of those elements in the same company or infrastructure right somebody does the custodial somebody else does tokenization somebody else does the

4:49liquidi like you know HSBC does the custody some blockchain company only will do the tokenization and there's some third- party exchange kind of thing happens like bring it all in and now as you get into what's valuable to tokenize right like there's a whole bunch of people I call masquerading around saying we're tokenizing treasuries like big deal like

5:14let just cut to the chase on that one like it's regulated like money it's more or less a mutual fund stop using a buzzword to promote yourself like like stop done one of the so you know I think we''ve mentioned like we're actually approved to swap tokens to financial instruments like stocks Commodities the first one we're launching with though that we've

5:42announced publicly is a mining company and I don't mean a Bitcoin mining company I mean a traditional like multi-billion Dollar in assets like dig stuff out of the ground mining company and it turns out like ter you know when the VCS always talk about product Market fit we found something really unique here because it is one of the largest asset classes in the world like let's

6:13dig iron copper gold Etc out of the ground right and it turns out these are all very El liquid assets right now gold ETFs can be traded but like and so can precious metals but the here's lithium in the ground here's emeralds in the ground there's tens of billion actually guys we're talking to have tens of billions like the market cap is in the

6:40hundreds of billions or higher but there in some cases cash flow po it's just massive you know pieces of assets that you know with tokenization can get liquid finally no that's that's a great point I think when I you know when I'm in Canada and I see traditional investors older investors they love Mining and I look

7:10at it you know from the lens of somebody who's in blockchain and sees the liquidity and you know being able to move between assets day by day and it's crazy to see how El liquid and like the investment Horizons that they have it's like you know you're looking 5 10 plus years down the road and I couldn't imagine actually owning the mine in and what they the amount of

7:35assets they have to have that they can't sell efficiently it's got to be I feel like that industry is very R for disruption as long as the people in it are on board and understand hey this is going to help businesses and the investors to make everything just faster and more liquid you're nailing it and by the way the Canadian experience is actually

7:56really you know it's preent and Worth to discussing in this so you can imagine like well our partner Limitless is what they're called they've got over 10 billion do in assets and typically when you go like here's Emerald Alexandrite or copper or gold and they go to sell it there's you know a wholesaler a distributor whatever and

8:23their margins get compressed compressed compressed and so when we started brainstorming with them of you know how to make their business better right like let's just get back to business 101 like what problems are we solving minting a token actually has functional utility in this case of they can literally people can buy their tokens and there's you can use it to

8:51have a an emerald you can buy an emerald directly from them so it's cheaper than waiting for the jewelry store to do it cut it take a tour of the mine Etc and they are so confident that people will like what they have they offered a refund policy of if you don't use this in the next three years like the tokens you buy they will refund to

9:19the tune of 4X what people puras for wow okay so okay so let me understand this relationship so Everest is partnering with a mine Limitless Emerald mine and they have 10 billion in assets so what how much exactly are they tokening tokenizing and then how does that work when people go to Everest to purchase

9:49the part of the tokenization Great questions so they've actually put over $250 Million worth of collateral into Everest custody so we're holding that as a just in case we've minted 21 million tokens on ethereum mainnet 20 of them will be available for sale one million

10:18is for incentive for people to get the word out from there they use not only ever for Fiat on and off ramp so you can show up with your debit card anywhere in the world and buy these tokens but they also use some of the infrastructure we develop that you know other folks in our ecosystem leverage and that's if you will that allows the swapping directly

10:48from metamask and eth or ID or usdt to buy you know swap for these tokens so yeah what it means and I'll go back to the Canadian reference just to think about what we just talked about is like there are mines all over the world that actually are have trapped liquidity right and tokenization plus the custody plus the

11:17exchange is essentially like bringing the Toronto Stock Exchange to the whole world and it's very liquid right so we all talk about like the promise of you know blockchain crypto I think we're in a really good spot okay so if I go to the Everest platform I'm able to buy some of the tokenization any amount and then what's

11:46the time Horizon on the investment like you mentioned there like a refund policy or a Forex what would I be looking at if I put into this sure so again I try to stay away from words like investment this is you're buying a functional utility like buying a gift card for a yogurt okay there is a basically a swap mechanism that will be on Limitless

12:17is website also on a nonprofit you will Launchpad and then also on the foundation if you want to buy with Fiat then that'll be ever Network and if you want you can just show up to their site simple connect your wallet just like Unis swap you can swap as many usdt eth ID tokens for these gems

12:47tokens at that point you're given an option to you can stake those on ever chain and get 20% apy right or you can hold for 36 months and use the token how you normally would and if you don't use those tokens then Limitless is signing up to give you a refund you'll be able to go back and just go I want to

13:13swap these gems for you know I want my refund and you just swap them back for the amount times four wow so for on the company side is that like Hey we're getting a bunch of liquidity in advance it really helps them with their operations and so in that way they're able to do that they have a forecast out clearly where you know they

13:43have we're talking about a multi-billion dollar Mining Company they're not worried about the cash right and they actually like doubled down and gave Everest the custody of if you think about it this is a there's 20 million tokens for sale $1 each and then even if 99.9% of everybody shows up three years later and wants their refund the company's on the hook for $80 million

14:14which they have and if just in case like Calamity happens and there's you know floods and Locust Etc Everest has three times the 80 already in custody too okay so it's about as like in terms of like you want to get into real world assets here's real real world assets mhm definitely and did you how did the

14:42relationship with this specific mind come about gosh there's actually folks from our community that saw what we were doing and said hey couldn't you wouldn't you and you know it led to we got really educated with minds and actually you know look I've been down now to the mines with them I've been out to you know headquarters I've been to

15:05their offices like it's practically family now right so you've seen the emeralds you've seen the emeralds live oh yeah as matter of fact here one one here's something coming to you couple ofs right there right from their mind if you're want to see yeah like I was

15:36out with their team they have little boxes about this big right emeralds bigger than my thumb one of them like almost the size of my hand and the associated Gia certification books showing that little package this big is worth $44,000 wow and so yeah you can imagine the

16:04level of trust they had in Everest to say here's 259 million exactly assets into your custody and we you know we take it pretty seriously as you can imagine that's very cool and you mentioned earlier about the ID token as well playing a role in this you know and I know that's it's been around for a lot

16:30longer than this mind partnership how are you guys incorporating that token into the gems token partnership as well great question so a couple of different ways so one you'll be able to swap ID tokens for gems tokens you'll also be able to take gems tokens and stake on ever chain to earn ID tokens 20% I paid an ID wow okay and then we also have

17:00simply the functional utility that is the ID token show you what our calculator looks like what does this actually do for Everest and actually the ID token specifically let me just do a quick screen share I'll show it to you all right so

17:31at the foundation network.org which owned all the ID tokens here is real world asset tokenization and we wanted to show like hey there's going to be 20,000 identities verified half of those we think we'll actually go through Fiat and get kyc the other half probably won't right they'll just be swapping directly with no kyc we had to program some things and so

18:01here are the dollars that are used and then here's the tokens that are used and consumed right depending on the function that's happening and this is all available and you'll be able to see so you know be able to buy and swap you're going to be selling on Main net Etc so the utility and the amount of tokens consumed you know pushing you know million almost 2

18:29million there come back to the top there's the community voted a while ago of how many IDs would be burned and how many rewarded the validators and so this is a tokenomics calculator and we're we're going to be updating this constantly because we have more deals coming in what it does every time the ID token is used how it's what it function is and what happens to the

18:53whole yeah everything very cool awesome yeah and so you guys already have the capital from the mine are the gems already available to purchase or what's the timeline for the whole partnership to start we've already taken custody we've already minted tokens they already have they have stock to sell gems until

19:25ever and so we're looking at at later in June or early July for really the token being available for everyone and then it's like I said debit card anywhere in the world requires kyc if you're simply swapping up to 99,900 dollar worth everything under is literally just show up with your

19:52wallet just like Unis SW that's always nice lower the barriers to entry fewer steps the fewer clicks a person has to do the better consumers feel about it all so yeah and the other thing to point out is this is not only the first of a few with Limitless mine it's one of our first mining companies and we have a

20:19pretty pipeline because again like we think we stumbled upon quite literally like a gold mine like every one of these mining companies likes the idea of taking their illiquid assets and getting them liquid and getting them globally liquid so yeah no I can imagine definitely and you know I've actually heard stories of other mining companies

20:48trying to you know so-called utilize tokenization but it always just seems like I don't know maybe it's just a money grabber a PR or something like that I haven't actually seen something where hey they've already put you know 250 million plus into another company and they're offering a refund and there's a return that's guaranteed and I guess for the company this big

21:17a mine that has billions it's it's not a lot for them maybe it's just testing the waters maybe this could be something that is you know tokenizing billions as we continue to grow our wa into the mainstream yeah and again like look I always as a custodian and one doing a utility token I always try to be cautious that there's nothing's ever

21:40guaranteed because that gets everybody regulatory I hope and they hope that people are going to get their tokens they're going to use them for buying gems directly because then your girlfriend wife Etc will be really happy or taking it to where the refund policy and the extra you know I would call 3x to 20x collateral is really their statement of the world that they're

22:06deadly serious and have the assets and the money to back all this up right so that's just I think it's you know it's a really good sign M definitely so if you when you buy gems and you want to actually get physical gems you know sort of the tokenization settlement to is it just you're purchasing raw Gems or they actually have jewelry how how

22:33how what are the possibilities on what I can get of physical assets with the gems really good question so they will sell here's raw emeralds I said like I was looking at boxes like here's a gem like the size of my thumb I don't know what to do with that but like it's big they've also gone all the way through like they know all the jewel Jewelers and you can any they'll have

23:00something made for you like these bracelets we're sending out to right some of the folks that are interested and so I would say it runs from you want a Raw Stone to do you want actually something finished in a necklace bracelet whatever M that's awesome well I you know have a feeling I hope with the I've seen quite an increase in interest in gold and silver and

23:28lithium and these other precious metals that would sort of trickle down to all physical kind of assets as a whole so I feel like this is a good time for a tokenization of something like this I agree I mean to Echo your sentiment about folks have tried some of this previously and they tried nfts for diamonds and the truth is nobody wants and like and those have

23:53generally not done terribly well and then there's organization of gold that all you're really doing is tracking the price of gold this is tokenizing an ecosystem with just an incredibly interesting functional utility with collateral and refund policy and that's right if this were a financial instrument this would be like on Maple saying here's corporate

24:19debt and here's 50% apy right now that's what that you if you didn't have the functional utility of the token that's what it would look like 50% apy right backed up by a multi-billion dollar Corporation you're like okay yeah that's amazing and you mentioned that you'll be able to get the gems from the Limitless site but also on Everest so if I am I want to

24:51get in on this on day one I guess it depends on what currency or crypto you're starting with but what's the best way to follow along for like the launch of it on the first day ever launch. org okay okay ever launched we'll have that widget up where you'll be able to swap crypto for gems easily seamlessly and if you want to use your

25:19debit card and touch Fiat to do this Foundation network.org is the other just depends on if you want to you know go through through kyc and Fiat or if you want to just you know swap mhm awesome I'm looking forward to it I'll leave those links in the show notes below as well and I would love to have you back on you know after it launches and

25:42and just to see I'm I'm very interested to see how this goes and also just how our wa real world asset tokenization expands this could be one of the catalysts for just everything hopefully the whole mining industry starts paying attention and realizes hey we're we're so El liquid this is something that could really help the industry and just

26:03move money faster and cheaper cuz I feel like that's something that it's very ripe for disruption so thank you so much for the time Bob thank you I appreciate it as always you always have most intelligent questions and you know cut to the heart of everything so thanks again for the time