AMA Recap: The Crypto Blade x Bitlocus
Host: Hello Arturas Bobinas
Welcome to The Crypto Blade Community
Arturas Bobinas: happy to be here
Host: Let’s start the AMA session, Are you ready?
Arturas Bobinas: Yes!
First Segment: Introduction:
Host: 1. First of all please introduce yourself, Your background and share an interesting story of how you got into crypto?
Please write “done” once you complete your answer!
Dino: I’m Arturas Bobinas (Business Development) with over 15 years of experience in sales, marketing, e-commerce, and project management. Joined crypto space back in 2017, right before the ICO boom.
I used to be a BD on one local exchange while Andrius (our CEO) was a developer for their EMI/Banking service. We sat at the same office and then after the ICO boom had passed, we decided to establish our own crypto-to-fiat CEX.
Host: 2. Briefly enrich our audience about the main concept behind “Bitlocus” How long you’ve been building this?
Arturas Bobinas: Well our case is a bit diff: we have the “before and “after” fundraise stages :)
Already in action (since 2018/2019):
Originally Bitlocus is crypto-to-fiat CEX which has been established back in 2018.
Other companies of the Bitlocus ecosystem since the get-go are Payrico (crypto-friendly banking service (EMI, registered in Lithuania, EU) and Ginger Fund (liquidity provider for the CEX).
not that new in town :)
What are we building now for all that $3M we have recently raised (MVP with Anchor’s almost 20% yield estimated in February):
We are building is our CeDeFi project or the “Defi investments platform for fiat-based users” will be built on top of that Bitlocus ecosystem.
This service will allow fiat-based investors to invest in Defi quickly, easily, and in a risk-mitigated and complaint way with just a few clicks. Our fiat-based users will not directly interact with Defi space at all — they will make investments via our platform really easily — basically just clicking a few times and submitting an investment request to our platform (deposit or withdraw).
Host: 3. Please introduce the $BTL token economic system, and what are the utilities of your token?
Arturas Bobinas: let’s start from an important note:
our reward programs will be fueled by hopefully never-ending fees from earned fiat users. Since those fees are paid in fiat, this means that we will buy BTL tokens for rewards distribution and thus, as a platform, will also generate some buying pressure.
Utilities:
⁃ attend and earn rewards on liquidity mining and guarantee fund staking programs (the ones to be fueled with fiat fees)
⁃ get reduced rates for our CEX’s fees. Basic but handy stuff.
⁃ (new) stake-to-access utility where clients will be able to qualify for one of a few tier levels that will open up access to some specific products. It is basically the same as what IDO platforms do with their tokens.
the BTL token’s main chain is Terra (cw20), but we have bridged it to bep20 and erc20 versions via Wormhole Bridge too in order to access more users and more functionality from the crypto ecosystem.
Host: 4. Next, Can you tell us on motivations and benefits for investors to hold your token in long term?
Arturas Bobinas: Well, there are a few aspects that very heavily collaborate with utilities:
- pure speculation
- early addoptance at a better price for stake-to-access and liquidity mining utilities. And again, I want to stress that our reward programs will be eventually fueled by the fees we earn from our fiat users.
- our buy-back program. We will use part of those before-mentioned fiat fees to buy our tokens back at market price and will burn them on a quarterly basis until 30% of the total supply is burned. This makes our token deflationary and it in itself brings additional value for the holder in the long term.
- reduced cex fees if paid in BTL
Not a promise yet, but “I’ve got a dream” type of thing:
if things go well and our user base will grow big enough to support our own DeFi protocol, we will do that and have BTL as its utility token too.
Host: 5. Lastly, share some information about staking and farming for passive income options in the future?
Arturas Bobinas: We have just released our first liquidity mining program for our BTL-USDC LP on Pancakeswap (bep20). APY currently is ridiculously high with over >1000%. Don’t miss out ;)
Click here to join it: https://bitlocus.com/mining
For the staking part of things, we’ll introduce a Guarantee fund staking program
where users will be able to stake their stable coins in order to earn 50% of whatever we earn from that fund as fees from our fiat users. But that includes some risks too.
cause that guarantee fund would be used to cover the losses IF any of the protocols fail. So, nothing comes that easy :)
2nd Segment: Questions from the Twitter announcement:
6. The Bitlocus project is composed of both decentralized and centralized finance. How does the team balance and manage both approaches without violating the other? Can you please discuss this matter?
Question by 0JeanWayne
Arturas Bobinas: It is important to understand, that Bitlocus essentially is a centralized gateway to/from DeFi space, but not a decentralized project itself.
We categorize ourselves as CeDeFi project. Our CEX obviously plays the CeFi role with all the KYC/KYB and AML processing for compliance and FIAT/Crypto payments processing. Works as a crypto-fiat gateway basically.
Our “Defi investments platform” service will also be centralized, ’cause the idea here is to serve fiat-based users in a simple, risk-mitigated, and compliant way for them to invest their fiat to DeFi yield or NFTs.
The DeFi part of it is for processing to currently existing protocols, where our clients are connected indirectly. They will deal with DeFi without actually interacting with it — we will do that for them and manage their requests to/from DeFi space. This makes the Defi part of our business.
7. Partners are very important for every project today, may I know which partners you have now? and which partners in the future you will be heading to?
Question by Jan43951484
Arturas Bobinas: Our main partners are:
⁃ Payrico EMI — European crypto-friendly banking service (Electronic Money Institution to be exact. Actually, Revolut used to hold the same license in Lithuania too).
⁃ Dao Maker — our lead and strategic BTL investor. Others include GBV, LD Capital, Evangelion, DWeb3, Double Peak, AU21, Basics Capital, and a few more. Good, strong, and beneficial investors.
⁃ Social Staircase — our content and marketing agency.
then we are currently working on new partnerships that will be beneficial for the project in the future. The already announced ones are with Coin98, GBV (our VC too), Angel Protocol, bitsCrunch. A few interesting ones are still in progress.
The idea for partnership is simple — it either has to benefit the product/service directly or be useful for marketing, branding, or user acquisition.
8. Each project has interesting stories before it is created. So can you tell people about the story that gave you the motivation to build and develop a great project like yours?
Question by Ibrahem24254134
Arturas Bobinas: As I’ve mentioned before I and our CEO Andrius have worked for other CEX and EMI respectively during the ICO boom. We saw the money, we saw the opportunity and we also saw some flaws that our past employer did. So, we simply decided to do our own — better one ;)
3rd Segment: Community round
Q1: Can you share Your opinion about Defi & NFT? What makes your NFTs rate and special?
Question by ArtieLightfoot1996
Arturas Bobinas: I think that the current NFT market is just a little piece of what can actually be accomplished with that technology. Especially if NFTs get legal support. Up until then is mostly field by the many stuck in the crypto ecosystem that can't get out to the fiat world honestly. Prices are ridiculous in most cases, but I also like the current idea as well, especially where the content creator can get recurring revenue each time his content is re-sold.
In our case we will start from a smaller BFT marketplace, the hg=the main idea will be this: we will mirror markets like OpenSea, BUT we will filter out scam NFYTs, washtraded ones, etc with the help of our partner I’ve mentioned before — bitsCrunch.
Also, our fiat-based users will be able to trade NFTs with their fiat money (EUR for now)
Q2: IF THE BEAR MARKET COMES will your token PROBABLY DUMP? Do you have any plans to prepare for this bear market? How will you handle the panic sale?
Question by claytongriggs
Arturas Bobinas: the is no magic there. Bad timing, but in our case we won't try to synthetically pump our price — we wouldn't have enough funds for that actually. Once that market comes, we’ll just focus on building and delivering our product. Hopefully, by the time the next bull cycle comes, we will be fully operational and will ride the wave. If we will survive, if we will develop our product business-wise successfully, trust me — Bitlocus is gonna be a unicorn with the next bull run, mate ;)
Q3: How important is the COMMUNITY to you? and how can we collaborate or help you with the development of the project?
Question by lakribd234
Arturas Bobinas: let me be honest here: there is a community and there are real supporters. We currently have like 70k community members but probably less than 1000 real supporters. That's the sad truth behind all exaggerated crypto stuff.
Focus on essentials. the rest is noise.
Q4: How strong is your team? Many projects start with a good impression and are later abandoned the project. What makes your project different than others?
Question by Roadmape
Arturas Bobinas: most of our team is here since the very beginning of 2018. Check our page to learn more about the core team: https://btl.bitlocus.com/
Q5: Do you have an AUDIT certificate? Or are you working to AUDIT Your project, so that the security of the project becomes more secure and reliable?
Question by Kkkkkaaakkkk0
Arturas Bobinas: yes, you can find that on our website
Host: Thank you so much @artb01 for the very detailed answers!
I would recommend to our community please join Bitlocus social media channels for more updates
Channel: https://t.me/bitlocus
Chat: https://t.me/bitlocus_official
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bitlocus
Medium: https://medium.com/@bitlocus
Tiktok: https://tiktok.com/@bitlocus
