Lauri: 0:00

We saw the yield market so the market where people could earn on their crypto skyrocket. It went to tens of billions of dollars. But the companies offering these products weren't ready to offer these in that large scale to these retail investors. And then we saw what happened. So many of these companies then got crashed.

Joeri: 0:26

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm excited to have Lauri on the podcast. Hi Lauri, how are you doing?

Lauri: 0:41

Hi Joeri, Great to be here. I'm doing great. Nice to be at the podcast.

Joeri: 0:46

Yeah, great to see you again after we met at the Web Summit a few times. Even we made some video together and you were asking the questions. Now I am asking you the questions, Lauri. So if people are now wondering who is Laurie, guys, laurie Marequia is a co-founder and CIO at Valos and actually, if you're not wondering, what is Valos? That's a platform focused on making crypto a productive asset, part of everyone's savings strategy, and they specialize in transparent and fair returns. We'll come back to that, Lauri, but first to start with, I am always interested to know your journey for Valos, your journey into Web3. What inspired you to build Valos and maybe your background in crypto trading and DeFi the role in there. So I'm curious.

Lauri: 1:36

Yeah, definitely. Thanks for the intro, and funny to have the roles now reversed, with you interviewing me. I guess it's better that way. But about myself? So I got really kicked into DeFi and crypto in 2020 after witnessing the DeFi summer that was happening back then. We saw the TVL, so the total value locked off assets in different protocols skyrocketing from under $1 billion start of the year to above $18 billion end of the year, and that actually then the first time inspired me to focus my time on crypto and especially DeFi, and since then I have been more or less professionally also involved in the space. So the first time I think I started to invest in crypto was 2018, as probably many after the bull run, many got the volatility it offers. But then, when there were the first moves in DeFi happening, with first protocols like Compound and Aave launching, I think that showed that there is an actual use case and opportunity for founders and builders to build something meaningful in the space meaningful in the space. So since then I have been mostly passionate about DeFi and last spring, in 2024, I founded then Valos with the mission, as you said, to make crypto a productive asset.

Lauri: 3:19

I had a lot of experience in DeFi, but not all of them were positive.

Lauri: 3:26

Starting in 2020, it was still quite the Wild West, so there were a lot of protocols that got hacked and a lot of wallets that didn't have really a good user experience.

Lauri: 3:38

I made my learnings mostly the hard way and paid for my education also with the investment mistakes in the early phases, but still I somehow also stayed motivated even after the more frustrating times, because I saw that architecture and technology of blockchain, of offering these composable solutions for builders and transparency in financial solutions, can actually offer something meaningful. And after then graduating from school in 24, I have a background in finance, graduated here in Finland. I was already so long in crypto there's a saying that one year in crypto is like 10 years in TratFi and I certainly had the same experience, so I didn't feel any option to go back into any other industry. So then I started to build in DeFi with the mission to offer these safe and transparent investment products for retail and institutions, and actually had a quite good luck of then, in the same time, finding my co-founders here in Finland as well who shared quite the same mission with me. So then we combined our efforts and have been now almost for a year building.

Joeri: 5:03

Valos Amazing, but it's good. You know that, with the experience that you had, this allows you to build this company. Valos, you mentioned that you help make crypto become like a productive asset. I think that are the words that you are using. Can you break that down a bit? What problem are you exactly solving and for whom?

Lauri: 5:29

Yeah, definitely. So what I see, and what we saw with my co-founders, is that there is actually quite a big problem in the crypto industry that not many are talking about. So we are relying on exchanges on board all the new users to crypto and educating users around the asset class. But mostly exchanges still focus on just trading volume on their platform and that leads investors to speculate on the asset. And what we saw is that crypto should be treated more as an actual asset class that should be invested in the long term, and we wanted to shift the focus from trading towards more passive income investing in the long term. And our mission, I think, has been now also verified with all the institutions coming into the space last year in 2024. And now, with the ETF launches, they signal that it actually is an asset class that should be treated as the long term investment. So that has given us at the company a lot of boost because we have been in the right momentum. Now, yeah, and if we compare crypto to TradFi, in TradFi the focus has been for long term to build these structured products that are targeted towards investors with focus on building wealth, but the infrastructure hasn't been in place in crypto to offer the same kinds of products, so only now we are seeing the first products, like ETPs, coming to crypto, but, for example, last pool market, there wasn't the infrastructure in place to offer these wealth management solutions for investors. There was a huge demand, though, but the demand wasn't met in the correct way. The industry scaled too quickly wasn't met in the correct way. The industry scaled too quickly.

Lauri: 7:47

So in 2022, we saw the yield market so the market where people could earn on their crypto skyrocket. It went to tens of billions of dollars, but the companies offering these products weren't ready to offer these in that large scale to these retail investors. And then we saw what happened. So many of these companies then got crashed and a lot of people, of course, lost money in these products, which led to the industry taking a hit on these. But now we have come a long way from that, and I see that the industry right now has been able to develop a lot of new ways to generate yield.

Lauri: 8:35

There is more infrastructure in place and new ways to actually generate safe yields on crypto, and I actually believe that we are already in a place where no one should actually just have their assets sitting idle when there is a way to make them productive, and I think liquidity is needed in all financial industries. It is responsible for making the market efficient. Liquidity is needed in all financial industries. It is responsible for making the market efficient. So if we don't bring these assets that are sitting idle to be efficient on various markets by providing liquidity for the traders, then crypto can't be ever as efficient as Stratify. So we are solving this problem bringing crypto for the masses in an efficient way and in a way where they understand the value of long-term investment and not only speculating on trading.

Joeri: 9:52

Yeah, I love that. So it's not about speculation trading, but on the long term. So it's not about speculation trading, but on the long term. Actually, I had someone on my podcast already some time ago. It was actually the Warren Buffett of Web3. That's how he called himself, because there are also certain, I would say, best practices that come from traditional finance that also can be like investing on long term, that can be used for Web3. Now many people may be listening to the podcast or that are already into Web3. They are still debating the balance between decentralized finance and centralized finance. Yeah, where do you think that the industry is headed and what is your follow-up approach?

Lauri: 10:34

Yeah, it's a good question. I think we believe in the core principles of DeFi, which are the transparency and efficiency in the market, but I don't see DeFi being the solution for most investors. So DeFi offers the centralized players to offer designed products towards the end customers. We saw this, for example, with the launch of a borrowing product that Coinbase did in last month. So they use the infrastructure from DeFi behind their product, but they are offering it still in a simple way for investors where they don't actually need to, where they don't actually need to install the actual wallet with the private keys and need to consider where to store the keys. So it's an easy way for people to access DeFi without all the hassle and also security risks in between.

Lauri: 11:44

So we are in a similar direction. We actually have launched the first version of our own platform where we also offer retail access to these yield opportunities to earn additional interest on their assets and, going forward, we are focusing more and more on using DeFi to generate the yield and to make our products more transparent, more fair to our end users. Products more transparent, more fair to our end users, and in the future we might also see some hybrid versions where actually we can provide users access to DeFi in a secure way, where we might have a shared custody of the private keys and a shared wallet where the risk of the retail people or wallet, where the risk of the retail people or investors in general is a lot smaller because we can design the wallet and experience in a way that eliminates the risks that there might come up if users would be only where users would be the only holders of the private keys.

Joeri: 12:59

Interesting. That's all interesting discussion. Actually, at this moment also, I'm advising a company that has a solution to protect private keys or even seed phrases with an image, so that's also interesting how security is important in this space. But to continue on the discussion about Valos and investing psychologically psychology difficult word for crypto investors. In your experience, if you see crypto investors, how do they think differently from traditional investors? Are there certain trends, behavioral trends that you are seeing and how do they impact the user adoption?

Lauri: 13:41

Yeah, it's a great question. Actually, when we did interviews in Lisbon at Web Summit there, we also interviewed people around the sentiments they have around crypto. Do they speculate or do they actually treat it as a long term asset class? And what we saw is that the ones that have been only for a short term in crypto they see it more as a speculative asset class. They might make some quick wins and then convert their assets back to euros or dollars.

Lauri: 14:14

So I think that has a lot to do with the focus that has been in the industry, with trading being the main focus, but the ones that then have been for a longer term in crypto, they see the actual value of holding the assets for the long term, be it, then, that they see Bitcoin as an inflation hedge or just an alternative asset which gives uncorrelated returns against any other asset, or they might have been investing in altcoins Ethereum, solana and they actually believe in the underlying technology of that blockchain leave in the underlying technology of that blockchain.

Lauri: 15:04

So I think it takes some time for people to understand the value, and then we will see more people actually holding than just have been driving around the speculative um, speculative behavior that volatility has also enabled, which leads then, of course course, also to the industry, which also leads then to a lower volatility for the whole industry, which makes it then even more attractive for also traditional investors that are not used to this kind of volatility levels. So overall, I think we are seeing a shift to the right direction, where it's not that speculative asset as it was previously.

Joeri: 15:49

Yeah, absolutely. And, of course, you mentioned all the large institutions Now we have ETFs and BlackRock is there and people see it more. Institutions now we have etfs and blackrock is there and people see it more. Okay, this is not for speculators or for this is really something that we need to watch for. This is something that can really be a good investment. I actually I now started also see bitcoin as, yeah, you can see it as an asset, but I see it more as money, which, if it all depends how we define it now, whether it's speculation or whether there is a lot of attention going to the space, but there is also more and more regulation coming. Probably it's good to have some regulation, but it's also a challenge for you guys. So how are you navigating these compliance challenges across the different jurisdiction that are there?

Lauri: 17:47

across the different Joeri that are there. Yeah, navigating the regulation has been actually quite an experience since the start, because I didn't expect it to be this hard to get, for example, a MICA license in Europe. So we have been now focusing on applying for the MICA license and it requires a lot of effort. So we have two full-time legal persons focusing on the applications. We need to have a lot of operational documents in place to then be able to get the required licenses. So it has been taking a lot of effort from us and I see there is a good side on it.

Lauri: 18:35

But also it hinders European companies and European founders of really innovating, because everything we want to do is quite slow because of the regulation.

Lauri: 18:49

So if we compare us with other Joeri, they will have an edge because they are able to react faster to new opportunities, and this has been an issue we have been and this has been something we have been struggling with.

Lauri: 19:10

On the other side, it offers us to gain more trust, especially inside Europe, by then being regulated and showing our customers that we actually have been going through all these compliance tasks and we are in a unique position where I think, after this MICA process has ended, not many new companies are able to come and compete with already established companies. So I guess it's, in the long term, a good thing for the company and also for all the investors, because it makes the decision of an investment a lot easier if you see that a company is regulated in Europe. Also, the marketing effort is a lot easier, as it gives us the opportunity to treat every European country the same way as before we needed to look at each country separately, as all of the European countries as well had their own regulations. What can be said around our product? Which product is regulated and what not? So overall, I think it has a lot of benefits.

Joeri: 20:34

Yeah, so a short-term challenge, but once you get over the mountain, over the top, I would say, then it's down the hill, then it will be easier, or should be easier, of course. Yeah, that was actually a question. I wanted to ask about trust. Of course, when you build a new company, you have three. These days, there are so many scams out there. So many people also lose money, so it's important to have these certificates or these proofs of authenticity of regulation that you're following. Also, as you said, on the marketing side, it's important that people know about it, because you can have it all this, but they need to know about it. Yeah, is there any specific strategy that you are using, apart from the things you already mentioned, to build trust in Web3 for your company?

Lauri: 21:19

Yeah, since founding the company, trust has been a major focus for us, and I think one approach we have had is to go out there and speak with our clients, get ourselves exposed. We have been traveling to a lot of conferences. We have been meeting their people face to face. After having already some trust, it's a lot easier to continue the discussions, and we have been then also traveling to clients, to their offices. We have been inviting them to our office.

Lauri: 21:55

So it actually takes some time to build a trust as a new company, but crypto offers a lot of ways to do it, by having these crypto native conferences, for example. Then, on the retail side, I think it's important to build the brand awareness. That's something we have been now the past few months focusing on. We just launched a new website and we are now starting to push more and more content out that will educate people, that will have our own views and our advice as well to the public available, so that people actually can see us behind the product and behind the company and know who they are actually dealing with.

Joeri: 22:45

Yeah, that's really important. I also think that you see the people like we met, you know, at WebSummit. Maybe you don't see it on the background, but I have the Rio below there. Rio is a coin in Japan, crypto coin, and I also have been advising them, helping them. They are, by the way, sponsoring my podcast and trust is really important. But I know those people. I saw them in real life, so that's already different than when you just see a face on the screen and with AI these days, you are never sure. Yeah, really interesting this aspect of meeting people and then be able to talk and see what everyone is building. So definitely a good strategy. Let's talk about tokenization and yield generation, because tokenization is also the future and we've seen projects experimenting with tokenized assets and yield generation. So where do you see?

Lauri: 23:39

real, sustainable opportunities for crypto holders to generate returns. Yeah, I think tokenization will be the third revolution of asset management and we are also heavily focusing and investigating the space. So what we saw, for example, with exchange traded funds happening after they had launched I think in 1993, it was they in seven years got 1% of all funds assets under management to these ETFs. So in case we would see a similar scenario with tokenization, where stratified assets flow into blockchain by having them tokenized, it would present a huge new industry. I think, depending a bit on the case study that you read, it might be from 600 billion to 16 trillion. So it offers a lot of opportunities and where we see us playing a role is the infrastructure of these tokenized assets and maybe also tokenized fund structures. So there aren't that many people actually still in a crypto native way focusing on how actually we can make these tokenized assets product. There aren't actually that many crypto-native players focusing on how we can actually bring these tokenized assets also some utility. So for now, we have been only seeing some tokenized assets but you can't really use them. There are no use cases for them. So what we see is that it will need a whole new infrastructure where you can use tokenized assets in decentralized finance as collateral. You can only invest a fractional share in some new fund structures that were previously only accessible for accredited investors with a lot of money.

Lauri: 25:44

So we see that, as a crypto native company, there are a lot of possibilities to contribute to this new industry, even though it might be also depending a lot on TradFi coming into the game. In addition, I think tokenization also offers a great way for distributing products that we are, for example, building. So we are seeing that there is a huge demand from different kinds of crypto native platforms or also platforms that are also platforms in TradFi, let's say, banks or brokers that want to offer new features to their end users. For now, it has been quite hard to integrate new features because it requires the platform to integrate the new offering, to build something around it, but what tokenization might offer is a seamless integration of these new investment products to these platforms, offering them a totally new way to activate their users and to generate some revenue. So, overall, I see that tokenization will play a big part in asset management in crypto and I think we want to also play some role in it.

Joeri: 27:19

Yeah, exciting. And in general, Lauri your vision for Valos this year, the beginning of the year, or maybe, if you can see so far, because I think one year I think you mentioned it, one year in crypto is 10 years in the real world how do you see Valos in the next, let's say, 12, 24 months? Any big developments, any milestones on the horizon?

Lauri: 27:45

Yeah, good question. So right now we have the platform that has been in a closed beta environment. We are going live with that. We are going live with that. We want to bring there more features that also offer our products more transparently, and I think it will be a journey where we will iterate a lot, depending on the feedback we get from users. So I see our platform playing a role in the next 12 to 24 months. I also see us playing a bigger role on the institutional side, where wealth management has been already identified, ways like tokenization to meet the requirements our end users have. Yeah, I'm really excited about the upcoming months and years. After having also the regulation in place, we can start doing some marketing, which has been still lacking of our journey. So I think that will make things a lot easier as well.

Joeri: 29:02

Absolutely yes. We are the Web3CMO Stories podcast, so, of course, marketing is always a topic. Now indeed, for maybe for our listeners, web3 entrepreneurs or maybe marketers that are now listening to these episodes, do you have one piece of advice, Lauri, that you would give to these people that want to build something in this space, and maybe to entrepreneurs or marketers, how to communicate about this? So I'm curious.

Lauri: 29:32

Yeah, I think we are now in the last phases where founders have the possibility to come into crypto and disrupt the industry. In a few years, I believe, there will be so large, established players, it will be a lot harder for newcomers to gain a large share of the market. So I would just give the advice of now taking the step and come and build in crypto, as there is still a lot of problems to be solved and, even though it might look like too big of an industry already, we are still in the early phases and there is still so many things that need to be solved, be it around asset management or any other type of industry inside crypto. There is still so many things that need to be solved, be it around asset management or any other type of industry inside crypto. So I think, yeah, now is still a great time to come and build.

Joeri: 30:28

Absolutely, and I think this is a really good motivating message for people now listening to the podcast. So go and do it and solve problems that are still there in the space. It feels maybe for some people that are in there early that it's already a long time, but for a lot of people it's still very new. Talk to people on the street, I still need to explain what is Web3 and so on still very early. Lauri, if now the listeners to the podcast here, they want to know more about you, they want to know more about Valos, everything that you're doing, where would you like me to send them?

Lauri: 31:05

Yeah, so we have a website it's valos. io, and LinkedIn it's Valos, and on Twitter we are also active, so it's valos, underscore IO. So, yeah, there we might have more and more content now in the coming months.

Joeri: 31:21

So, absolutely, and this podcast, yeah, this podcast can be a part of it, of your content. So, laurie, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show.

Lauri: 31:32

Yeah, thanks, Joeri, for the invitation.

Joeri: 31:35

Guys, what an amazing episode. As there are show notes, all the links that Laurie mentioned will be in there in the show notes, in the blog article. So if you think that this episode is useful for people around you investors, entrepreneurs, people that just want to learn about Web3, be sure to share this episode with them. If you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven't given me a review yet, yeah, please do that, because these five stars can give me an opportunity to reach an even bigger audience and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.