On Friday, May 28, 2021, YIELD App held its first-ever live stream Ask Me Anything (AMA) with our CEO Tim Frost and CFO and COO Justin Wright. Broadcast across our YouTube and Facebook channels, the duo answered a range of questions submitted by the YIELD App community, with chosen answers winning exclusive YIELD App merchandise.
The AMA came hot on the heels of a volatile period for cryptocurrency, which has seen its total market cap tumble from $2.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion in just over two weeks. In his first answer, Justin addressed the sell-off, answering a question from community member @KildrasZ on the stability of the YIELD App fund throughout the period:
“In many ways, I don’t think it’s unhealthy that we had a pullback in the market overall, and, as part of putting our processes and fund strategies in place, it’s important they are tested on the way through. From the very start, it was about making sure the capital that’s invested is not at risk while we create alpha and implement hedging strategies to ensure we can pay our customer’s APY.”
Both Justin and Tim added that the crypto industry had held up well through the pullback, with no serious or “systemic” issues arising at any of the big exchanges, indicating the growing maturity of cryptocurrency in general. Tim added that safety is paramount at YIELD App, with robust safeguards in place both at an investment and a technology level.
Steady State opportunity
The duo also took the opportunity to give some more details on the recently announced partnership with nascent DeFi insurance protocol Steady State. The new insurance solution is going to allow platforms and protocols to purchase comprehensive insurance cover, rather than users having to cover their own assets, and YIELD App plans to be one of the first customers.
Justin commented: “Really, so far we haven’t really found what we needed. So we are working with Jonathan Libby and his team, who are really pulling the whole DeFi insurance thing apart from end-to-end. This will be a whole new solution.” Later in the AMA, Tim advised YIELD App users to register their interest in the Steady State launch on the Telegram community channel, particularly Tier 5 members that should mention their status when contacting the Steady State team.
Withdrawal fees slashed
On updates to the YIELD App platform, Tim announced a big cut to withdrawal fees: from $20 to $10 for USDT and USDC withdrawals, 30 to 20 YLD for YLD withdrawals, and 0.014 to 0.010 ETH for ETH withdrawals.
“This is something that was overdue. We have listened to the community here: whatever it is you guys want, we want to cater to that as much as possible.” Tim added that there are still no fees to deposit on the platform and “never would be.”
YIELD App version 2:0 upgrades
Both Tim and Justin also covered a range of questions from the community related to the package of updates, new products, and services that are coming as part of the wide-reaching YIELD App Version 2.0 upgrade this year. The first was on auto-compounding, which will mean user rewards are automatically reinvested: a feature that user @cryptoanoop sent in a question about.
Tim commented, “Auto-compounding will be a part of the new application [and] we’ve got a lot of other things coming up. We have grown really fast - from our public launch in mid-February we’ve grown to over 43,000 users and over $120 million of assets, while we’ve grown to 42 members of full-time staff to build a very qualified, global team."
“We see it very clearly: we are going to bring YIELD App to millions of users, and faster than we ever anticipated. So we made a decision that we needed to rebuild YIELD App from the ground up. We have a new wallet system that will be cross-chain compatible, we’re adding more assets, fiat rails, and we have the mobile application coming that we have consciously waited to roll out with the new version, plus the card program and more investment options.”
BTC Fund and portfolio strategy
Tim added that all of the above updates and more would come with the new version, currently being built by developers working “24/7” around the clock to deliver it. Justin reassured users that, in the meantime, he and the portfolio team would continue to do “exactly what [they] set out to do” by delivering market-beating APYs to users.
The duo did reveal that the first new asset to be added to the platform would be Bitcoin in the form of a new fund that would be added in the “very near term”, as well as a filecoin strategy. On the portfolio, Tim and Justin said that the investment team was actively taking advantage of opportunities across different blockchains to deliver the best yield, but that they were continually balancing that with security.
Justin commented: “There are some pretty outlandish and wild returns in some of the more exotic types of strategies that individuals might take, but for those like us looking out two to three years, sustainability is important. There are a lot of opportunities out there but we make sure we stay close to our founding principles of security and stability.”
On regulation, Justin mentioned that the team is working hard to get the permissions in place to allow them to roll out YIELD App to the US market in the future, as well as secure further licensing while offering YIELD App to more corporate customers across Europe and beyond.
Touching on some big developments in the wider market, Tim and Justin added that signals from Visa, who recently announced it would be settling USDC on the Ethereum blockchain, along with the adoption of Bitcoin by major banks like JP Morgan and asset-class approval from Goldman Sachs spoke to the growing acceptance of cryptocurrency in traditional finance.
1 million users and $1 billion assets, coming soon!
Answering a final question from Twitter user @hauhau1166 on YIELD App’s goals over the next three to four years, Tim added that by the end of the year the updated version of the new platform should be fully rolled out, with the complete road map fully realized over the next 12 months.
He said, “Crypto banking is real, it is here and we feel we have a good chance to be right at the top of the industry worldwide. We have a really fantastic team that we’ve assembled and more and more talent coming on board and, really, any company is about its people so we’ll continue to build that out."
“We have growth metrics in mind too, including hitting that millionth user and that billion-dollar asset level - and that’s coming quite soon. We’re going to really ramp up marketing once we get through this new version phase here and we can really ramp up marketing to push it quite aggressively moving forward."
Tim concluded, “Overall it’s one step at a time to make sure we don’t make any missteps along the way as we continue to work with strong, leading partners in DeFi.”
WATCH The YIELD App Live AMA on YouTube HERE!
DISCLAIMER: The content of this article does not constitute financial advice and is for informational purposes only. The price of digital assets can go down as well as up, and you may lose all of your capital. Investors should consult a professional advisor before making any investment decisions.
