DeFi Raccoon AMA: Wise Token Founder, Peter Girr
What: Wise Token AMA hosted by DeFi Raccoons
Hosts: DeFi Naut and Wolf of Vladyland (Wolf)
Guest: Peter Girr, Wise Token Founder
When: Feb 24, 2021 at 2:00 PM EST
Where: https://t.me/DeFiRaccoons
— AMA Begins —
DeFi Naut: Hi, Peter.
Peter: Hey!
Wolf Of Vladyland: Welcome aboard, Peter.
Introduction — Wise Token is an innovative cryptocurrency designed to be a highly secure store of value that can be easily staked to earn trustless interest. Like bonds, certificates of deposit, and time deposit bank accounts, longer stakes provide higher yields.
I hope you’ve made yourself comfortable and will enjoy today’s session, so let’s get started. Welcome Peter, please tell DeFi Raccoons a bit about yourself!
Peter: Hello! My name is Peter Girr. I’m a US Army vet, real estate entrepreneur, and ex-competitive gamer — turned crypto enthusiast. I have been studying crypto since 2017 as an investor, and after 3 years of not seeing the kind of investment I was looking for, decided to build Wise Token myself!
Wolf: Army vet? We have a real spec ops here.
Peter: VN. I started as a combat medic (68W) and transitioned to Intelligence Officer (35D) in 2011.
DeFi Naut: D*** that’s crazy! I’ve been watching some footage of the seals lately, BUD/S classes.
Wolf: Interesting. Well, we are glad you decided to move to crypto.
Okay, once again welcome, glad to have you with us today! We like to start off with an elevator-pitch — for the people that haven’t yet heard of WISE — tell us what it is and what are you trying to achieve?
Peter: Wise is a cryptocurrency that is backed by the intrinsic asset of that particular blockchain. Example: Ethereum WISE is backed by Ether, Cardano WISE will be backed by ADA, BSC WISE will be backed by BNB, etc. By hosting a completely fair launch and using the crypto sent to buy WISE to back the value, we created a new type of cryptocurrency that has a price floor in the native intrinsic asset (ETH, ADA, BNB, etc.).
This is a completely new concept that can be understood best by comparing WISE with stablecoins which are cryptocurrencies that are also backed by assets. What if a stablecoin could go up in price just like any other crypto, but could only go down a certain amount due to a price floor? This is what WISE is. On Ethereum, for instance, the entire supply of WISE is backed by a pool of ETH on Uniswap. People buying WISE on Uniswap can make it go up just like any other crypto, but in the worst-case scenario, even after everyone sold their WISE, there would still be over 28,000 ETH in the liquidity pair on Uniswap.
On top of these properties, WISE can be staked for up to 42 years like a bond or certificate of deposit, and staking longer pays higher interest. WISE is the currency for an entirely new DeFi ecosystem that stands out because of how fair and straightforward it is. On top of staking, Wise will soon have lending and borrowing, similar to Aave and Compound, but 100% decentralized and automatic.
Wolf: Am I reading this right, 42 years?
Peter: Yes (not recommended to go that long btw). But if you believe ETH will still be valuable in 42 years it is an option. I personally have a 42-year stake but most are spread out 1–5 years.
Wolf: You mentioned soon lending and borrowing. I am sure that community wants to hear more about this. When is it planned?
Peter: Q3 this year. You will be able to stake and then use the value in that stake to borrow against. Plus lending and borrowing any other cryptos traded on Uniswap.
Wolf: Good options. Can you tell us about the origins of the idea for WISE? What inspired you?
Peter: After realizing the power blockchain technology has to revolutionize finance, I eagerly searched for good projects. After 3 years of looking for good, asset-backed, 100% decentralized cryptocurrencies and finding none, I decided to make my own.
It’s ridiculous to me that the safest tech in the whole world has gotten a bad reputation because of bad crypto projects and scammers. DeFi is completely safe, but it has to actually be decentralized and built sustainably. Unfortunately that kind of thing is very hard to find in this space.
Wolf: Well, we can argue about being safe. We saw great expansion of DeFi projects, but some were scams also. Feeling bad for those people that got ‘rekt’.
Peter: Yes, and not just from scammers either. Exploits in the code or just bad tokenomics add to this problem. Wise does not have any outside dependencies on other sources like price oracles, etc. that could be manipulated. Our lending contract won’t either.
Wolf: So your contact is audited?
Peter: Yes by Coinfabrik, and thoroughly tested by our own dev team. We also made the code public a month before launch and offered a 100 ETH bug bounty for critical errors. None were found, but we did correct a few minor things that came up.
Wolf: Amazing to hear.
DeFi Naut: So the goal of WISE is not for it to act as a stablecoin which is backed by the intrinsic asset of that blockchain right, but more of it to act like a volatile currency then? Just trying to pinpoint the exact use case for Wise, it’s still a bit unclear to me
Peter: Yes, specifically cryptocurrency, store of value, money, etc. It is a much better option compared to cryptos that are not backed by anything and did not have a fair launch. Of course all the products we are building for our ecosystem will be more beneficial for WISE holders, so essentially it’s a base currency for a new DeFi ecosystem.
Wolf: Tell us about the team working on the project! What are their backgrounds? How many of you are currently engaged in it?
Peter: We have a fantastic team, and you can see everyone on our website. Besides me there are several extremely skilled devs, a mathematician, and a marketing manager on my team. We have a lot of community volunteers playing crucial roles as well. Also we are looking to higher and expert in coding Solidity, so if anyone is looking right now, please apply!
Wolf: You hear that, Raccoons? Make sure to check this offer.
Moving forward… First question that came to my mind was about regulations, and did you have any problems being classified as a security or commodity? Do you have a plan if this question arises in the future?
Peter: Luckily, being fully decentralized helps us completely avoid this issue. No government can go after us any more than they could go after Bitcoin. No funds are being held in custody with the Wise contract. Everything is executed by the user and all funds stay in the user’s MetaMask wallet at all times.
Wolf: I see. So the only problem would be if the specific government decides to forbid their citizens to use your services?
Peter: Yes, although that would be difficult to enforce since everything is decentralized. According to my lawyer team, this kind of community project is not something governments tend to go after to attack.
Wolf: *Laughs* We have a winner over the authorities then!
Being 100% backed by ETH is really amazing to hear, and I am sure your community appreciates this. Can you explain to those not familiar with this what does it actually mean?
Peter: Layman’s terms: There are 2 forces affecting the price of WISE 1) The price of ETH vs the USD and 2) The price of WISE vs ETH which is affected by buys/sells on Uniswap. Both factors could be going up, both could be going down, or one could be going up while the other one goes down. All cryptocurrencies experience the market conditions from buys/sells of their native token, but no other crypto is backed by ETH such that even if people were selling the token, the price of ETH can carry the price.
Technical explanation: 55,900 ETH ($40 million+ at the time) raised by selling ~250 million WISE was paired with another ~250 million WISE to create the initial Uniswap liquidity pool, which the contract locked forever. WISE is backed by that pool of ETH, meaning even if all WISE holders sold everything, everyone would get some amount of ETH back, with even 28,000 ETH remaining in the pool after the last holder sold. WISE is backed by ETH and has a price floor in ETH.
Staking locks up WISE and raises the price floor for the duration of that stake. Currently 80% of circulating WISE is staked for an average of 2.2 years, which gives us a price floor of 31 cents in ETH (current price 43 cents). Now let’s say somehow everyone were able to end their stakes immediately right now and all WISE was sold back to Uniswap so that there were zero holders left. There would be 28,000 ETH left on Uniswap in the WISE/ETH pair, our liquidity would still be top 10 on Uniswap pools, and the very last person to cash out would sell their WISE for 7 cents of ETH each.
Wolf: Thank you very much for this detailed explanation.
Peter: You’re welcome.
Wolf: Can you provide more details about the DeFi products that were built on top of WISE? You mentioned also that your project can be incorporated in the existing projects built on Ethereum… Do you have plans for cross chain operability?
Peter: Yes, we will be launching on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) in about a month, Casper Labs after that, Polkadot and Cardano thereafter.
Wolf: BSC is always good way to go. Polkadot also with their parachains. Looking forward to these updates.
Peter: Exciting times in crypto for sure!
Wolf: Reading through your docs, one thing intrigue me… Current inflation rate is 4% in a year. Can we expect some token burn in the future, or less inflation?
Peter: Compared to every other crypto product on the market, this amount of inflation is nothing. Comparable to the amount of gold that gets mined out of the ground ever year, increasing the gold supply. Besides, the transaction fees on Uniswap offset the inflation and make Wise a deflationary supply anyway.
Already $1.3 million value has been added to the Uniswap pool naturally from transaction fees.
Also, tokens are temporarily burned every time someone stakes (currently 85% of circulating supply has been staked/burned for an average 2.2 years).
Uniswap is ownerless locked liquidity and is not circulating until someone buys it.
Wolf: I see. Couldn’t find this info, thanks for the clarification.
Not many projects are touching the store of value space, probably because of the above-mentioned regulations. I have heard about NDAU, and with its current price, WISE has a lot of room to grow. What other projects do you see as a competitor and what are your key benefits compared to them?
Peter: Creating a $200 million+ liquidity pool complete with a price floor is not something anyone has attempted, before or after us. We are kind of in a class of our own, especially once we launch on multiple chains and have the lending contract deployed later this year. It will be interesting to see how the community grows!
We are continuing to innovate deeper into our niche with creating ownerless liquidity, and one would have to generate the dollar value of our pool size in addition to copying our code, not an easy thing to do considering we are one of the top pools on Uniswap. Liquidity is everything in crypto, and we have a lot!
Massive liquidity allows investors to buy more without moving the price against themselves. All successful markets need massive liquidity in order to reach a large market cap.
Wolf: I agree with you here, without liquidity nothing
We have seen a lot of partnerships between DeFi projects that enable different services in this space. Do you have plans to enable yield farming for WISE or something similar?
Peter: I’m more of a fan of staking, and that is the primary function of WISE anyway. Yield farms tend to be unsustainable over long periods, and pay the best to first users, while giving diminishing returns to future users. Every new user who joins WISE must ultimately buy WISE on Uniswap, driving up the price. This means users get rewarded the LONGER they stay in the system rather than trying to be the first ones in and first ones out.
That said, I’m open to any partnerships that expose more people to WISE!
Wolf: Good to hear this.
DAO governance is also very popular among DeFi projects and supporters. Do you have plans to allow WISE ‘hodlers’ to participate in the decisions related to the token and platform?
Peter: Oh yes, we are working on that as well! Users who have staked WISE will be able to vote accordingly.
Wolf: Got to say, this just getting better and better.
We like to finish off by taking a look into the future, can you share what can the community look forward to in the upcoming months?
Peter: Launching on multiple blockchains will allow us to create a massive incentives pool for stakers. We didn’t do this on Ethereum, but for all other blockchains we launch on, we designed it in such a way as we are able to lend out the crypto that is below the price floor (for instance the 28,000 ETH on Uniswap that is just holding space and can’t be accessed).
Every time we launch on another chain we have a kind of hedge fund that grows larger. This crypto will get lent out to earn interest for the benefit of the community. There will be contests every day with cash prizes for winners. Besides that, the lending contract is a huge ticket item. Once complete our hedge fund will be used in our own lending contracts to generate our own APY.
We are also working on a number of small things like staking pools, governance, and a free WISE faucet page for the community.
Wolf: You have a lot of work ahead. Hopefully everything will go smooth.
Peter: Thank you! I have the utmost confidence in my team and we have done very well so far.
Wolf: I think we covered all the basics and now it is time for the questions from the community. I will unmute the group now and you can choose three questions to answer. Also from those three you will pick one only to win prize of $100.
[43 Community Questions Sent]
Wolf: And we are muted again.
While Peter chooses questions, I will share once again the links for WISE:
Visit their website here: https://wisetoken.net/
Here’s their Telegram: https://t.me/WiseToken
And Twitter: https://twitter.com/wise_token
Community Q&A Portion:
Community Question #1: “Can you explain a little more about how the staking mechanism will work and what kind of yields potential investors can expect?”
Peter: Yes! And staking is live now btw. The WISE supply generates a 4% annual inflation. 3% goes to stakers and 1% goes to referrers (which I will address in my second answer).
Think of it like Bitcoin mining, but without the heavy equipment needed or electricity. If you have WISE staked, then you get more WISE every day just like BTC miners compete for more every ten minutes. More people competing means lesser returns but also lesser supply and a possible price squeeze.
Right now 85% of circulating supply is staked so interest is about 10% annually, depending on how long you stake.
Community Question #2: “One of the key concepts of Wise is referrals. Can you please explain how people are rewarded (both referrers & referees) from this and how the rewards are generated?”
Peter: WISE has a simple referral program that acts like a buy link for an Amazon product. Anyone who stakes WISE for at least one year after they use your link will get 10% extra interest earning power and you will earn WISE every day they are staking. Currently referral APY is about half what staking APY is, so you earn about 5% interest per year on the amount they stake with your link.
Community Question #3: “What if BNB Validator Nodes do not generate 60% APY for much longer?”
Peter: Speaking about how we will earn interest with the hedge fund we grow every time we launch on another chain, yes. So if BNB eventually is not a good return APY anymore then we switch to the next best APY. Eventually we will use our own lending contract, but in the meantime, we will use whatever generates us the most APY.
Wolf: Great. Please pick a winner, Peter.
Peter: I choose [Community Question #1] as the winner. Thanks for allowing me to elaborate more on the staking system, which is the heart of the WISE token.
Wolf: Well, I really enjoyed in this AMA, Peter. Thank you very much for your time. Wish you all the success in the future.
Peter: My pleasure as well! Thank you.
We are launching on BSC in about 30 days so stay tuned for that! Meanwhile Ethereum is working well if you can stomach the fees. Staking pools will be out soon to split up the fees.
Wolf: Amazing to hear this before anyone else!
END
Learn more at www.wisetoken.net