Talking Access to DeFi with Diana Biggs - CSO at V

What is up everyone? Welcome back to the episode of the Divi Crypto Podcast. And today I am joined by Diana Biggs, the chief strategy officer at Valor. How's it going today, Diana? Great. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Before we get into Valor, let's talk a little bit about your background. What was your crypto origin story? How did you get into this space?

Yeah, so I first really got into interested in Bitcoin back in 2013. I had just moved to New York City, actually most recently from Sierra Leone. I've been working for six months across Brickena Faso and Sierra Leone, so West Africa. The four or five years prior to that, I had been a management consultant in financial services with a particular focus on emerging markets, in particular, Sub-Saharan

social impact and emerging markets work, which was quite interesting. I then went to New York and was subsequently living on my brother's couch. And my brother was spending a lot of time watching the thing called Bitcoin. And he was like, oh, yeah, you worked in finance. Like this should be interesting for you. And it certainly was, it's sort of that light bulb moment of thinking about

how a global digital money, especially from my five years, ex-Series prior to that, working across both international development and then financial services and then micro-finance of why that could be interesting. So, so fell in the rabbit hole then. Very cool. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Kiva and everything. They do. And for everybody that's listening that isn't familiar with Kiva, it's a micro-lending service. And part

of the reason that it's such an important service is when you are in the lending game, which my previous company that I sold to founder of PayPal, peer-to-peer lending. It wasn't about the size of the loan that was of interest. It was the larger the number of the more interested banks are. In lending that and Kiva really mastered the art of a smaller principal size because

it's not worth it to a bank to do loans like that. And I always really admired Kiva for doing that because it's just an underserved market completely. Because their, it's just banks don't want to touch small, you know, 100, 500, or loans. They want 100,000, 500,000 dollar loans. So yeah, that's really cool that that's kind of how you got your, your start. So let's talk about

Valor a little bit. What is it? And I know before we were recording a little bit, you mentioned there is an acquisition that took place. So we'd love to know a little bit about that. Yeah. So I joined Valor in mid 2020, SCEO. And we've just been through or going through a bit of a name change. So there'll be two Valors here. But the, the Valor

that I joined does, the digital asset exchange traded products. So these are products that are, but I sold on traditional stock exchanges traded throughout the day that are tracking cryptos like Bitcoin, Ethereum. And we have a number of others currently just these single digital asset trackers soon will be the watching basket products as well. But essentially it's a really simple and secure and safe way for

people who want exposure. To a cryptocurrency, but want to be able to do that through their banker broker to access that. So I joined as CEO to help launch that company back in 2020. So at the time it was a perspective, waiting for approval hadn't yet gone live. And took that company live. We went live with our first product, a Bitcoin trackers certificate in December 2020.

Launched that in Sweden. And then subsequently over the next year grew the company to 300 million USD in AUM assets under management through a variety of these crypto tracker products. We have those listed across Europe now. So the Nordics in particular Sweden remains our primary market for those products. But we also have listings in Germany and on the year next in Amsterdam and Paris. Very cool.

And somebody that's so deep in the space and even in the space actually the same amount of time that I have since 2013. I think a lot of really great builders entered during the bull market in 2013, 2014 kind of run up and come down. I think a lot of people that stuck around after milk ox really was like the true test of a person. I

mean, that whole period was, everybody just thought it was over. I mean, I remember it was just an absolute wasteland. Nobody was investing. It was just kind of this whole dead period. And it's so interesting. It's some of the best operators I've met came from that sort of Phoenix rising from the ashes back then. So it's cool that you've seen a lot come and go. And

that's a good segue into like the stage that you guys are at. I'd love to talk a little bit about that. It's live. And you mentioned that you guys had 300 million AUM. What is the kind of the status of the project itself. Right. So yeah. So build out Valor and got that launched last year. And then also worked it through an acquisition. So Valor was

acquired by a publicly traded company. Which was called DeFi Technologies. And which is now rebranded to Valor as well. So the entire group is now Valor. So my role changed in January of this year, where I moved into the parent company following that acquisition. So now Valor Inc., which was previously DeFi Technologies, is publicly traded company listed on the Neo Stock Exchange in Toronto Canada. So

I think that's a good idea. We also have listings in the US and Germany as well, but the main listing being Neo in Canada. And through Valor as a group. Of course Valor, the exchange traded product business is still a really important part of that. As I mentioned, right now our products are listed across Europe. We're also just starting to launch more products in new geographies

as well. Part of that through a partnership. With Sabah Bank, which is a digital assets first bank here in Switzerland, where I'm based. And we've invested in them as a company as the parent, company, our parent company this year and are now working on a product partnership with them, which is really exciting. And which allows us to enter more markets as well with the exchange traded

products and do new kinds of products. So for example, with them, we announced last month that we've actually launched Metaverse Index product. So that's just a really easy and accessible way for then investors who are interested in this thematic of the Metaverse to gain exposure to a basket of Metaverse related digital assets within a single exchange traded product. So things like that we're working on. We're

also working on expansion. And of our products across other geographies as well as the regulatory environment in more geographies opens up to these types of exchange traded products to. Which we definitely see as something. You know, that's that's that should be happening. That's a positive for investors. Not everybody is comfortable or is able to depending on their their compliance departments for businesses. For example, to open

an account directly on a crypto exchange or to. To hold their own wallet. So so this gives them a way to to gain that exposure without needing to go through those steps. Got it. And what types of you know Metaverse tokens would be in that basket that I would be getting exposure to. Yeah. So typically these would be the highest market cap. Tokens and following a

specific index methodology. And those are always published in in Europe. That's. A regulated area through European benchmark regulations. So so you'll be able to to see there and and see the the methodology that's followed in order to select whichever number of underlying form any particular exchange traded product. So that's there's the index methodology with you can look at as well. And there's also the prospectus related

to any exchange traded product. And those always have to be published and available on an issuer's website. Got it. Very cool. Yeah. I'm always curious. Just because I've seen a couple ETFs out there that. They they have Metaverse in the name. And then they'll literally have like Apple, Facebook, Google. And it's such an interesting world where people are just buying it because the name is in

there, but yet the underlying. Companies in there are like disconnected from. Like actual web three building, which is quite quite fascinating to me that that's how. How the world works, but it's great to hear that you guys are focused on the actual market cap of these individual projects and. Bascading them. Yeah. For for those that would depend on the product type, like sometimes for for ETFs,

for example, you know, to gain approval. Then the on the underlings or the composition of that index or any basket would have to be. Publicly traded equity, which would them limit what they could possibly put in. For these ETPs, at least in Europe, we're able to actually use digital assets as underlines, but it it obviously it always depends on the particular regulator that's approving that perspective,

what type of perspective, what type of product. And there are additional regulations that that ETFs have to fall under in terms of their composition. So that could be a reason for that. Then you also have an additional step with these types of. Tread 5 products where you need to gain the approval of the stock exchange for listing the product as well. And there's various types of

parameters that have to be met in order to do that. Sometimes it has to do with. The liquidity of the underlines to ensure that it would always be possible for the issue where to be. Balancing out whatever they're purchasing or whatever's being purchased on the exchange with the underlines. That's some products you need to do that some don't with with our products. We do hedge 100%.

So whichever amount of the digital asset that we're we're tracking what the investors who are purchasing the ETPs purchase. We would then be holding the the underlying digital asset to ensure that that's hedged at all times. Very cool. Very cool. Well, somebody that's been in the space for a long time. What types of things get you excited outside? Of course, what you guys are doing at

valor and all of all of that good building. What type of things do you get up in the morning and you're checking your phone and just gets you over the moon excited about? You know, it's interesting. Like as you say, I think the sort of periods that we're in now, these sort of market downturns and laws are really interesting periods are like the most interesting periods

for me. So I think the number to see which individuals which builders which teams which projects are in it for the long term and have a really sustainable proposition that can hold out beyond a lot of the hype that. This space gets and you know that used to be a lot easier and kind of like as there was much smaller pool to work with as you

mentioned like back in 2014 where we had that kind of year or two and everything. It's had sort of just lulled. It was a smaller group and as you say like there's the people who were really building and there was quite a few of those because at the beginning you needed to have a huge amount of conviction to even turn your whole career into this space

and focus all your energy on it. Because at the time everybody was telling you that that it was crazy. You moved to say a year ago and everyone is wanting to be part of the space and you have a whole different set of dynamics that you're playing against. And also the space itself has become you know quite vocal in a way too where it's sort of

saying like it can be very awesome them or if you don't believe it then you're not part of the group and people want to be part of the group. So so they're falling along with certain things and you know like it's like do you want to be part of the future or not. I don't think that kind of tribalism is helpful either and I think that

sometimes that. That high attracts the wrong incentives. That being said it's really amazing and exciting and incredible to see sort of this vision of decentralized internet, decentralized economies coming to life now and there's still a massive amount of building that needs to be done there. So hopefully during this phase we'll see the building and some of those projects that are really aiming to make meaningful change.

So when you ask me what types of those projects are and I'm interested in. I would say probably less so around helping brands to brand or enter the metaverse. With that type of thing really I think it comes back to some of the questions and the issues that originally brought me into the space and got me excited about it. So how can we how can these

technologies potentially be a lever to create new and better economic incentives that allow for more accessibility, more financial inclusion, more transparent systems, be they economic or otherwise. And I feel like in some ways it's slow progress if you measure it against how fast. Crypto overall seems to be moving but it is actually like quite good and rapid progress when you measure it against how the rest

of sort of traditional finance or a lot of traditional industries or say even humanitarian work if you want to go to that and spectrum tend to move. And hopefully with some of the amounts of funding that are moving into the space. Some of that can be used for these types of projects that are going to be used. But that are looking to create meaningful social and

positive economic change. That will just sort of depend on whether or not. FECs and funders want to fund those types of projects as well. But I'm hopeful that that things are moving in that positive direction. Got it. Very cool. Very cool. Well those are all the questions I have for you. I'm excited to dig deeper into Valor. It's a great brand by the way. I'm eager

to learn more about it. I like that you guys are giving access to more people. That really does kind of fit your background. I feel like with coming from Kiva in that world. I understand that world very, very familiar. So I think it's really exciting to see you doing access as part of this giving people basket assets to invest in. So where can people go and

learn more about Valor? Probably our website that's Valor.com or you can follow us on Twitter at Valor Global. Awesome. Well thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. Diana, all the links that you mentioned will be in the show notes. Everybody listening on iTunes or Spotify. And thanks for sharing your story. Thank you.