Great! Thank you Terminada for the opportunity to clear this up!
I reached out (yes as a representative of Anzens) to hopefully earn your support for our budget proposal, as we believe that we are well aligned with the Cardano community’s core missions, and seek to bring the much needed stablecoin liquidity and drive adoption for both ADA and CNTs into the broader crypto markets.
We did see your rationale on your vote, and wanted to respectfully reach out and try to clear up some general misconceptions - and hope to possibly earn a yes or abstain from you in light of this new information.
So first point, while we would love to be supported by genesis ADA, we want to make it clear that we are not EMURGO and therefore do not have access to these resources. Anzens is an Encryptus Global product entirely, and is not owned in any way by EMURGO. We have not received any financial funding or ADA from them, nor do they have any stake/equity in Anzens. We are wholly our own entity.
What is EMURGO’s role? They are our technology partner. When we came into Cardano, we brought with us years of experience building Web2 <> Web3 financial infrastructure, fiat ramps, payment rails, and trading desks. As the technology partner, they helped us build the minting and burning platform, and we used our funding, experience, and partnerships to bring $USDA to market.
But we didn’t stop there: our mission is to be successful and use every tool in our kit to drive adoption for CNTs (as we are one). What does that look like? Offramps in 48 countries, with plans to scale to many more emerging markets. You can cashout your $USDA for local fiat currency in as few as 3 minutes - and we’ve done so without reliance on SWIFT.
We are working with our partners, NEO banks, institutions, OTC desks, and wallets to bring Cardano to a wider audience. Most recently, we listed USDA versus USDT on Coinstore, where they are offering 0 fee trading against Tether. Additionally, any other CNT can list with us too for a very modest listing fee ($10K) and no other requirements or marketing campaigns are required.
We have gotten 4 CNTs and ADA listed on CipherBC, an institutional grade MPC wallet designed for web2 and web3 businesses managing cryptocurrencies.
We recently completed our first withdrawal to Japan, and will soon be able to offer withdrawals there, and we have a keen focus especially in emerging markets within India, LATAM, Africa, and Asia. Anzens also presently supports a growing number of US states (14 right now), and our qualified custodian is BitGo. We have monthly attestation, and provide services all across the world without the need to visit an exchange.
We have taken it this far, but we need the community’s support to continue to scale our ability to integrate into new geographies, new exchanges, and wallets. We believe wholly that Cardano can compete on the larger stage and we can capture some of Tether’s volume. Stablecoins account for two-thirds of all volume within the crypto market, but we sit in 41st place for Total Value Locked, and it is our mission to tap into that larger market and bring real liquidity into the space.
We are onboarding RWAs and NEO Banks as well. We recently partnered with SH Financial to bring European IBANS to web3 businesses running on Cardano, allowing them to send/receive and/or pay vendors, employees, and so forth within Europe from anywhere else in the world.
We are also highly collaborative and willing to work with almost anyone in our space. We are presently working to onboard and support additional Cardano wallets in our minting/burning platform, and we will provide offramp services to any Cardano wallet who wants to integrate with our API. We will soon offer onramp services as well.
I have personally been in Cardano since 2017, and I love Charles’ vision, that’s why I bought in, but one of the things that many of us have always complained about is a lack of interest for builders to build on Cardano. Encryptus is that builder. They came from outside Cardano to invest and bet on Anzens USDA with their own money (I know I’m randomly speaking in 3rd person here, but I was in Cardano long before I worked here so I speak now as someone outside of Encryptus), and have brought USDA to market this far , and I personally think it’s great - and I’m thankful. I would love to see you support it as well. I know I work there, but I think that type of builder should be encouraged and supported. We need companies like Encryptus building on Cardano in my opinion.
And as a final note, although there is more, I would like to add that we do not view the funding proposal as a gift. It is an investment into Cardano, and we will use our real revenue streams (which are functional today) to repay every lovelace to the treasury. 20% of Anzens’ revenue, and 10% of Encryptus’ revenue will be paid until it is all returned. Our infra isn’t theoretical. It’s live today.
I believe a vote for Anzens is a vote for Cardano, and I do hope you will reconsider. If you have more questions, please do leave them for me, and either myself, or our CEO Shantnoo would be delighted to chat about it.
We’ll also be at Rare Evo if you want to meet up there. That goes for anyone reading this as well. Look for us. Say hi!
All the best,
William
of my income will see the fiat world through a service like this and I don’t yet see any reason why Anzens isn’t prepared to be that service. Until then, my own assessment of their business requirements suggests that they will have to bear, not just development costs, but compliance costs: which can be daunting. If detail about all this is available (I haven’t looked for it) then I believe it would help to see a digest here (or linked / copied from the proposal if it’s already been prepared).
