Parallels Between DeFi and Traditional Finance with Rowland Graus

Today we are talking to Rowland Graus, product manager at Agoric. Rowland says while in college, he roomed with 8-10 guys that were really into poker. Bitcoin became big in the poker community, and Rowland was in the perfect place to hear about it. As the years went by, Rowland tracked bitcoin, but didn’t really get pulled in until February 2017. It was while launching a new product for a startup that Rowland’s business partner spoke to him for hours about Ethereum. Rowland was convinced it was something he should put some money into as an investor. After he bought in, he realized he should learn more about it and that’s when he really got sucked in. He started seeing products being built but didn’t see a lot he could do in the space, so he watched from a distance. In 2019-2020, Rowland started to see products that he understood and would use personally. That was his light bulb moment when Rowland realized he needed to switch his career. Rowland has noticed some differences as well as some similarities between DeFi and traditional finance. When Ethereum first launched, Rowland had a lot of friends asking him what he thought of it and whether they should buy in. Rowland told them he honestly had no idea how to value this new thing. He says there are parallels between valuing DeFi and traditional finance, and NFTs are a perfect evolution of that. Like every business model, there should be a way that money and revenue are generated. It’s amazing to see how far DeFi protocols have come. Ethereum has done $50million in transaction fees. We need diversity at the layer one level where some are solving specific security systems. That diverse range will bring such a broad ecosystem of users. If you can lower barriers to make it possible for developers who aren’t security experts to do it well, the amount of development you’ll see is going to explode. When it comes to the future of Agoric, Rowland says by the end of next year, he expects to see significant hubs of liquidity connecting cosmos chains in meaningful ways. He says that will be a massive opportunity for developers, and we’ll suddenly see complex derivatives markets. If you’re interested to learn more about Agoric, visit them at www.agoric.com or follow them on Twitter @agoric. -- The Fortune Teller podcast is a discussion between industry leaders in blockchain and financial technologies. The podcast focuses on the development of blockchain-based financial services and outlines the current state of the industry and future predictions for the adoption of decentralized finance. Go to www.teller.finance/