Investing in Web3 with Midas Investment CEO Iakov Levin

Iakov Levin is the CEO of Midas.Investment, a custodial CeDefi investment platform offering yields on cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. Iakov joined us in this Slogging AMA to talk about investment in web3 and what his plans are for the future of investment in this new digital era.

This Slogging thread by Jack Boreham, james Burrows, Trevor Midas, Melissa Brown, Lara, Char736, Jimmy L, Cryptodragon, Mónica Freitas, Limarc Ambalina, Sara Pinto, Kelley Dane, Cris Silva, Mark Finnigan, John T., Sonic3625 and Jack swift occurred in slogging's official #amas channel, and has been edited for readability.

Jack BorehamAug 22, 2022, 6:02 PM

Hi @channel; it's a pleasure to welcome our next guest, Iakov Levin (Trevor Midas), the CEO and founder of Midas.Investment

Midas.Investment is a custodial CeDeFi investment platform offering market-leading yields on BTC, ETH, USDC, and other cryptocurrencies. Midas' mission is to bridge CeFi with the transparency of DeFi.

You can ask him anything about:

1) What is Midas? What is the fundamental difference between competitors of other crypto investment custodial platforms?
2) What statistics can the Midas platform share?
3) Why did the MIDAS token perform better than the market and grow by 50% during the crypto winter?
4) What are CeDeFi strategies, and why are they so important to the market at this stage?
5) What are the next key plans for the development of the project?

Jack BorehamAug 22, 2022, 6:03 PM

Hi Trevor Midas great to have you with us! Can you start by giving a brief background about yourself and your current work?

Trevor MidasAug 22, 2022, 6:07 PM

Hi! Thank you for having me.
I am the founder and CEO of Midas.Investments for more than 4 years. My CEO role is fully entwines my crypto path.
I have some deep expertise in cognitive science, product management, start-ups and DeFi

My previous experience was related to building start-ups and helping others to grow, and then Midas was born, which was a great teacher during those years of challenging crypto markets

james BurrowsAug 22, 2022, 6:04 PM

Curious to understand what Midas is Trevor Midas

Trevor MidasAug 22, 2022, 6:09 PM

Midas.Investments is the CeDeFi platform that offers a vast variety of investment products with the highest APRs on the market.

Midas is 4 years old, and we have pivoted multiple times until we have stumbled upon the CeFi yield model back in September of 2021, after which we have started the exponential growth in terms of AUM and userbase. Currently offering 6.5% APR on BTC, 7.8% APR on ETH and 11.6% APR on Stable coins. APR can be boosted by 25% if user picks rewards in Midas token.

Our main sources of yield was DeFi, which allowed us to provide really sweat interest rates for users.

In the past 8 months we have invested a lot of resources into the creation of our inner asset management, which focuses on DeFi and algorithmic additions on-top. We have created risk frameworks and infrastructure to reduce most of the risk in DeFi protocols, which allowed us to dodge UST and stETH.

After building a secure layer on top of the yield process and making it transparent through investment reports, we have started to experiment with CeDeFi strategies, which is our vision for the wealth management of the future. CeDeFi strategies combine simplicity of CeFi, expertise of asset managements and transparency of DeFi.

And now we are trying to execute this CeDeFi vision and provide every user the accessible way to build wealth on DeFi.

Melissa BrownAug 22, 2022, 6:08 PM

How has your previous experiences helped with developing your platform Trevor Midas?

Trevor MidasAug 22, 2022, 6:12 PM

The combination of expertises in product management, human needs and methodologies of solving problems through default brain system really helped me to create the crypto products that are needed by the market. That is why we have pivoted 5 times until we have reached a nice product market fit

LaraAug 22, 2022, 6:10 PM

What is CeDiFi? What problem does it solve?

Trevor MidasAug 22, 2022, 6:16 PM

We have started to think about CeDeFi concept back in January of 2022, when we were exponentially growing as the CeFi platform.

I have always thought about CeFi models, like Celsius and Nexo, as the black box systems, which main goal was to maximise profits while minimizing interest rate to users. It creates the unknown risks for the end-users, like we have seen in June events with Celsius bankrupcy.

Therefore, we have started to think about the next step, and it seemed natural that the answer should lie between CeFi and DeFi. CeFi has simplicity and more users; DeFi has transparency and a lot of blocks to build your portfolio from.

So, CeDeFi is the answer to the current issues with CeFi lenders that crypto community has suffered from during the last 3 months with the close of Celsius, Voyager, Hodlnaut and others.

The CeDeFi strategies looks like basic blocks for your portfolio that can be monitored onchain instead of CeFi black box. There are a Soft long and Soft short on ETH (basically a liquidity pool position, where impermanent loss earns money when ETH is going up (in long) or down (in short), and you get 15-30% APR on top) and DeFi token farming, which gives a nice APR on Convex pools. More strategies are coming in the next couple of weeks to add more variety to yield mechanics.

Our main idea is to disrupt the current CeFi models with the efficient and transparent investment blocks that users can build their portfolio from and have fun in the process. I see no future in CeFi until it embraces DeFi market.

Char736Aug 22, 2022, 6:11 PM

What growth numbers have you seen? What number do you want to reach in terms of user acquisition?

Trevor MidasAug 22, 2022, 6:19 PM

Currently, Midas has $280 mil under management, which was an amazing rally since September, when we had $25 million dollars with the higher crypto marketcap.

9.6k active users on the platform that doubled in the last year.

Midas has 50 employees all over the world with 20 employees in investment department (20 employees one year ago).

Our main target in the next few months is to validate the market need of CeDeFi strategies. After the launch in three days we got $4 mil in deposits in the three released strategies and almost 1k users trying it, which was a great relief. Our next goal is to target for $50 mil AUM in CeDeFi strategies, which will show that users beside our current user-base need this product.

Jimmy LAug 22, 2022, 6:20 PM

Trevor Midas What do you think has been the main reason for such growth?

Trevor MidasAug 22, 2022, 6:25 PM

We have built extensive amount of features on the platform, like exchange, lock-in mechanics, dozens of staking and masternode coins, trading algorithms and so on. But the main product for investors was always interest rates. That's why in the previous year we have dropped 10 different features and left only the interest rate coins, while starting to pivoting towards asset management, instead of IT platform.

Basically, it helped users to make choice to deposit to Midas. We made the churn much easier and started to position ourselves as CeFi platform. Listed on many monitoring websites, which attracted a lot of attention in a short period of time.

CryptodragonAug 22, 2022, 6:29 PM

What is the difference between Midas and other competitive platforms?

Trevor MidasAug 23, 2022, 2:54 PM

The main differences between us and other CeFi platforms are:

Trevor MidasAug 23, 2022, 2:55 PM

We are combining our asset management expertise into building our own investment products on top of crypto. The only way we collaborate is with DeFi protocols in order to form a partnership that leads to increased liquidity in DeFi protocol, while giving users a nice exposure to DeFi opportunities

Mónica FreitasAug 22, 2022, 7:37 PM

Hi Trevor Midas. Love the Midas name for an investment platform. It gives a whole second meaning to it. Do you have a selected portfolio of possible investments or do you collaborate with other platforms to have the widest range of ventures?

Limarc AmbalinaAug 23, 2022, 7:42 AM

Hey thanks again for joining us here on Slogging! My question is: do we need CeDeFi as a term? Once you add aspects of centralized finance, isn't it just centralized finance?

Basically I'm questioning whether or not it is possible to even have the best of both worlds. Either a big company can freeze my assets or they can't.

Trevor MidasAug 23, 2022, 2:58 PM

Limarc, great question. Yes, you are right in the terms that any CeFi platform has an opportunity to freeze assets.
My take on CeDeFi is the possibility of combining transparent wealth sources with the CeFi way for users. DeFi is still a scary and unknown territory for many crypto users. And I see our goal is to make it more accessible to everyone, while keeping the main spirit of DeFi by fully disclosing the address of the strategy.

Sara PintoAug 23, 2022, 9:48 AM

Hey Trevor Midas, great to have you here with us. Can you tell us a bit more about Midas.Investments token?

Trevor MidasAug 23, 2022, 3:14 PM

Hey, Sara.
The Midas token is a utility token of Midas.
It is heavily integrated into Midas platform. Each Midas product contributes to the health and growth of the token and its liquidity.

You can earn more yield with Midas token and stake it.
If you pick to earn yield in Midas, we are using your initial yield to buy Midas from the market or increase liquidity. It generates up to $1.5m monthly towards the token.

Kelley DaneAug 23, 2022, 11:09 AM

Hi Trevor Midas, what statistics can the Midas platform share?

Trevor MidasAug 23, 2022, 4:02 PM

Kelley, currently we are showing all the yield statistics, change of your portfolio and assets. Also the allocation for each product and total AUM

Cris SilvaAug 23, 2022, 12:51 PM

Hello Trevor Midas! Great to meet you! What are your thought on the bear market and how it'll evolve and affect crypto investments?

Trevor MidasAug 23, 2022, 4:03 PM

Cris, the bear market is always the build market. I expect a lot of innovation to appear during this two years. New lending services, new DeFi exchanges, new structured products, options, better liquidity, better NFT marketplaces. Maybe even the first fun game with crypto. So, looking forward to it.
Additionally, bearish market perishes every non-efficient players from the market, like evolution.

Mark FinniganAug 23, 2022, 12:52 PM

Nice to meet you Trevor Midas. I'm curious about the Midas token. What drove you to create one, and what has it meant for Midas as a company?

Trevor MidasAug 23, 2022, 4:06 PM

Mark, token is a great addition to any crypto company, since it allows you to play with so many interesting ideas and concepts, plus it binds the community together. Creation of the token allowed us to gather amazing amount of supporters and the features we have created on top of Midas token helped us survive the hard times of the market

John T.Aug 23, 2022, 12:56 PM

Hi Trevor Midas, how are you? CeFi and DeFi have started partnering up, but we'll probably need more integration of DeFi in traditional finance systems. What's your best bet on what this integration will look like in the future?

Trevor MidasAug 23, 2022, 4:10 PM

John, DeFi is so much more efficient than TradFi in terms of resource management. The great thing about DeFi is interoperability, which allows to build products on top of other products. I feel that in the next ten years DeFi can disrupt TradFi, because it is more efficient to create DeFi protocols than build and use TradFi software.

Mónica FreitasAug 23, 2022, 4:50 PM

Trevor Midas understood. What projects in your portfolio are you most proud of?

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 1:06 PM

Monica, the most interesting one is Convex, I suppose. It is the governance protocol for managing liquidity on the Curve exchange (more than 1 billion worth of assets). As a holder of Convex you are deciding the way liquidity transfers to various pools and receive bribes from other projects to vote for their pools.

Jack BorehamAug 23, 2022, 4:54 PM

Trevor Midas, how will you utilize interoperability with your platfltm?

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 1:07 PM

Jack, the CeDeFi layer on top of DeFi allows us to benefit from every innovation that is happening in DeFi, and build our own protocols from those blocks if needed. I feel that this is the safest way to build a reliable business in the volatile crypto - just to be above the market

Cris SilvaAug 23, 2022, 5:06 PM

Trevor Midas, oh that's interesting. Everyone seems to be treating the bear market as a treat, not as an opportunity. What's left for the NFT market to be better? Does it need more creators and users or just a better integration?

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 1:09 PM

Cris, for NFT market there is a huge problem with liquidity. The project that will find the way to efficiently solve the problem of NFT liquidity will bring a lot of new players to the market. I think that just released sudoswap nft exchange has some chances to become this type of platform.

Mark FinniganAug 23, 2022, 5:21 PM

Trevor Midas, a token is definitely a plus for the community. How long has your token been up for and what's the adoption been like?

John T.Aug 23, 2022, 5:10 PM

So, do you think that TradFi will become obsolete? I find it hard to believe it'll completely disappear, at least in the upcoming years, as so many people (especially older generations) are not prepared to deal with DeFi, and maybe they're not even interested in learning about it. From your experience, is there something the community and existing companies in the space can do to foster growth and trust in crypto and web investments? Trevor Midas

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 1:31 PM

John, I do not think it will completely disappear. There is almost zero liquidity in DeFi for now, and it will take many years until it will become interesting to move from TradFi to DeFi. But the tools are already in the process of development.
The only thing that pushes crypto forward is the new innovations. Usually it is solving the next step problem out of time per one cycle. Than this new innovation gets a lot of new variants due to forks, gets a lot of attention and then establishes like a basic level. Then the hype is getting destroyed and crypto clears itself for the entrance of new innovations.

Mark FinniganAug 23, 2022, 5:23 PM

Also, since you're up to date on the latest investment trends, what are the ones that you think are going to change in the next few years? Trevor Midas

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 1:33 PM

Mark, our token is 3 years old. We were really niche in our community for all those years, so we did not reach the full adoption that we expect in the next few years.
Regarding investment trends, I am really bullish on the DeFi infrastructure and new ways to generate yield by providing value to protocols.

Sara PintoAug 23, 2022, 6:08 PM

You mention the difference in the performance of the token compared to the market and its growth. How did your token excelled in this? Trevor Midas

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 1:33 PM

Sara, Midas token has a huge underlining and capital inflow from our main business activity, which allowed us to be not so correlated with the rest of the market.

Kelley DaneAug 23, 2022, 6:15 PM

Trevor Midas, thanks! That seems pretty cool. I just checked your website, and I'm a newbie in all this. So, how does one get started with Midas?

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 1:34 PM

Kelley, just log in on the platform, pass KYC and deposit any crypto you want from the list. And that's it. It should take 5-10 mins.

Sonic3625Aug 24, 2022, 11:36 AM

What are your long term goals for midas?

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 1:37 PM

Sonic, I really wish Midas to become one of the key financial platforms not only in crypto, but in all Fintech.

Cris SilvaAug 24, 2022, 1:39 PM

Trevor Midas, that's a great point. NFTs quickly devalue as they're sold, except for a few phenomena. Why do you think this happens?

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 3:56 PM

Cris, because the price of nft is not backed up by the real liquidity, which makes those assets highly volatile

Mark FinniganAug 24, 2022, 1:45 PM

Trevor Midas so it's a young project. It's still impressive to witness how much it grew in that period. What are the next steps for Midas?

Mark FinniganAug 24, 2022, 1:45 PM

DeFi will certainly see a lot of innovation and work in the upcoming years

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 3:57 PM

Mark, the next steps are releasing more strategies and update the token to Ethereum chain to fully sustain the CeDeFi vision

Mónica FreitasAug 24, 2022, 1:47 PM

Does Convex work with a liquidity margin? And then adjust to the desired percentage? Trevor Midas

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 3:57 PM

Monica, no, its just assets that provided to specific liquidity pools

John T.Aug 24, 2022, 1:48 PM

Trevor Midas, what have the key factors been for Midas' fast growth?

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 3:57 PM

John, I think our work with the community, transparency and the highest yields on crypto

Jack swiftAug 24, 2022, 2:08 PM

Trevor Midas, who are your main competitors, and what tactics will you employ to remain ahead of them?

Trevor MidasAug 24, 2022, 3:58 PM

Jack, our main competitors got bankrupt because of the investing in low liquid assets, so currently we are beneath the ones that left on the empty market

Jack BorehamAug 25, 2022, 10:06 AM

And that's a wrap on this AMA Trevor Midas. Thank you so much for joining us. And final thkights, how can people check out Midas Investments?

Trevor MidasAug 26, 2022, 9:04 AM

Jack Boreham Thank you for having me!
Visit Midas.Investments and join our amazing http://discord.gg/midas

Trevor MidasAug 26, 2022, 9:04 AM

Looking forward to see you all