What's up, Sean?
- Cool.
(laughing)
- Not much, thank you.
- Alright guys, well welcome to another episode of
That Crypto Hustle podcast.
Super excited today to have with us Sean Donato
who is the CEO OptiToken.
So, uh, Sean is actually a true veteran.
He's been in the crypto watching space for quite a while.
A rare dinosaur in the space,
so super honored to have you on the show today, thanks.
- Thanks for having me on, Luna.
- Super excited.
So, a question in everyone's mind:
what were you doing when you first discovered bitcoin
and I guess the potential of Cryptocurreny?
Do you remember that day specifically?
Or are you completely blind?
- Yeah, I do actually. I was sitting on a toilet.
(laughing)
- Going through your iPhone?
- I never mentioned that part,
but I was reading The Economist.
I was in junior college and I wanted to go to...
I wanted to finish that,
transfer over to find a bachelor's program in Economics.
So I thought, why not subscribe to The Economist
and read that, and I found a lot of interesting.
So, one time there was an article about bitcoin.
It was kind of mentioned, really, it was kind of like,
"Hey, this could be something," type of article.
And it was pretty early on.
But that's when I first found out about it.
But I didn't get involved until, I didn't buy any coins
until like, I don't know, the end of 2013, I think.
- So, when you read that article, what did you do after?
I mean, you knew it was Cryptocurrency, or I guess you
probably had some general information about it.
But did you start going on Reddit groups?
What were some of the things that you did?
- No, Reddit really annoys me (mumbles).
(laughing)
- Not a fan.
But you can find some stuff.
I mean, sometimes you can actually find some legitimate
research or something you might find,
analysis you might find interesting that's like user...
user content and not mainstream...
news agencies.
Anyways, no I just thought it was interesting but,
at the end of the day, I didn't understand how it worked.
They broke it down pretty well, actually,
if I recall correctly.
But at the end of the day I still didn't full grasp it,
what the block chain thing was, et cetera.
I definitely, I thought it was interesting, too.
I know that. I was like, "Oh, that's cool."
- So, in your eyes since you've been in this for so long,
how has the market evolved overall?
A big thing that is on everyone's lips, currently,
and obviously the media is not helping,
is the fact that we've experienced
quite a bare market this year.
And so what's something that you could tell
individuals who are just starting out
as far as making them understand
that they shouldn't be freaking out.
Based on some of the things that you've seen in the past.
- I don't know, I don't want to tell people
not to freak out, though.
I don't know if that's good advice, you know.
Because at the end of the day it's risky-
- Risky business.
- To try to profiteer with, at the end of the day,
bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies.
I wouldn't advise not to worry about it by any means.
But I would say that...
As far as...
Investments tend to not move up in straight lines.
I will say that.
The fact that this year is really bare-ish
shouldn't surprise anyone.
If you look bullish it was last year,
the whole market was extremely parabolic, so yeah.
- What is currently going on in the market, in your opinion?
- Well, we're sitting in the six thousands range.
There's a ton of buy support here.
A lot of money's coming in at this level.
Where it comes from, I'm not sure.
I don't really think it's retail investors here so much as
I don't know, corporate interests, like miners
potentially even some institutions
may think it's a bargain buy here
so they're buying at certain levels
or accumulating at certain levels.
But there's definitely a lot of buy support here.
As you can see, if you look around 6000,
it really has a lot of trouble dropping below.
It did drop below briefly at one time
and ever since it just tries to test it
and it's a battle here.
- Yeah, I mean, right.
And some of the speculation and a lot of individuals
are excited about the fact that there's probably
going to be more institutional money coming in to the space
especially with different projects.
Which is why, so I mean there's a lot of also speculations
that ICOs are dead, long live security talk
and offering for next year.
So you raised an ICO and you have an ICO project,
what's your opinion about the following?
- I think ICOs are cool.
I don't subscribe to the idea that they're all scams.
I don't subscribe to the idea
that it's somehow bad for the industry.
I really think that a lot of big industry names
are kind of like abusive in that
and that the idea that Cryptocurrency
should be limited to bitcoin alone is really bizarre.
Is the industry ripe with a lot of...
kind of like fraud and corruption
and shitty projects that kind of, maybe you know,
are kind of annoying, like kind of, it's like 'ugh'
you're giving us a bad image, yeah.
But so was the dot com boom, you know.
I mean, to say that ICOs,
that Cryptocurrency should just be bitcoin
is like saying that the ICO, or I'm sorry the dot com boom
the 90s should have only been Microsoft, you know.
And that everything else was a scam.
Apple was a scam.
Everything, you know.
I mean you could look at bitcoin like a Microsoft
and you could look at Apple like an Ethereum.
You know? I mean, really.
What's the beef with Ethereum?
The pioneered an ICO.
They made something new in the space.
There needs to be capital to flourish.
Capital needs to come in for stuff to flourish out of it.
Yeah, a ton of it's gonna be waste in scams
and it's gonna die.
But some stuff is gonna flower up.
It's important, this is how that works.
- So would you consider yourself to be in the camp of
having more regulations to help that process
so that there's less scams?
Or do you think it's in the consumer's own
like the consumers essentially have to do their own research
to determine whether or not a project is a scam?
Which camp do you consider yourself to be in?
- I don't think, as far as investments go,
I think it's natural selection.
I don't need, I am an American citizen.
I don't need the FCC to tell me
where I can and can't put my money.
What it does is...
So institutional investors can invest in a lot of the
presale projects happening and stuff like that, but I can't.
And what you're seeing is then you see them turn the flips
where they invest in huge discounts and projects...
Sorry there's a bug.
Presale projects, and then later they flip their bags
to retial investors on exchange at a huge premium.
So retail investors are still holding the bags,
they just happen to pay more for them.
I don't see who's being protected or how.
If someone's out investing in BitConnect
or something like that,
I'm sorry but that's natural selection, man.
It's just like if you're investing in a shitty penny stock
I'm sorry, that's bad investment.
Investment's not supposed to be...
As far as I know, investment's about risk and reward.
- Right. So what's the best place for someone to
educate themselves if they're interested in projects
that are a little bit riskier, if you will,
what's a good place to find the info?
Cause the problem with Crypto, in my personal opinion,
is there is just so much wealth of information
and a lot of it's fake news as well.
I'm sure as you sort of get to learn the space
and train your eye you understand better what to look for.
But as someone who's been in the space for so long
what are some of the recommendations you could
give someone starting out in the space?
- Well, I think the idea that somebody has to go and invest
in all coins, like low cap altcoins or ICOs,
is not really a good idea, to be honest.
I do think that finding a valuable project
that you're getting in at the ground floor
at the value level,
having a few of those or a small amount of money
devoted to that, that's great, that's really fun.
It could be really profitable.
It's kind of exciting.
I love, I think that's what's kind of cool
about investing in general.
It's like a roller coaster ride, man.
But the thing is, at the end of the day,
if you're gonna have some money devoted to stuff like that,
I'm a big fan of going to conferences
and actually meeting the people, the team, the project,
seeing it in person, talking to them.
Ask them a ton of questions.
Because talking to people on a Telegram channel or on Reddit
at the end of the day you don't know who you're talking to.
You can't look the person in the eye
and get the same kind of responses to your questions
as you would in person.
That's something I would actually advise.
- And what are you personal thought about the fact that
Ripple is sort of going through a place...
So there's just a lot of controversy because
obviously in the Crypto community,
Ripple's sort of the centralized child, if you will.
Do you have any personal beef with it?
- No I don't, man.
Because they're doing their own thing.
It's like the startup doing their thing.
It's like if someone doesn't like it, then ignore them.
Am I a huge fan of Ripple?
No, not really.
I'm not a fan of...
There's a lot of stuff that irks me about them.
But the stuff irked me about...
When ripple first started,
there was something really cool they had going on
where you could actually earn it
by donating some of your computer power
to the world community grid, WCG.
This was like a really long time ago.
And they kind of canned that.
And after they did that, I was sort of upset at Ripple.
I was kind of like, "Hey."
I thought this was something cool
where I could kind of get on something early on and earn.
And why they stopped that initiative
I'm not sure, but they did.
They kind of turned more centralized.
A ton of it's like premine.
Like the founder, I know they own a really large portion
of coins as compared to some other projects, maybe,
or compared to what people think a project should own.
Which I'm not sure even where that number comes from
or how that's decided.
I also didn't like that they don't require banks
to use their token, to use their platform.
However, that's not something that's concrete.
That can change.
So the idea that they don't have value because of that
is kind of like well hey, be careful.
Because if they do all the sudden make that a requirement,
what if they get to a critical mass
where they have all these clients and they say,
"Hey, well actually you gotta use the token now.
You gotta use the coin now."
- So lack of transparency, essentially.
- Sorry?
- Lack of transparency.
- Um, no I wouldn't even say that.
I think they're pretty transparent.
I would say lack of utility at the moment
but there might not be a lack of utility in the future.
And also I know they had a new product launch, recently.
And I read an article on it
but I haven't got to research it a ton.
But I think that may be a step toward
requiring the use of the token.
But don't quote me on that because I have to
research their latest product launch.
Because yeah, that will add a ton of utility to them
and make them really valuable.
- Yeah, so Ethereum is experiencing
quite a bit of scalability issues right now
which is affecting a lot of these ERC-20 token projects.
Do you think this is another reason as well why the market's
been a little bit more bare-ish these last few months?
- I wouldn't say so, no.
- No?
- The problem-
- Yeah, so do you think Ethereum, I mean obviously
they're working hard on a solution,
but what do you think is sort of the future of Ethereum?
Do you see it longstanding?
Or do you think something else is going to come along,
like maybe like an EOS or Stellar?
- I think Ethereum is the absolute
forefront of smart contracting.
I've really bought into the project.
In fact, if you would have asked me three or four years ago,
I was actually really resentful against the project.
And part of the reason was because
one of my industry partners I've worked with
and consulted with for years,
Morgan Price with Davidson Beck,
outlined a lot of scalability issues really early on.
In fact, he was the first one to actually point out
the scalability issues and the bloating issues
with the Ethereum blockchain.
But, the thing is like this:
what Ethereum boils down to is if you think they'll scale
eventually, properly, and sufficiently or not.
I tend to actually think that that is a problem that
with advances in technology and time that will be solved.
To think that, when we look at microchips and things
and how much more they are able to hold each year data-wise
and all that stuff, how much more powerful they become,
I think that scalabilities and blockchains
will probably follow some kind of a path like that.
- Yeah.
So can you tell us a little bit about your project
OptiToken and what is the vision behind it?
- Yeah, totally.
Simplicity, you know one issue with...
It's kind of like economists tend to enjoy the project.
We have a lot in the community.
The idea is similar to what kind of
a lot of central banks do with open market operations,
except our idea is to kind of support the price.
A lot of issues with Cryptocurrencies is the volatility.
And our goal is to be a stable coin.
Actually we think there's nothing wrong
with the upside of value to a token, right?
Or a coin.
But we want to protect against the downside more.
So what we do in a sense is we use trading algorithm
to generate profits, is the goal.
And then after that use those profits
to support the price, buys on exchange,
and then either destroy the tokens
or permanently lock them away.
Right now we destroy them, we have a burning function.
But eventually, if we have to change things
we will just lock them away permanently forever
through the use of blackle address,
transparent blackle address or something like that.
- And so, do you guys have several algorithms
that you're using to do trading, or how does that work?
- Well that's actually...
A goal is to kind of like,
what's the word I'm looking for...
(grunting)
Ah, da-da-da-da-da.
I can't think of the word where you're...
Doesn't matter.
Okay, yeah the goal is to have kind of different options
or different strategies in play.
But right now there's only one algorithm we use
and it's in my opinion the safest
style of trying to beat the market.
And when you're trading, you're trying to beat the market.
When you're day trading that's really all you're doing
is you're trying to beat a hold strategy.
So there's a lot of ways people trade and try to do this.
There's margin trading on places like
BitMax or Bitfinex or whatever, Kraken.
There's a ton of exchanges you can do this on.
And people basically try to ride the swings
or they may try to trade an altcoin verses bitcoin
or bitcoin verses altcoin and see an appreciation that way.
I don't like, I don't this is a safe method of trading.
I think that more often than not it's kind of
just speculating, although it can be really profitable.
I don't think it's...
I think at the end of the day
it's better to hold, in my opinion.
So if you're just, if you...
You know, people who want to try to time
bitcoin price or market swings,
I think more often than not they are going to end up
with less bitcoin than if they had just held.
So that being said, I don't think that's,
I think that's a more risky play.
- So that's interesting that you say that though
cause I've talked to a few traders
and they've commented the fact that the style of trading
has to change based on how the market is.
And for instance, one of the trader I spoke to
mentioned the fact that they don't swing trade anymore
just because the market has been too volatile
and they've had to be just more actively day trading,
for instance.
So does the algorithm take that into account,
and what's your personal opinion
on that following statement?
- I don't know who said that but I would guarantee,
I would love, I mean I guarantee that they don't...
I would love to see their gains over time
from their strategy, because nine times out of ten
people are losing money with trying to beat the market.
They're on BitMax to try and trade every day, all day.
"The market's gonna either go up today,
it's gonna go down," I mean, come on.
People do that, and at the end of the day
they're out there losing money.
And people like, really, if you look at 90% of people's
portfolios that do that strategy consistently,
they have huge deficits.
They would have been better off just holding.
Or just selling and then being like,
"Hey, you know what? I have a target of X amount of money.
I think the market's gonna go down to, whatever, 5000.
I think it's gonna hold there, or maybe 3000."
And then just say, "Hey, I'm gonna re-enter here."
And I guess the only difference in that would be
it's not day trading, it's like, "Hey," it's a...
I would say that's a much better strategy.
- So how did you learn about trading?
Cause I think that's, for me personally,
that's what could be off-putting about
the Cryptocurrency market.
And obviously there's just like
so many different layers to it.
But the trading aspect is a skill
that you need to learn and acquire on your own,
and most individuals don't necessarily
have the time to read charts, and what not.
So how did you learn about it over time,
and what would be your recommendation to someone
who has a day job or has other stuff going on
and is interested in obviously participating in the market?
- It's like my hobby, I don't really...
Like I was interested in stocks
before Cryptocurrency came out
and I was kind of a nerd on that whole subject
so I naturally transitioned quite well.
A lot of people for fun they go out
and play video games or something
and that's not what I do.
I like to make money.
I like to pass the day by-- - You play Crypto-games.
Instead of video games (laughing).
- I think it's fun to actually to make profit
and to invest in something and see it kind of like a garden
to see it grow, I find that really pleasing.
So that's kind of...
I say if it's not your life, then, I don't know...
Be careful trading with it.
It might not become that well.
If basketball's not your life,
you're probably not gonna get into the NBA.
So, um, yeah.
- Cool.
- I kind of look at stuff all day.
Read articles, and yeah...
- You do your homework.
- I do my homework, bitch. - Yeah.
(laughing)
Nice.
- What were you saying?
Did you have a question, I'm sorry?
- I said, "I do my homework, bitch." (laughing)
- No but I mean, there was a second part of that question-
- Oh yeah, how can someone...
I mean I think, yeah, I understand where you're coming from.
Obviously if you want to trade, you have to learn the art
and you have to educate yourself.
And there's plenty of, I think, blog geeks.
There's just a bunch of different resources out there
that are available for people.
But I've also heard the camp of individuals telling me,
"Well, you know, people pretend that they can read charts,"
but at the end of the day
it's almost like you're betting penny--
- It's not that they can't it's just at the end of the day
the emotions come and get the best of people.
- Yeah.
- So to think that you're going to trade,
like sit and watch a chart all day
and somehow just beat it all day
it's just not gonna happen, man.
There's huge money coming in like at times,
there's like Malgox up to..
I mean it's not like, it's real, you should--
- Oh yeah, what's going on with Mongox?
I read a couple articles about...
- Only 90% (mumbles) every day.
A good, good, it's like a good trade comes
maybe like a few times a week, maybe.
Maybe less.
I mean, that's really what, I see maybe even less.
Where it's like, "Hey, look, there's like four indicators
saying we are due for some bare candles, some red candles."
That real world where it's like, "Oh my gosh.
Let me get some money on this."
That's what you want to see.
Or the opposite where it's like
I think we're at a clear bottom.
I'm about to put a long on and go heavy
and then with a stop locks under this little level,
you know what I mean?
Under these indicators.
So, that comes pretty rare.
- Yeah, no most definitely.
- And no other people are going to find that.
Why look for it?
You know what I mean?
Here's my advice, real quick.
And not to cut you off, I know you were about to--
- No, no.
- But if you're interested in Cryptocurrency,
I would say figure out an amount of money that you're okay,
that you can afford to put toward it,
and then scale into a position.
This is a fine level to buy a little at.
Long term if you're really bare-ish on Cryptocurrency
this isn't a bad price at all.
So even if we go lower in the long run
the idea is you're looking for bitcoin to go
and test like six figure levels, right?
That's really why, that's what...
If you're bare-ish on bit,
I'm sorry if you're bullish on bitcoin
that should be some kind of a number you're considering.
Otherwise, there's other safer aspects.
Go for investment real estate.
If you're just looking for bitcoin 20000 again
go investment real estate.
That's 300%, you can get that in real estate, I think.
And it's probably gonna be safer.
So, that being said, scale in.
Buy a little here.
If the market does dip, great, buy some more
if your target really is that high.
If this is a bottom and it starts going up,
the market picks up steam,
add to that position as well, get a nice average price.
That's my advice.
- Yeah, I mean it's crazy the amount of individuals
who don't understand the opportunities
that are currently in play and the fact that...
I mean obviously you have to know
which Cryptocurrencies to invest in,
but people like Tim Draper have been saying
that bitcoin could hit as far as like 250000 by 2022.
And obviously these are all speculations but these are
individuals who have been in the finance world for quite a
long time and the institutional money is coming in.
I guess the press is doing such a good job
with putting such negative press out there
that again, yeah it's just really off-putting
and people just don't understand the opportunities.
Cause I mean, yeah, it's the wild wild west right now.
Was it like that back in 2014 or do you think,
when you started, or do you think
it's just really evolved into,
I mean, even just crazier time, if you will?
How was it back then comparison to now
as far as the type of individuals
who are getting into the space?
- Well, I mean it's like we talked about earlier
it's not, like, I've yet to see really an asset
that just goes up and up forever, you know?
I've never seen that before, and if there was
financial markets would be different, completely.
Even like (mumbles) would probably be different.
That's not how, assets don't tend to work like that.
Bitcoin 20000 was a regalia at the time.
It was too much for it, it wasn't worth that much.
It didn't have enough, not enough people were accepting it
or using it as a stored value,
as a mechanism to transfer value.
It wasn't being used enough.
So it was overvalued.
It's coming back down to earth.
Is 6000 a fair price?
I'm gonna say I don't think it's a bad price at all.
Like I said earlier, I think it's a
pretty fair price to open a position at.
In 2014, there was similar...
In 2013 there was a big run up as well.
And so, yeah, the run ups are gonna come
and they're not gonna probably come when people expect them.
It's probably gonna be over like three to five years
that there's enough accumulation, enough...
A perfect storm for another run up.
Enough development, enough...
Yeah, just stuff kind of accumulates.
- No, most definitely. Well--
- So yeah--
- Yeah I was just gonna say thanks for joining us today
and I wanted to ask where's the best place to keep track
of your project, OptiToken?
- I would, we come through on the Telegram channel,
we have some pretty heated and wild discussions in there--
- On the Telegram channel?
- I'm known to be pretty, I can be pretty mean in there.
Keep it real.
- That's good, we need someone like you.
- There's people in there, friendly people.
Telegram or OptiToken.io is the website.
And real quickly I just wanna say
Luna, how great I really think you are
and how I really think you're a good heart in the industry.
I think you know that I've mentioned it many times
how I really see you as a powerful, like someone who's
going to be a really powerful woman in the industry
and has the ability, the potential to do that.
And I think your heart is in the right place...
The industry needs people like you--
- Oh, thank you. Aww (laughs).
- Be on early because I feel like, in a year or two
when it's really blowing up, they're gonna be like,
"Oh look at this O.G. episode..."
- (laughs) Yes, this is deifnitely the O.G. right now.
Building stage, and I'm so excited
that you can be part of it.
Thank you, Sean.
I'm gonna let you go cause I know you have
lots of stuff going on this morning.
Please make sure to check out OptiToken
and thank you guys again for joining us
and listening to That Crypto Hustle podcast.
Bye guys. Bye, Sean.
- Thank you.
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