AMA with Creditcoin
On the 11th of October, 2021 at 10:00 UTC, Decentralized Club had the honor of hosting Tae-Lim Oh, Founder of Creditcoin for an Ask-Me-Anything session on their Telegram page with a community of over 60,000 people. It was hosted by DC Admin, May.
The session was divided into four segments. Introductions were made in Segment 1, questions from the Twitter and website community were answered in Segment 2 and 3 respectively, and live questions from the community members in attendance were answered in Segment 4.
If you missed this event and would like to know what Creditcoin is all about, you can find a recap of the interview here. Note that slight edits have been made for clarity, and links in this recap lead to images, documents, or other media.
Segment 1 - Introduction
[May]
Hello, 안녕하세요, 大家好, नमस्ते, Selamat!
My name is May and I'll be hosting the AMA with Creditcoin.
Today, we have with us a guest from the Creditcoin Team.
[Tae Oh]
Thanks for the intro @MsMayMay
Nice to meet you, everyone
[May]
You're welcome to the Decentralized Club and it's an honor to have you here.
Could you quickly tell us more about yourself and your job description at Creditcoin?
[Tae Oh]
I am the Founder of Creditcoin. I am also the CEO of Gluwa, the technology builder of Creditcoin.
In my spare time, I am an art collector who hasn't bought any NFTs yet.
[May]
Haha!
You'll get some soon, I'm sure :)
Let's begin the interview!
Q1. What is Creditcoin about and what idea was it created out of?
[Tae Oh]
Creditcoin is about allowing anyone to build an objective, verifiable credit profile.
Everyone deserves credit, banked or unbanked. However, unbanked or underbanked people cannot borrow from financial institutions and build their credit profiles in the current system.
With Creditcoin, anyone can keep track of their credit history, verifiable by a 3rd party. For investors, this means opening up a new market where they could not assess due to lack of information.
[May]
Impressive!
Q2. What innovative solution is Creditcoin bringing to topple its competitors with similar offerings in the financial market?
[Tae Oh]
Creditcoin focuses on non-collateralized lending, where most DeFi protocols like Compound or Aave are built for crypto-collateral loans. The difference is due to differences in target users. While Creditcoin is built for unbanked and underbanked borrowers who are not necessarily using crypto today, most DeFi protocols are built for crypto-natives.
Fundamentally speaking, collateralized lending isn’t suitable for the vast majority of real-world lending cases where borrowers are already capital constrained.
[May]
That's great to know.
Q3. How can global users or investors use Creditcoin to fundraise?
[Tae Oh]
As a fundraiser, you can start by registering your offer on the Creditcoin Network: how much you want to borrow, in what currency, for how long, and what interest you are offering to pay.
Note that merely posting your offering does not guarantee to receive loans. Investors need to buy into your offer.
[May]
Noted!
Q4. Could you briefly talk about $CTC and the utilities?
[Tae Oh]
You can use the Creditcoin Network to post your offer to borrow or lend, get matched, and make/take the loan investment. When the loan matures, the borrower can repay the lender and register the repayment.
Within this loan cycle, each user spends $CTC to make transactions on the Creditcoin Network. Note that you only pay the transaction fee when making a “write transaction,” adding more data on the network. Reading from the network is free. Also, the transaction fee is locked for a year and returned to the sender—a notable difference from other transaction fee models.
[May]
Great!
The utilities are solid.
Q5. Are there any incentives available to users of Creditcoin?
[Tae Oh]
While there isn’t a built-in incentive for Creditcoin holders, we foresee various developments to utilize the asset.
We currently see two different possibilities: 1) $CTC Lending and 2) Governance Token.
1) $CTC Lending
Instead of buying $CTC to use it, you can borrow $CTC. For holders of $CTC, this will be a way to utilize their idle $CTC funds to generate capital.
2) Governance Token
We can use $CTC as a governance token of smart contracts within the Creditcoin ecosystem. Given an upgradeable smart contract, we can make token holders vote to approve or disapprove of a proposed upgrade.
The governance token can have an incentive program similar to others like $COMP.
[May]
Looking forward to these!
Q6. What major news should we still look forward to from Creditcoin by the end of the year?
[Tae Oh]
1) Credal (Infura for Creditcoin)
2) User adoption (targeting 5M by EoY)
3) Listing on more exchanges
4) Ecosystem expansion by integrating with other networks
[May]
We wish you the best with these targets!
What's your current user adoption strength?
[Tae Oh]
We currently have 2M users, powered by our fintech lending partners. We were able to acquire users by growing with strong partners in the emerging markets. Our partners raise through Creditcoin, which offers better terms than financial institutions, and the savings are passed on to their borrowers, creating a virtuous cycle.
[May]
That's an impressive number!
Let's now take questions from our Twitter community.
Segment 2 - Twitter Questions
[May]
Q1. In the event, the borrower is unable to fulfill his/her repayment obligation, how does Creditcoin insure the lender against total loss of funds? Is the credit market physically regulated by financial bodies?
Twitter Username: @Trixiesfirst
[Tae Oh]
Important question. The network itself cannot collect loans. However, lenders can make an off-chain agreement with the borrower that enables them to physically and legally collect loans. For instance, a fundraiser who is a regulated financial institution can provide that information off-chain to prove its creditworthiness and legal terms. With that in mind, the lender will assess both on-chain and off-chain information about the fundraiser to make the investment decision.
[May]
Is there any form of KYC requirement on Creditcoin?
[Tae Oh]
None. It is a permissionless/public blockchain.
[May]
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Q2. Why do you think it is important to create an inter-blockchain lending market?
Twitter Username: @cradled_in_
[Tae Oh]
A maximalist may disagree, but like people use thousands of different web platforms today, we believe people will use multiple blockchains in the future. There is no reason to lock us down with one.
[May]
I support this too.
Q3. Can anyone from anywhere in the world get loans on your platform? Or do you plan to expand in the future? What items do you take in as collateral? Are digital assets also considered collateral? Do the users need to hold $CTC to get full access to your platform?
Twitter Username: @Albertjaison2
[Tae Oh]
We are currently working with partners in Africa and ASEAN region. We plan to expand within those two regions and to LATAM in the foreseeable future.
The end-users do not need to hold $CTC if they are not directly interacting with the Creditcoin Network. In most cases, we expect the platform providers to spend $CTC on behalf of their users.
The Creditcoin Network is solely for credit loans and does not support collateral. We won’t add the concept of collateral unless we see a meaningful reason to do so.
[May]
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Let's now take questions from our Website community.
Segment 3 - Website Questions
[May]
Q1. Destination transactions or retrieval of transaction data to/from Creditcoin Blockchain will use Credal: the Creditcoin API. What is Credal? How does Credal work? What advantages does it offer?
Telegram Username: @Josegamboac
[Tae Oh]
Credal is an API for Creditcoin. Like what Infura does for Ethereum, Credal allows developers to interact with Creditcoin without running and maintaining their own Creditcoin nodes. Developers can simply make REST API requests to Credal instead.
Behind the scenes, the Credal server is connected to multiple Creditcoin nodes, communicating with them on behalf of the developer, according to the API requests.
It will save a lot of time for developers and allow them to focus on their business logic instead.
[May]
Splendid!
Q2. Marketing is a central element for every project so that everyone knows the potential that a project can bring is vital to achieving the goals set. What is your strategy to attract new users and investors to Your platform and keep them long-term?
Telegram Username: @DungxPLCVN
[Tae Oh]
Initially, borrowers will get attracted by loans with better terms and liquidity. The project already has several lenders working with it, giving the network access to millions of users.
Investors are more likely to get attracted by the high, fixed APY that they cannot get elsewhere. Gluwa Capital (an investment fund) already has successfully raised two tranches for their Bond Account, providing 12% APY for 3 months lock-up, each capped at $500k and filled almost instantly.
In the long term, lenders will build their credit, by successfully raising and returning to the investors. The credit rating of lenders will attract even more investors.
[May]
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Q3. What is Gluwa's relationship with Credit Coin?
Telegram Username: @danWickerjil
[Tae Oh]
Gluwa is the first technology provider of Creditcoin. It has implemented the first version of the blockchain and is continuing to improve it.
Gluwa hopes more people will join the development of Creditcoin! As a member of Gluwa or as an independent contributor. If you are interested, please contact us via Github.
https://github.com/gluwa/Creditcoin
[May]
Dear community, please also join:
https://t.me/creditcoinofficial
https://t.me/creditcoinctc
Very detailed answers Mr. Oh
[Tae Oh]
🙇 thanks for the questions
[May]
It's now time for the community to send in their live questions 🎉
In this 4th segment, I will open the group for some seconds for the live community to shoot you some pressing questions.
Please pick four original questions to answer.
Try to ignore generic, vague, and copy-paste questions 😊
Ready?
[Tae Oh]
ready 🙂
[May]
As a measure to deter bots and reward hunters, could you please pick an emoji that will be included in the questions so you can tell original questions apart?
[Tae Oh]
let's use this 🙇
[May]
Great!
---Chat was then opened for the live community to send in their questions---
Segment 4 - Live Questions
[May]
Please select the questions now.
Kindly prioritize the questions with the 🙇 emoji
[Tae Oh]
got it
[The Curious]
🙇 ✅ I understand that the investor will evaluate the risk of the opportunity based on the credit history of the servicer, but you yourselves say that many people lack a credit history because they are not allowed to access a reliable credit system, so can a person ask for a loan if he/she does not have a credit history? Is this a fundamental requirement?
[Tae Oh]
Anyone can ask for a loan without a credit history. Lack of history will make the investment riskier, so it means you are likely to get a worse deal than when you have built a credit.
[May]
3️⃣ more questions to go 🎉
[Albert]
I like the mission of the Creditcoin platform to create a place with borderless loan opportunities. But how do you find valid and loan deserving institutions or individuals? Do you have any field workers for this purpose?🙇
[Tae Oh]
We can use off-chain reputation and due diligence. Note that we don't need everything to happen on-chain. Just like exchanges have on-ramps, we have lenders with a real-world reputation who can make credit assessments and decisions, using their successful investment history to raise capital on the Creditcoin Network and build their own credit profile.
[May]
2️⃣ more questions to go 🎉
[Akash EA]
Does your project have any cross-chain plans in the future?
🙇
[Tae Oh]
Creditcoin is designed to be cross-chain since day 1. Today, it can record Bitcoin loans, Ethereum loans, and ERC20 loans. You can also build new plugins to support any open blockchain and its tokens.
[May]
1️⃣ more question to go 🎉
[Nimsa]
Can you please talk about your partnership with Aella? What other platform or project in Africa are you in partnership with? 🙇
[Tae Oh]
Aella has initiated the Creditcoin project alongside Gluwa. You can think of them as the supplier of the project. Through Aella and their regional expertise, we are connected with various players in Africa, including financial institutions (e.g., banks, payment processors, and insurance providers), telcos, SaaS, and more.
[May]
Do you have time for one more? :)
[Tae Oh]
sure, have a question you would like me to answer?
[May]
Just select a random one that interests you :)
[Tae Oh]
🙆
[May]
Dear community, you can ask any question that was not answered here:
https://t.me/creditcoinctc
[Vicky Jones]
🙇🏼♂️ My attention is drawn to the creation of credit markets in Creditcoin. Can these markets be created by the users themselves for their economic functionality? Are strict requirements needed to have access to them?
[Tae Oh]
Creditcoin is an open, permissionless blockchain and you do not need anyone's approval to make transactions on it. We are working with various parties to jumpstart the ecosystem, but in the long run, we expect the credit market to run by itself.
[May]
Aaaaaaand it's a wrap!
Thank you for your time with us today, Mr. Oh!
I had a great time learning about Creditcoin!
Any final remarks for our community?
[Tae Oh]
Thanks, @MsMayMay!
Lastly, I'd like to share that there's a $CTC airdrop happening!
Join the $CTC Squid Game 🙂
https://twitter.com/creditcoin/status/1445675196363337735
[May]
Pinned!
[Tae Oh]
awesome
[May]
We'll definitely be a part of it!
Our regards to the rest of the team at the Creditcoin HQ!
You've built an impressive project!
We wish you all the best from here.
Until next time, do have a great day.
[Tae Oh]
Have a nice day @MsMayMay and everyone, bye
[May]
Thank you
The AMA with Creditcoin is now over.