Building the Bridge Between Traditional Financial Institutions and a Crypto Future with Daniel Strele-Ramonis of Renegade
A seamless and user-friendly digital wallet that combines the benefits of fiat and cryptocurrencies? In this episode of PayPod, host Jacob Hollabaugh sits down with Daniel Ramonis of Renegade to discuss how the Renegade app is revolutionizing the way we handle money and cryptocurrencies. Renegade combines traditional banking and cryptocurrencies in one environment. Watch this episode for a fun and interesting dive into this latest development in payments and fintech.
Payments & Fintech Insights In This Episode
- Users can easily switch between fiat and cryptocurrencies within the app.
- The goal is to reach underbanked or unbanked regions like Latin America and Asia.
- Renegade aims to provide easy fiat on/off ramps for buying and selling cryptocurrencies.
- Compliance regulations are stricter when handling cryptocurrencies.
- Educating users about the difference between a bank account and an electronic money wallet is challenging.
- Renegade incentivizes users with renegade tokens for transactions and card usage.
- And SO much more!
Today’s Guest
Daniel Strele-Ramonis : Renegade
The Renegade App will change how people in the 21st century will do their banking as it is the first App worldwide which combines traditional banking and cryptocurrencies in one environment. It enables Renegade clients to spend their crypto currencies like BTC, ETH and other crypto currencies as well as FIAT money through their smartphone or a debit/credit card where ever they are accepted.
Featured on the Show
About PayPod
PayPod is the leading voice in the payments and fintech industry, covering payments, risk management and new technology. Host Jacob Hollabaugh interviews leaders who are shaping the payments and fintech world, as they discuss the latest developments in the payments and fintech industry.
Episode Transcript
Jacob: Welcome to PayPod, the Payments Industry podcast. Each week, we’ll bring you in-depth conversations with leaders who are shaping the payments and fintech world from payment processing to risk management and from new technology to entirely new payment types. If you want to know what’s happening in the world of fintech and payments, you’re in the right place. Hello, everyone. Welcome to PayPod. I’m your host, Jacob Hollabaugh. And today on the show we are diving into what, even though it has been around for longer than a lot of us realize, is still the new frontier of money and technology, and that is cryptocurrencies. We’re going to be taking a look at crypto, at blockchain, tech and everything else these platforms has to offer, as well as discussing the best path or some of the best paths forward for bringing the old world of finance and this new world together, bridging those gaps, completing this transition process to truly integrate and adopt a lot of this new tech into our lives. To help explain this newer world to me and to you, the listener. I, of course, have brought an expert in the field here to help us join me on the show today is Daniel Ramonis founder and CEO of Renegade, your gateway to a partnered powered financial universe in the future of your finances. Daniel, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.
Daniel: Yes, thank you. Hi, Jacob. Thank you for giving me the chance to be on this show. It’s actually my very first time do something like this, so I’m a little bit excited and a little bit nervous as well.
Jacob: I love that. Well, I’m even more honored that you would have your first attempt at the podcasting world be with us here on PayPod. So thank you so much. The pleasure is all ours because as I spoke to you before we started recording this cryptocurrencies blockchain, all of these new technologies do come up certainly from time to time on this show as we’re talking about all the world of financial technology. We can’t talk about those without talking about some of these two true new frontiers, but they aren’t as used to. A lot of our listeners and even me, myself, as some of the other things we do talk about would be. So I want to start with kind of a couple overview type of questions and topics here, which the first of which it pertains to you yourself. When did you first get interested in the world of cryptocurrencies and what was it about them or blockchain tech or anything else that attracts you to wanting to work in this world?
Daniel: Yeah, that was back to 14 when I really started to get into cryptos and to spend some time doing research, and I was quite convinced immediately, but I thought, I need to give it some time. Will this go into the right direction? Will there be some sort of adoption? Will people start? Actually, it was Bitcoin back then, right? Nothing else existed. And I was like, people start using Bitcoin, will they trade it? And it got popular and popular in 2015. I really, really got into the crypto space and I’m in the crypto space ever since and I’m a huge crypto believer. And yeah, I do remember when I first read the Ethereum Whitepaper, which was really, really amazing. Like I remember the moment. It was an amazing moment because you just I realized immediately what potential cryptocurrencies blockchain technology can or will have on our future. The blockchain is here to stay. It’s not going to go away and 100% it’s going to change our lives forever.
Jacob: So what are some of those types of changes or some of those promises that like when you’re reading the Ethereum White Paper that you’re getting the most excited about what are with again, without you don’t have to give us the full super long lecture but the kind of top line items, the promise of cryptocurrency, the promise of blockchain, the the ways in which it can greatly advance or improve our lives in the financial world or outside of it. In total.
Daniel: Yeah, especially with the Ethereum White Paper. What I really, really liked was the idea of decentralized autonomous organizations and daos, which basically the idea behind is to tokenize a like maybe a company or whatever. Whenever you work together and you have to find mutual decisions, you can do it in a Dao like that was really it was fascinating for me and I was like, wow, this is like so like crazy amazing. And that’s what really fascinated me. But also the idea of being in charge of my own finances. I don’t have to rely on intermediaries. I don’t have to rely on a bank. It cannot be censored in some sort of way. It cannot Nobody can take away my cryptos unless I give them my private keys and or I store them in a hot wallet. And yeah, but that’s what I really found fascinating about cryptos that you’re in for the first time. You’re really in charge of your finances.
Jacob: Yeah. And the way I think of it a little bit and tell me if I’m wrong is just simply it’s a new framework. We didn’t really have any new frameworks for how the financial world worked or for how ownership really worked for a very long time. Like we’ve had a company is either privately held and X amount of people own the percentage of that company or it’s publicly held and you can buy and sell shares in it on the stock market. And that was the framework for ownership. And you had banks and their traditional system as the framework for finances, and little changes were made within those over the years, but nothing actually like said, here’s a brand new way to start fresh and do a fully different framework. So I always when if I’m ever speaking to someone who’s taken aback by it or thinks it sounds scary or doesn’t understand it or anything, I like to start from just saying it’s a new framework for financial ownership and ownership in general. Am I wrong in framing it that way as a framework to people?
Daniel: No, I think that’s actually a really good way of describing it. Also, how our financial world works. As you said, it didn’t change a lot. Maybe it didn’t change over centuries. Basically, like it was always the same. Like in the Roman Empire, they had coins, but currencies have been here forever and then nothing really changed. It’s controlled by a few and they don’t want to give up control. They don’t want to give up power. So they’re just going to yeah, let’s it should stay like it is. And it’s controlled by a few mighty corporations, banks, whatever, like governments, and that’s crypto is going to change it. And that’s the very, very interesting part about it. It’s as I said, that the good thing about cryptos is that you’re going to be in charge of your finances, but it’s also one of the big downfalls, I would say, because the question is, are human beings made to actually be in charge of their own finances? Maybe they’re not. The likelihood is pretty big that there maybe shouldn’t be in charge of they’re not in full charge of their own finances, at least. Yeah.
Jacob: Or at least every one of us is all in charge and that. Yeah, it does. Then it still has a little bit of collective to it where I might feel like I’m capable of being fully in charge of mine, but I’m still impacted by the fact that everyone is in charge of theirs and that. Can have effects on the market and everything which speaking of that. So definitely, especially given how long you’ve been in and kudos to you for being one of the early adopters way back when. I’m I don’t need I don’t need to ask, but I’m sure that there was many beneficial times to you having been in on Bitcoin as early as you were and whatnot. But the crypto market in general and is the mainstream thoughts of crypto and kind of news stories and headlines and stuff. It’s certainly been a little bit of a roller coaster over definitely the last few years during the pandemic and after. But even before that there was a lot of highs. There’s a lot of lows. There’s a lot of moments where it felt like we might hit that kind of tipping point of mass adoption and then, nope, nevermind. We’re not now. There’s negative headlines. Now everyone’s scared again. So where do you feel like the crypto market is at right now as far as mass appeal and that adoption curve of actually getting people to understand what it really is, what it’s really trying to do versus just news headlines they see of if whether it’s really negative stuff, like it’s all a scam or just really like you’re going to lose all your money or you’re going to be a billionaire tomorrow, all the kind of exaggerated headlines. Where do you think the market actually is in truth in its adoption period right now?
Daniel: Yeah, I think we are a very interesting point right now because governments realize that the currencies, they’re not going to go away and now they come up with their own central bank digital currencies. And I’m not a big fan of it because it will make you like very controllable if they can shut down, like they can just take away everything with one with one press of a button, they can block your wallet. But I think a lot of people think the same. So I can imagine a lot of people will realize that governments want to go away from from cash. They’re not they don’t like it. They want to get rid of cash. So that’s why they came up with central bank digital currencies. I think it’s a very dangerous path, even because, as I said, it makes you very controllable, very dependent on on on governments. And right now, I think what’s going to happen that governments will try to regulate cryptos that are not cbdc is not central bank digital currencies because they don’t want to give people another path. So if you have the choice, will I go into central bank digital currencies and making myself literally a slave to two governments? Or am I going to use other cryptos that are not as heavily regulated? Maybe a little bit more anonymous. It’s a big misbelief by the way. There. Bitcoin is not anonymous, but. That’s where at this point where we’re going to see the next 2 or 3 years what passed, especially regulators are going to go. And I think there’s only one one path they’re going to go that they’re going to really regulate cryptos to death or at least try to do it.
Jacob: Certainly. And yeah, and as you referenced before, the reason maybe things haven’t changed for so long or took so long to start changing is because those people that have all the power and that are running that aren’t just going to give that up, it’s not in our human nature to be like, You know what? It was good. We had a good run. Give it all up. So I’m with you. That one. The digital currencies they’re putting out are missing the main appeal of the world of crypto and blockchain, which is the decentralized ownership. It’s like, no, that’s still there with what they’re doing, but that I would envision them incentivizing folks come over here. We’re we’re still in control. We’re we’re still the beneficiaries of all of this and that that’s going to be the biggest push for them. So we’ve talked, generally speaking, about the kind of whole market. Now let’s actually get into Renegade, your company. When did the idea for Renegade come about? When did you actually start this company and what was the initial goal or maybe the initial goal remains still the goal today. What is the goal or the purpose of the company? Renegade?
Daniel: I had the idea for Renegade six years ago. I was handling cryptos already more or less in my daily life, and it was such a struggle back then to buy Bitcoin. And it took me two days like I had to transfer money to a company and they’re going to guarantee the price for 48 hours. And if the money didn’t arrive on time, they would give me maybe a better or worse exchange rate. It depended on where the market went, and I was like, that has to change, right? And it was so complicated. And how do wallets work? You really had to spend a lot of time literally learning it, learning how to handle cryptos. And I was like, okay, this has to change. And. Also, I realized that cryptos are going to here are going to be here to stay. They’re going to revolutionize our financial market. But yet traditional banking has to change. But it won’t disappear in the next ten years. It won’t maybe disappear in the next 20 years, but it will transition into a new form of traditional finance. It won’t be that traditional anymore.
Daniel: Now with Renegade, we want to help in this transition, in this transition, in this process, we that’s our punchline. Bridging the gap, bridging the gap between traditional finances and the crypto world. The problem, in my opinion, is that the banking and traditional banking world, they’re hating cryptos because they’re like their natural enemy. You know, they like, you don’t need a bank, take a peer to peer, you don’t need an intermediary. So obviously they don’t like that. And all the hardcore cypherpunks crypto enthusiasts, they’re like, Oh, the banks, they’re actually our enemies. They’re just controlling everything. And yeah, that it’s not the way we should go like they have. Both words have not only code to coexist, but they have to collaborate effectively. And that’s what we’re trying to do with Renegade. We in our app you will able to open an account. It’s how can I describe it? It would be something like an ACH account, just like a bank account. I have to be very careful with the wording because we’re not issuing bank accounts, but just to make a stand, a holding account, get.
Jacob: You a wallet or holding account. Yeah, you.
Daniel: Could actually call it. It’s actually that’s what it actually is. A wallet for electronic money. Yeah. So you can hold your euros in this wallet. We will issue a visa debit card and you can spend it in your daily life. You can pay your rent, you can get your salary, but also you’re going to have all the cryptos in this app. You’re going to have a crypto wallet and you can easily switch between those worlds if you say, okay, I have like, I don’t know, €2,000 in Bitcoin, but I need it now. You can just with one click, sell it and have the amount on your, on your fiat, on your Euro wallet immediately and then you can spend it with your card. You can pay something. Or if you have some money left, you can go into crypto, into the crypto space. The big picture behind it actually is that we want to go to especially to underbanked or unbanked regions like Latin America, Asia, that’s are too big, especially Latin America. That’s why we have an office in Madrid and because we’re going to go from Spain to Latin America, because once that’s the thing, people are sending money abroad. There’s a lot of Latin American people living in Spain. They’re working here and they’re all sending money back home. So they send money abroad in a craziest way. And crypto could actually change that really easy. You can send money to everywhere in the world with one click with literally zero costs. And whenever I speak to people like I have a few Venezuelan friends here in Madrid who actually send money back home and I’m like, Why are you not just sending your mom Bitcoin or ether or whatever? And they’re like, I don’t know how to buy it, and my mom doesn’t know how to sell it.
Daniel: Like, that’s even if I would know how to buy it, I will never make like I cannot explain to her. So that’s what we want to solve this problem. We want to have an easy fiat. That’s what you call it, fiat on off ramp. People should have the possibility to easily buy cryptos and sell it. So we have like really good partnerships. We just secured a partnership with a company. They’re very, very strong in Latin America to on and off ramp. So just imagine, let’s call him Jose. Jose is from Venezuela. He lives in Spain and he can use Renegade and we will provide him with an Iban account. It’s where he will get his salary. He’s used to handling money on his Iban account, and with one click he can buy, let’s say, Bitcoin, and with another click he can send it to his mom, and his mom just needs to download the app. She will receive bitcoin into her wallet and then she goes to a local 7-Eleven and can cash it out in cash if she wants. Yeah, or if she has a bank account in Latin America, she can cash it out to her bank account and pay her bills. And that’s one of the things we really want to do. And to make cryptos user friendly.
Jacob: Yeah, that’s really amazing. And definitely it makes perfect sense that I’m with you at the beginning of that as this is where it needs to go. These sides need to be able to play together, otherwise the only adoption there would ever be of the crypto world would just be there being two different worlds. And some people operate over here and other people operate over there and that’s not a great future either. I then also, though, understand why the financial world would probably push back so much on allowing anyone like yourself to bridge that gap because they see if they view this new type as a threat, they’re like, Yeah, we’ll incorporate any new payment method you want as long as it’s using the Fiat. Current season is running through our things, but this is a whole different level to them. So it all makes sense. And it definitely, you know, for me, just personally as a user, that’s why like I own some cryptocurrencies, but I never even think about the idea of actually paying it. It’s a simple I’m trading it to some degree and mostly just buying and storing it. But with something like this where it actually be able to integrate into my life and also integrate into those other lives.
Jacob: Because you give a great example with like it’s one thing for me to know how, but if I have to send money to my mom or dad or just really anyone else that has no idea the current system that they have of like, okay, well this is how you’re going to go get a wallet and then this is how you set up this and this is where you go to purchase it and this is how you sell it and this is how you can eventually get it to cash and then move that to a bank account to use on your debit card. It’s like, no, no, no, no one’s ever going to do any of that. So this seems like a great system to actually be able to do that. Besides just them viewing crypto as the enemy. Are there other barriers, maybe technological barriers to linking the traditional financial services and institutions with the world of crypto? Or now that you’ve come along, are you finding a lot of resistance? Are you finding less resistance than maybe you expected in being able to actually link those worlds and have them work so collaboratively together?
Daniel: It is quite hard to find partners who are willing to work with you if you handle cryptos. It’s maybe not that hard to find like a partner who will issue Iban accounts for your company if you start your neo banking fintech startup. But once crypto is part of it, everybody is like, Wow, okay, this is we have to be careful because maybe you’re going to get there’s going to be people and they were going to launder their bitcoins through your app and everybody is scared. So the level of compliance is higher once you handle cryptos than if you don’t. Lucky enough, we found a really, really good partner who is really behind the project, who is not so much afraid of cryptos. It’s a Swedish partner. They’re called Inter Giro. They’re issuing our Iban accounts. They’re issuing the visa debit cards. And that was a really big accomplishment already. But generally, this is our it’s quite hard to find partnerships like that. A big problem also is a problem, but it’s the regulator, right? Like it’s very we are based in Liechtenstein. They’re very strict. It’s a struggle. It’s very hard to keep them happy. You have to be extremely careful about the wording. You know, that’s why I said in the beginning, it’s not a bank account. Once they will go crazy if I call it bank account, like it’s totally a no no, it’s forbidden.
Jacob: The rule book for bank accounts. Now follow all of that.
Daniel: Yeah, Yeah. The problem is, like, at least in Europe, people do not know the difference between a bank account and a electronic money wallet. Everybody just calls it bank account. Yeah. So this is just because in your daily life you call it bank account, whatever it is, even if it’s just like an electronic money wallet. But it’s there. People will still call it bank account. Yeah, this is one big hurdle that the regulator, Liechtenstein is pretty crypto friendly, I have to say. It’s quite a good place to start your company. But yeah, that’s the biggest things. Then also I have to say, which is still a little bit complicated to handle, is the crypto community actually, because what we are doing, we’re trying to build a product that drives crypto mass adoption. We want to have an app for the masses. It’s funny because you mentioned your parents. My mom, she’s like my benchmark. If she’s able to use our app, if she’s able, you know, I’m always like, Mom, please test it. Can you use it? Do you understand the user interface, the user experience? And if she’s happy and if she’s having a good user experience, then I’m like, okay, like we can release it. It’s like, you know, proof by my mom. No, but seriously, like, it makes sense. Yeah, if she can use it, then I’m fine. Like, then it’s perfect because she knows nothing about technology.
Daniel: So it’s a perfect, the perfect testimonial. But in the crypto community we are selling our token. This is a way for us to fund the project. Also, a very interesting, really cool thing about crypto is how you can finance your startup. It’s a very new way of financing it, but within the crypto community people are going crazy. We’re about to implement a wallet infrastructure that is like a non-custodial wallet. Non-custodial means that nobody holds custody over your wallet but yourself. Normally that you have 12 seed phrases. That’s like you can imagine it like as a passcode. Once you have those 12 seed phrases, you can access the wallet. So this is like your key. This is the key to your wallet. And there’s yeah, this, there’s this very strong belief in you have to have your 12 it’s even possible with 24 but you have to have your seed phrases otherwise you’re not really fully in charge of your crypto. So there’s this company, they’re called defense, they’re from France and they have a very, very genius technology. It’s called delegated signing, where they take a scan of your face and the 12 seed phrases they’re stored in on different servers. I think they’re hosting it with with AWS, but I’m not quite sure. And with your face, you will unlock your wallet. They will just get all the seed phrases from the servers, put it together and open your wallet.
Daniel: And people were going crazy over it. And you can’t do that. You can’t introduce something like that to the app. I want to have my 12 seed phrases. And we were like, okay, like if that’s what you want, then you’re not our customers and you have to go somewhere else because people have to come to an understanding that if they and everybody wants crypto adoption because all the crypto holders, they have crypto, they want the price go up. Everybody’s dreaming of Bitcoin hitting half billion dollar whatever, like $1 million in ten years. I don’t know. This is only going to happen if like a lot of people are going to start using it because then the demand for Bitcoin will be high and the supply will be very, very low. That’s only going to happen if we have the technology like defense is offering because that’s something people can actually use. Imagine in the onboarding process of a customer and he has nothing to do with crypto. But he was like, okay, I’m curious, I want to start using it. And then he will be on the screen at the app, on the app and say, Okay, this is your 12th seed phrases. You have to write them down and you better write them down by hand. Don’t put them anywhere like in your computer because it can be compromised. And if you lose it, all your money is gone and people will be like, Go back to my mom.
Daniel: She will be like, Oh my God, I’m not going to touch it. Like, she will never use it. And that’s the first thing people are afraid. That’s what I meant before. Like a lot of people are not made to be really fully in charge of their finances. And a lot of people you would be surprised, a lot of people do. They don’t want to have this responsibility. People are lazy like that’s how it is. And so that we have to implement technologies and features like that. And it won’t make hardcore crypto users happy. But that’s a little bit the problem in the crypto space because a lot of crypto projects are financing themselves through the crypto community, so they want to please them and they all implement features that the crypto community is happy with and they can use it because they know how it works. But the rest of the world, who’s not in the crypto space, they have no idea how to use it. And that’s from my point of view, there is no real mass adoption yet because it’s like there’s a little bit vicious cycle. It’s just staying in the crypto space. Maybe some people even like it, like being a small crypto elite and like like we know something you don’t and but that has to change.
Jacob: Yeah, it’s not living the values of the actual, the community or the initial values that were espoused of making it for everyone. It’s wanting to keep it insular and keep it for them. And it would make it makes total sense that while there’s plenty of pushback from the traditional financial world of like you’re trying to take what we currently have, there’s then also the pushback from the extreme of in the community of don’t give this away to other people or don’t bring anyone else in like only make it for us or it’s going to be if it’s going to be different for us, we don’t want anything to do with it. That’s interesting and it makes sense now that you said it, but I wouldn’t have thought before of that there would be equal pushback from both sides of like, you’re being the one of we should bring these together, we should allow them to work together and that both sides there’s plenty of people who are like we like working separate. We would like to keep it separate. So very fascinating. You did reference then the renegade coin, and I think you said the main purpose behind both yours and any in general is that’s just a new method of being able to finance company. Is there any other purpose to renegade having its own coin other than just the financing piece? Is there other hopes or ideas of how you could use that or just any benefits to having your own token system within your app or ecosystem?
Daniel: Yeah, so obviously the Renegade coin is like a massive part in our ecosystem. You can use it to send it like in within the app and people can on and off ramp it, but also for all the card transactions we will get give you rewards in our own token. So imagine like with the most basic card, you will get 3% in rewards. So imagine you spend 100 bucks, you will get three 3 USD or euros or whatever you spend it in back in Renegade tokens. So we want to incentivize people by using actually our app, using our technology. So this is a perfect way to to incentivize people and it can go up to 8% in rewards. You have to stay Renegade tokens. We came up with a really, really cool card card scheme. Actually. You can build your own card. You can. It’s actually the first time you can actually really, really build the card to your needs. You can have airport lounge access if you want. There will be benefits. We call them benefits where you can get a refund. You can choose from a lot of companies. You can have Netflix refunded, you can have Spotify refund, Disney Plus, whatever. Like we’re not offering it in the United States, but it could be Walmart or Target or whatever.
Daniel: Walgreens, I don’t know. And you can choose how many benefits do you want to have each month? It can be up to eight benefits and you will be refunded ten. It’s in euros because we launch in Europe, so you will be refunded €10 each benefit. But to get it you have to stay renegade tokens. This is 11. where you can use it and also you can just take it to to generate the passive income. We have a partner who will give out loans so you can take the renegade coins into the loan book to finance the loans he’s giving out. And it will generate a passive income because obviously you will get a part of the interest rate. Yeah. And that’s one of the big that’s the big use cases for the renegade token. Also, there will be the possibility to stake it actually into mining. So this will also be a way of generate your passive income. Ideally, all the rewards people get by spending money through the card, they just use it to stake it. And by the time you build them, maybe a nice, a nice passive income.
Jacob: Yeah, love it. What So you mentioned you’re in Europe, you’re looking to go into South American markets. Are there what is the kind of goals as far as the geographies you’re going to be in or hopeful to be in? Because I will admit I am salivating a little bit here in the States of like I would love for Renegade or something like it, but preferably yours. I’m talking to you here about it. To be available to me, it would definitely get me to be much more of a user of these currencies and technologies. What are the plans for scaling it out? Is it just like focus on Europe and eventually South America first? Or what’s that? What’s the geographic roadmap kind of look like?
Daniel: Yeah, we’re not offering it in the United States. It’s I think this is like now for a lot of crypto companies. It turned into almost a red flag. Right now the SEC is going crazy. Like you have the the rules are like so strict. And it’s like if you the thing is actually, I just I learned it like eight months ago that if you want to offer your service in United States, you’re not going to offer it in United States. You have to offer it state by state. So and it depends on what state you want to offer it. It goes up to crazy amounts of money. You’re going to have to deposit somewhere or to pay for the license. So California is pretty expensive. I remember there’s like, yeah, you roughly need a million to offer your services in California. And I was like, okay, then I have California. What if I want to offer it in Florida? I was like, Yeah, maybe another 700K I’m like, okay, let’s go. Like, yeah, Texas kept going. I was like, Yeah. And I was like, okay, like, if you want to offer it in all of United States, we’re going to end up spending millions and millions and millions. So and then also the regulation is pretty strict. I think the SEC is going a very. That’s what I said before. They’re going to they’re not a big fan of cryptos. They really want to usher in central bank digital currencies. It’s more in their favor, obviously. So we’re not going to offer it in United States. And our main focus now is Europe and Latin America. And we want to expand to Asia as well, because this is also a very interesting market for cryptos. That’s our three main geography speaking. Our main focus is our main focus. Yeah.
Jacob: And then so looking at the rest of the roadmap you have on your site, you list out like a roadmap of the I think you have up to the next year, year and a half on there. What are the big the biggest objectives for the rest of 2023 or maybe even looking out into 24? I saw on there Apple Pay and Google Pay integration, which stood out to me as from my point of view, it seems like that would be really big wins and really big achievements to get on there. Am I right that those are going to some of the biggest goals on that roadmap, or are there any other really big objectives for the end of this year into next year that are the next big hurdles in big kind of testaments to you’re going to be successful Coming up.
Daniel: We are about to launch the app, actually the first version of our app and making the account and the card, the Visa card accessible, also quite short, like in maybe a month from now, we’re going to offer Apple Pay and Google Pay. So this is a big milestone for us because it’s very it’s going to be very easy to actually download the app and within a few minutes you have it on your phone where you can start spending money. Also, I have to say to implement Google Pay and Apple Pay is really a good way for us to actually save money because every physical card we have to send out, it’s quite expensive. Yeah. And so we’re happy if people say, okay, I don’t need a physical card and Apple Pay Google pay is sufficient. But yeah, this is a big milestone and another big milestone will be our listing at the crypto Exchange. We have secured two listings already. It’s bitmart and we are ready to sign a contract with Gate.io We have. It’s one of the big tier one exchanges. We’re really, really happy we have this possibility. And yeah, that’s going to happen this year as well.
Jacob: And is that listing the Renegade coin then, correct?
Daniel: Yes, that’s what Renegade Coin is. Obviously all token buyers who bought tokens until now. There’s like the big moment there. Waiting for it because this will be the day where the token gets tradable and where they will see what the token price go up or go down. And we are actually in a really good situation right now that I have the feeling like a bull run is coming up. It’s just around the corner. Bitcoin halving is coming next April. It’s not that far away, it’s only literally a few months. So that’s a really good, a good situation situation for us because to launch your token when there’s a bull run coming up or like in a bull run, it’ll just drag your token up. Like just go up and like imagine you will launch your token on Bitcoin’s all time high. That’s going to be more of a tricky situation. There’s only one place to go, then. Yeah, right. That’s it. And now it’s the other way around. Like it’s. And also, we’re really proud, I have to say, that we right now, we sold tokens for roughly €1.8 million and we started last October. And literally, like everybody told us, like, Daniel, you’re not going to sell one single token. We’re in the absolute bear market. The crypto is there like destroyed. Nobody’s putting money into cryptos right now, but yet we manage to actually collect 1.8 million, which is pretty decent. It’s not this crazy amount you hear in the crypto space like 100,000,000 in 30 minutes and the project was sold out. And yeah, we didn’t manage to do that, but considering the market circumstances, it was a pretty good achievement. And it also shows that there’s a huge interest in the app and in a solution like Renegade will offer and. So what I think from my understanding, if we manage to do to accomplish something like that in a bear market, if we survive the bear market, then it’s going to be easy for us in a bull run.
Jacob: Yeah. Love it. Well, I’m definitely rooting for you and the company, and I definitely am rooting for the whole industry because I do think for all the reasons you laid out of why right now and maybe for a long time, the US market is going to maybe be the hardest in the world for any of these things to enter and put up the most resistance. I view it as well If we’re going to be the last ones to adopt it here, then everyone else better start getting adopted quick so that if we’re if we’re last in line or the last to give in and let it happen, I’m looking forward to that day. So this has been really awesome. Daniel, it’s been a real pleasure to get to speak with you and learn about you in the company. For those listening who may want to follow you or learn more about Renegade and just keep up with everything the company and the market has going on, where would be the best place for them to go to do so?
Daniel: Maybe our social media. You will find it on X. It’s called X now. Still not used to the name. We have an Instagram profile, we have Telegram, telegram channels and also our website, My Renegade dot net. You will find all the info. Once the app is ready, you will find it in the app store. And yeah, that’s what I would recommend.
Jacob: Love it and we’ll link to those and more in the show notes below. And I was just thinking before we hopped on to the interview, I was talking about my hopeful big European vacation next summer, and I was like, Well, if I can’t use it here in the States, maybe if I spend a couple of months in Europe, I can get on the Renegade app and use it while I’m there. So yeah, definitely. I look forward to hopefully being able to do that. Well, Daniel, thank you so much for your time and knowledge today. I’ve greatly enjoyed it and hope to speak to you again sometime soon.
Daniel: Yeah. Thank you so much for having my first podcast with you.
Jacob: Yeah, love it.
Jacob: If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, head on over to SoarPay.com/podcast to subscribe on your podcast listening platform of choice. That’s s.o.a.r.p.a.y Dot com slash podcast.