Let's just give maybe another 30 seconds or so as people are joining in.
And then we're going to get started.
But in the meantime, I'm going to do two things.
First, I'm going to ask you just how...
Well, first, where in the world are you today?
Are you in Buenos Aires or where?
I just came back to Buenos Aires.
I flew back yesterday night after a couple of weeks off, enjoying time with family.
So I got to ask you because, you know, I'm based out of southern Brazil.
And usually whatever weather you have in Buenos Aires, I catch it like, you know, a day or two later.
So am I in for a cold and, you know, cloudy and windy weekend or how's it looking there for you?
So not rainy, but cloudy and cold for sure.
You just bumped down my weekend.
Brazil definitely beats Argentina in terms of weather.
And a number of World Cup titles, I guess, too, right?
But maybe we shouldn't get there because we just won the last ones.
For the following four years, every time someone asks us, hey, do you speak Spanish?
You know what the answer is.
I'm going to actually have this one.
We speak Castellano from Argentina, world champion.
So I got you a little bit for the next four years.
Yeah, I got to put up with that for the next three and a half.
But again, let's get to business.
I think we already have a really good audience live.
And of course, there's a bunch of people that catch the recordings later.
So let's jump right into business.
I know we have a lot to chat today.
So, Leo, I just want to begin by thanking you again for taking the time to come from the community,
share updates about Koi Banks, share updates about the projects, taking questions, as we always do.
We're going to open at the very end of the Twitter spaces to take some live questions from the community.
But, man, I just want to begin by thanking you for your openness and your availability to just chat with us
and always bring the most accurate and up-to-date information.
No, nothing to thank about.
I mean, I'm the one thanking you for the opportunity.
And, you know, I honestly believe there's a thin balance between our responsibility and obligations towards the community
and the benefit of genuinely getting and keeping in touch with the community.
I mean, I just tweeted a couple of minutes ago.
It's this thin equation where if we all collaborate, if we all work together, it's in the best interest of everyone, of course.
And at the same time, there's some portions of every crypto community, not the other, like web free space in general,
that will never be aligned.
And I believe it's good to own it.
It's good to put it on top of the table.
I mean, it's a free space.
So I'm choosing the builders area, sharing what we do for the better or for the worse.
I'm happy to share with all of you guys here.
And hopefully we'll all take lessons learned and next steps that benefit all of us.
And I truly appreciate the transparency there.
So as you mentioned, I pinned your tweet up here in the Twitter spaces if anybody's interested in checking the thread out.
And of course, making their own conclusions and asking questions at the end of the Twitter spaces is going to be an absolute pleasure.
And Leo, I know there's a lot of stuff that we need to cover regarding updates from your side today.
But I just want to know if before we start that, do you want to share just general thoughts around the thread, around anything else?
Or you just want to leave the thread there and then get started on the updates?
Well, maybe the first thing I would like to share is, I mean, I've been asked a lot in Twitter, especially about coin banks in general and social media, about our somewhat silence in the past couple of months, definitely weak.
And I don't want to leave that announcement.
I mean, it's not our typical profile.
Nothing dramatic actually happened.
A lot of people are asking like, hey, guys, how do you go bankrupt?
But it's not unknown for anyone in the algorithm that the entire Algorand ecosystem went through a lot of changes in the last couple of months, maybe queues.
The Algorand thing was, you know, Fred, but maybe not all of the listeners here do know Algorand.
They're one of our main shareholders in the company.
And they went through a lot of restructuring, going back to Steve that left, Sean going as interim CEO.
Now, Sean left, Matt entering the company.
Algorand was being built in Europe, led by Silvio and Mauricio.
The foundation going to a restructuring as well with the entrance of Stacey, John, and the entire excellent team that you guys put together.
So that, not in a bad way, but put us in a spot where we believed it was in the best interest of everyone to just pause a little bit, stop the ball, see how the different pieces of the puzzle played out, and realign with all the incumbents or all the stakeholders on what should be the best role that Coibanks plays in the ecosystem or how to collaborate with each of the parties.
This being said, schedules are complicated.
People need to start to learn working with one another.
Objectives and functions change.
I mean, I'm not discovering anything by saying that a lot of the business development and marketing activity has shifted now towards the foundation.
And I mean, I'm fine with that.
But it required some realignment and some, you know, shuffling the pieces again and understanding where we could add the more value.
This being said, we finished this process.
I had my last call of catching up with Silvio two weeks ago during my holidays.
Everything is now set and both are clear.
And what I have to say about this is, in the end, all changes bring some sort of uncertainty.
But when you are able to embrace those changes, usually something better comes out of the entire equation.
And I'm seeing this in the algorithm space.
As I said before in my tweet, technology has not flowed and the people that has been brought in are excellent,
both in terms of integrity and in terms of how proficient and professional they are.
It's a little different in terms of how the different components of the algorithm ecosystem interacted with each other before.
And that needs some time to adjust.
But I'm completely bullish on what we are going to still be doing with algorithm and what's in the future for us.
So that's actually, that's the main reason why we post a little bit our public presence.
Because we wanted to be on the safe place when interacting with all the new players in the algorithm family and the algorithm ecosystem.
And making sure that our part and our role within the ecosystem was in a better place for everyone.
That's what I would like to start with.
I truly appreciate you sharing all of this.
I think this is very important for the community just to know basically what happened in the last few months and how the dynamics have played out.
And I think it's always good to just share a brief reminder of what was heavily discussed last year.
And please correct me on the dates if I'm wrong.
But if I think it was around August or September of last year when, you know, you, Eddie, and Coibank team announced like this Series A race, right?
And it was, of course, you know, publicly announced at the time that the round was led by Algorand Inc., right?
And I think there's just an important distinction to make in terms of your, the Coibank's involvement with the different entities.
So, of course, the foundation here supports a lot in your operations, in LATAM, ecosystem, publicity, whatnot.
But the actual business dynamics have been historically with Algorand Inc., correct?
I think it was just, you know, important to bring that to attention as you did, of course.
And, you know, being completely honest was one of my main uncertainties going forward because now that dynamic change and putting all the cards on the table, the foundation doesn't have a direct equity interest in Coibank's in the same way Algorand Inc. has.
So, allegedly, we all play a lot together because the Algorand's success is everyone's success is here.
But that needed to be proved, you know?
Stacey was new in the space.
Algorand Inc. was now being led by Paul and Matt from a tech perspective.
And they needed to align themselves first to start working with us partners on how to better align in the new dynamics they presented.
That kept us a little initially patiently worried.
And I mean patiently worried because there was a scenario which likely it didn't took place.
But there was a scenario where dynamics didn't play in favor of what we have been doing.
It definitely played in the best interest for the ecosystem.
With mistakes and, I mean, with rights and wrongs, you know, that's for sure, as in anything we all do.
But I do see collaborative attitude.
I do see a team that wants to work together.
And I see clear roles in the hands of transparent people and proficient people, regardless if we agree as a community or not with some of their decisions.
But I'm totally enthusiastic about how we play, although it took a while.
But, hey, man, let's move forward now.
I think we set the stage pretty well.
You know, it's just important to share those initial thoughts that I know you wanted to.
And I do have a few bullet points that I want to discuss with you here today.
But actually, you mentioned something that was, you know, of course, nice to hear that you said, you know, even during this period, you were actively growing.
And this brings me back, and I hope you don't mind me saying this, you know, back to November of last year, when I had, you know, the honor of the opportunity through your invitation to spend a full day with the team in Buenos Aires at the internal company retreat, you know.
And I just got to say, man, it was truly inspiring to see that because, you know, for a full day, you had all of your employees from all over Latin America.
I don't know how many people there are.
You can tell in a second.
But it was a lot of people.
But it was just amazing to see, one, how big the team is and spread all over the different, you know, Latin offices that you have.
But mainly how smart, friendly, and driven everyone is.
So, you know, it's really inspiring to see that, you know, you guys are, you know, a true powerhouse in terms of, like, you know, blockchain development services in the region of Latin America.
And you and Eddie, you know, your co-founder, CTO, and maybe not as public person, but he should be because, you know, extremely smart and funny and cool guy to talk to.
Like, what you two have created is truly amazing.
So, you know, is there anything that you want to share about your team or how the road has been in the last, you know, in the last year or so before we jump into the status update section?
And not very much about the team.
We actually made our huge investment in terms of team growth last year.
So, this year we're remaining more or less the same, between 72 and 80 people, give or take.
I don't have the last minute updates.
But that's the size of the company.
We are double-bedding Central America in terms of traditional financial system infrastructure embracing Web3.
So, in terms of products, we are remaining with the product tag that we put together the last two years,
which is remittances, cross-mortar settlements, tokenizing financial assets, enable tokenizing assets as means of payments,
integrating to banking channels and APIs.
We're more or less at the same, we're keeping the same vision and strategy,
growing in terms of customers and adoption, with some flaw-backs along the way, for sure.
That's definitely what I would like to address with the algorithm,
and particularly one that we announced a couple of days after trying to salvatash in a couple of times,
which is the Nigerian deal.
Maybe we can start putting this in words, because I know there's a lot of people eager about it or wanting to know more.
So, as you mentioned, you made the announcement a couple of days ago about the Nigeria project being phased out.
You shared a thread, you shared a blog piece on the CoinBank's website.
Can you just share maybe a little bit more color on that along with your talk?
So, to begin with, I'd like to take a portion of the responsibility in terms of getting,
probably in a high market, getting too enthusiastic about it.
But at the same time, I do believe that the right pieces were there.
And please, I'll be as transparent as I always are.
I will just keep a couple of names outside the name dropping, because NDAs prohibit us to do so.
And at the same time, I believe it's web-setically correct.
But all the pieces were there.
I mean, Silvio and the leadership team from Malgorand actually pushing the creator's economy
and wanting to make a huge bet on it.
One large streaming platform that went or at least announced the intention of going web3
that could tackle the streaming component and thus bringing together the crypto and the tokenization pieces.
It actually put the backbone to what was needed to launch a product like this.
On top of that, we even brought to the table some brilliant people from the ecosystem.
I see probably they are here in the space as well.
People from like Ross or Patrick from TXM Labs.
They were also part of the conversations, bringing their tech and their products
to make a more compelling and robust proposal.
I mean, everything was there.
The government signed up on it.
Everything worked out until the point where we had to actually start to deploy in production.
And the market started not to go alongside with companies' financials, let's say.
And due to market conditions, strategies, and new people getting in charge as well of one of the partners,
the streaming platform in particular,
they had to make the tough call of unplugging themselves from the deal.
And that started complicating stuff because there are not plenty streaming platforms
with the intention and the capacity to go web3.
We even tried to get some Ethereum streaming platforms to convert into our world,
at least for the sake of the deal.
We even moved forward in some of those conversations.
And when we got a plan B in place and we were ready to actually move forward with this,
And it shouldn't have been as a surprise for us.
That's why I'm taking part of the responsibility of getting hyped too fast or too easily.
And the government came with what I'm going to call unrealistic demands.
And probably all of you know here what I'm making reference to.
And that's something that we are not willing to play along with.
We've never been, will never be.
So that was basically the death sentence because one of the key components of the project,
the streaming was not available easily from the ecosystem right away.
And at the same time, we have the customer that went through, let's say again,
a reassessment of the situation and asking for things that shouldn't have been asked for.
So despite our efforts and the time we dedicated and actually having most of the product built
because the wallet was built, the tokenization framework was built,
the connections to the credit card companies, the onboarding services,
We were not able to actually save the day and launch the project.
As I started with, I mean, this hurts me as personally and business-wise,
I mean, Coybanks took a loss in the entire deal.
And I understand this part of the game, you know, when you lead an organization,
once I have one mentor that always told me,
Leo, you need to get half plus one of your calls right in a year.
If you manage to do that year over year, you'll always be in a better place.
This is definitely the ones that I got wrong.
So I'm not like super criticizing myself.
I believe I need the move, but this was the right move.
And I'm willing to take this kind of risk.
But again, in perspective, seeing the entire picture, it was a high market.
A lot of the people we were dealing with were interested in the project
more from an angle not to be left out rather than really, really believing
That's something maybe we should have anticipated.
And I'm definitely going to anticipate for next projects coming soon.
But that's the sad process of why we had to unplug.
I know there was a lot of expectations built up logically.
I mean, it was a whole country implementing algorithm technology.
But the story is that this is a story, actually.
Well, no, I truly appreciate, you know,
and also speaking here as a community member like I am,
I truly appreciate you just, you know, sharing all the history,
the background, everything that you can with us.
I think it's super important just for the sake of transparency,
just like, you know, with the threads that you launched both today
from your personal profile that's pinned here in the Twitter spaces,
but also the one from the Coinbase profile a couple of days ago.
So I truly appreciate that.
You know, there might be some questions from the community
that we're going to take at the end of the Twitter spaces today
so they can come and ask maybe more things they want more clarity
But you mentioned that, you know, basically, you know, the project,
you guys built basically the entire tech stack, right?
You're almost ready to deploy this.
What does it mean for this technological piece that you built for the future?
Well, what we have done is basically a white-label wallet
that manages algorithm standard assets or white-label,
I mean, white-listing assets on top of the algorithm network
that manages distributed encryption.
The user does not have the keys,
but the user is in charge of encrypting those keys
through a four- to eight-digit PIN.
And the ability to connect this wallet to Visa credit cards
and to a couple of banks and exchanges,
both from particularly the Algram ecosystem,
launching NFTs and stuff like that,
and from traditional exchanges such as BitGo, for instance.
So that framework's already built and put in place.
We also have a connection to the Nigerian IP office,
which is probably not going to be very useful right now.
But it's something that we are looking actively
with our business development team to replicate
in other countries, governments, or organizations.
It's going to be a tough one.
You know, I always say that B2B sales,
and particularly government sales, are like a perfect storm.
You need to have the right counterparty.
They need to have budget.
They need to have proper and honest and clear intentions.
The regulation has to come along with you.
You need to be in the right moment.
It's like a bunch of factors that all come together,
and you do not control them all.
But when you manage to get that,
be at the right moment at the right time,
and you have the right product,
that allows you to do something like what we did
in Salvador or in Colombia.
And I'm confident that we'll manage to get this redeployed
in any of, in other of the countries
we're not really trying to.
And maybe, if I may, I mean,
it's not like we are making open source everything that we built.
You know, we as Coibanks, we play this role,
this bridge like in between.
We're not a full DeFi product builder.
We are the bridge for trap files and governments
But I'm going to trust here, everyone.
And if you believe that there's a place or a spot
for what we built, happy to make it available.
I mean, let's put this in the hands of the community,
in the hands of the foundation.
It's already being developed.
It will need some sort of customization for sure.
But let's make the most out of the situation
that clearly it did not end as we all expected.
And I truly commend you for just, you know,
doing this call to action, you know, for community members.
And of course, you know, in our community,
we have people from all walks of life,
you know, all different parts of the world
and all different, you know, just means of business
and things they do for a living.
So, you know, if you have ideas
on how this technology can be leveraged
and actually create something meaning,
like create value out of the entire tech stack
that Coibanks has created for this project specifically,
you know, just reach out to Leo.
And I'm pretty sure, you know,
we're going to find a way to work together
and make the most out of everything that has been built.
But Leo, and again, I truly appreciate you sharing,
you know, everything that you could have shared
And maybe we'll take some questions
from the community later on.
But I think we can move forward
because I know you also want to give, you know,
to some of the projects you have been working on,
maybe drop some other things
that you're interested in sharing.
And also, and just again,
as a reminder for the Algo fam
that everybody that's either listening to us live right now
or catching the recording later,
It's at Leo L. Duchesne here on Twitter
he released just about 40 minutes ago or so.
He added like a bunch of wallets
pertaining to some of the operations,
and other information regarding the projects
that Coibanks builds the infrastructure for.
I'm pretty confident that you didn't know
that actually Coibanks was building the infrastructure
because I don't think that it was ever discussed publicly.
There's some breaking news for you all
that some of these projects
are actually being built on the back end by Coibanks.
you shared a lot of really cool stuff
that I'm pretty sure the detectives in our community
are going to do some digging on the smart contracts,
and see what's being done.
But from those four projects that you mentioned,
the Colombian and Argentinian government institutions,
is there anything you want to share about those
How do you want to do this?
to have a little more context
or the app ID when applied,
will help everyone for sure understanding.
which is run by Fedor Saliba,
another very active member of the community.
the Algorand Accelerator programs
the company builder as well.
So he's a long time supporter of Algorand.
He's a Venezuelan technologist living in Miami.
I'm going to say something
that all of you know already,
someone's not as familiar
with the Venezuelan situation,
today Venezuela has a hyperinflation
that actually makes people live in U.S. dollars,
but they are not using the U.S. dollars
as the official currency.
It's not like it happens in El Salvador
is actually the official currency
giving away all currency issuing duties.
So what happens in Venezuela
is working with Coilbanks.
of the entire core balance keeping
and authorizing transactions
on top of the Algorand network
directly as a means of payment acceptance
and issuing in Venezuela.
where a lot of Venezuelan citizens
you have almost three million Venezuelans
you have a little over a million.
So there's a lot of people
that are constantly sending money
is that they are in an endless loop
of any dollar equivalent currency
goes on with that same USDC
and pays to another merchant
and that merchant to another
and maybe they give it back
to spend on another merchant.
It's like an endless USDC circle
where it's very difficult
they cannot go directly to circle
against the Venezuelan believer.
So what we put together for them
is through an integration
that New Moon has locally
and the currency networks
that we launched in Latam.
We are allowing Venezuelans
to actually send local currency
to pay within the merchant network
depending on the risk profile.
New Moon is offering actually,
but I feel a part of the team
because I love what they are doing.
that we both companies have
and empowers economically
this is like a perfect example
and it's all being driven
to fund all the transactions.
the on-chain transactions
of the on-chain operations,
a little bit more information?
with banking connections,