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The $INJ DAT with Pineapple
Recorded: Sept. 18, 2025 Duration: 1:01:21Space Recording
Short Summary
The conversation highlights the strategic partnership between Injective and Pineapple, focusing on the launch of digital asset treasuries and the potential for institutional adoption in crypto. With Pineapple raising $100 million to invest in INJ tokens, the discussion emphasizes trends in yield opportunities, the growing interest from institutional investors, and the innovative approaches to integrating traditional finance with DeFi.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. What's going on ninjas?
I am super excited to be here hosting this awesome space.
Thanks everybody for joining.
We will get the panelists up here on stage.
And then we will get things rolling.
So hope everyone's having a great day so far.
And we will get started here in one or two minutes Thank you. All right, looks like we got Mirza up here on stage.
Mirza, do you mind if we test your audio?
Yeah.
Hey, guys, how's it going?
Perfect, perfect.
Awesome.
And then we just need a Pineapple team coming up on here
and then we'll get things kicked off.
Perfect.
Pineapple team, if you can hear this,
I've invited you up here on stage.
You can also try requesting
and I can just approve you there.
All right.
It looks like we got the pineapple team up here.
Do you mind if we test your audio?
Yeah, absolutely. How are you?
Good morning. I think that's Shuba on the Pineapple account.
You got it.
Great. Great. Well, we have reached quorum, everybody. So a few quick housekeeping items before we get into introductions and start this conversation.
First and foremost, you know, everything on this spaces is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice.
As always, you know, that's a kind of a typical kind of standard thing here on the spaces that we host.
And this is quite the special space that we're going to be hosting here today, everyone.
We have Mirza from the Injective Foundation team,
as well as Shuba, the CEO from Pineapple.
And we're going to be diving into all things Injective,
all things digital asset treasuries,
and just generally talk about the kind of institutional
adoption that's happening across crypto, but also right here on Injective.
And so without further ado, why don't we do a couple quick intros, and then we'll jump
into some topics.
And so Mirza, if you want to do a quick intro, and then I'll pass it over to Shuba for another
intro.
Yeah. Hey, everyone. I mean, most people on the space know me.
This is mainly for you guys to get to know Pineapple because there's a lot of confusion about how we're working together, what we're doing.
But I'm Mirza. I run the business team. I've been here for over five years.
And you guys know Injective already. It's the preeminent blockchain built for finance.
And really excited for finance um and really excited
for the space and to tell you guys about what we're doing with the dat you guys saw a huge
announcement uh probably like 10 days ago um and now a lot of things are about to be set into motion
so wanted to give you guys the quickest alpha and the latest alpha before uh the strategy begins
absolutely yeah i think we'll dive into topics.
You know, we'll start out high level
and then get into, you know,
some greater detail for you guys,
just so you have a greater understanding
of like what's happening,
what are these DATs and how they work
and all those great things.
So before we jump into things,
Shuba, why don't you give us a quick intro
about yourself as well as Pineapple?
Yeah, absolutely. Would love to. And pleasure to see everybody on this basis and great to meet everybody.
You guys probably don't know me as well as you know Mirza or at all.
So I'll give you a quick introduction on myself, CEO of Pineapple, mortgage fintech company based out of Canada.
We started building this company
about a decade ago, working towards digitizing the mortgage landscape. It was a very archaic,
paper-driven, manual process-driven industry. And over these last 10 years, we've been working on
advancing technology integrations, as well as introducing artificial intelligence into the
space. We've focused on everything from lead inception to document analysis,
analyzing consumer data and determining what options are best suited for that customer,
fraud analytics, all the way down to resurfacing mortgage reveals and refinances.
So we're really looking forward to the next evolution of finance and mortgages and what it can become.
And I'm sure we're going to talk more about that in detail on this chat today.
So I don't want to give away any spoilers, but great to be here, everybody.
And I'm looking forward to this discussion.
Excellent.
Thank you, Shuba, for the intro there.
And you're absolutely right.
We will be diving into more of those topics.
But let's say you start here, you guys.
Obviously, DATs have really kind of swept the landscape across crypto, right?
We first sort of saw the original OG sort of DAT with strategy and have quickly seen that spread to other sort of Bitcoin treasuries as well as Ethereum and other altcoins.
And it's really becoming quite a popular sort of area of finance,
particularly seeing these new vehicles for institutions to access these digital assets in a compliant way.
And so I guess, why don't we start very high level. for institutions to access these digital assets in a compliant way.
And so I guess, why don't we start very high level.
Mirza, can you just maybe explain real quick,
like what is a digital asset treasury and how that really differs from a, you know, corporate treasury perspective?
Yeah, sure. I'll give a very simple explanation and then I'll dive into detail.
So the simplest way to understand it is a digital asset treasury basically is when a company makes a concerted effort to do more than just purchasing the token, right? You've seen things like MetaPlanet who purchased Bitcoin. So those are corporate treasuries, meaning they just keep Bitcoin or other assets in
their balance sheet.
Typically, you see it with Bitcoin.
Now, digital asset treasuries became interesting because they were a vehicle for institutions
to sort of access your token who might not be able to.
What that basically means is, let's say you have a firm on Wall Street,
and they're sitting on the sidelines because they don't have all the rails set up to purchase your
token on Coinbase or Binance, right? Most corporations will never do that. Most family
offices won't do that. So what's basically happening is you have these companies, such as
Pineapple today with Injective, who've gone out and said, hey, we will raise money
just to purchase this token, but we will also use a set of asset managers to do things like
staking to provide investors with additional yield. So just by purchasing shares of, let's say,
Pineapple, a investor effectively gets exposure into the INJ yield. They get exposure to asset managers.
So we'll talk about it later in the space,
but we have two amazing asset managers
who are basically going to be purchasing the INJ
and then staking it on behalf of the investor.
So it's just a bit more sophisticated
than just keeping INJ on a balance sheet.
And most importantly, and we'll get into it in a bit,
it's important to understand that this is a vehicle for IJ to effectively get onto Wall Street.
Like many of you know that Canary filed an ETF for us.
I'll also leak some more alpha, like we have a couple more ETF filings coming, which is great.
But as all of you know, ETFs take a while to get processed.
They could take many months. So Pineapple today is effectively a proxy for that ETF because effectively by owning Pineapple or by going onto Wall Street and being able to access it, you're getting direct exposure
into the injective token because now the vast majority of the balance sheet of Pineapple
will be converted into INJ out of that $100 million raised,
and we'll get into the specifics.
But that's really the core differentiator.
It's a debt effectively is a much more sophisticated strategy to purchase the token, to stake the
token, and to pass on that yield to traditional stock investors without them having to go
through bridging or go through setting up a wallet.
They're just getting that yield directly from the asset managers. Brilliant. Yeah, I love it. Thanks for kind of
setting the stage there, Mirza. And then moving in a little bit deeper, I'd love to pivot to Shuba
and ask, why did Pineapple specifically choose Injective and INJ to deploy into, right? Other
than, you know, the traditional ones that have been a lot more sort of ubiquitous, right, with
the Bitcoin or the Ethereum. Why Injective specifically? Yeah, of course. And that's a
question, obviously, that really was sitting on our minds and weighing on our minds as we were looking at all of the
various DAT strategies and all of the other transactions that were taking place. And quickly,
before I answer that question specifically, just to kind of piggyback a little bit off of what
Mirza was saying, you know, the capital markets world of Wall Street has been an exceptional
industry to help business and help other areas thrive
through access to capital and having access
to public markets and public treasury.
And I think with these digital asset strategies,
one thing that I'm very excited about and happy to see
is that we're beginning to move blockchain
and cryptocurrencies into the mainstream
and allowing the public to have access to these
where they may otherwise not.
So creating a little more fearless, a little more equality.
We're glad to be participants in that.
So why did Pineapple specifically choose Injective?
Well, when we're looking at the landscape and looking at what we do
and the evolution that we've had in the mortgage landscape through digitizing it,
the next obvious for us was mortgages on chain.
And what would the future of mortgages on chain look like?
What would the future of financial services on chain look like?
And throughout that process and our research and discovery, we're very fortunate to come
across the team at Injective and Injective Labs.
And being a finance first blockchain,
you know, the synergies were just immense right from day one. And the opportunities for us to not
only build an INJ token, that strategy within our business, but also then being able to put
mortgages on chain and being able to look at other financial services strategies towards the future became very exciting for us.
And, you know, for us, progress is the most important thing.
And I think, you know, the collaboration between Pineapple and Injective has just incredible opportunity for progress in the world.
Excellent. Hey, thanks, Shuba, for kind of outlining that for the audience here. You know, do you mind, either of you, do you mind maybe going, you know, really kind of diving into the details with regards to, you know, again, like I kind of reiterated before, you know, Bitcoin sort of DATs and ETFs are sort of ubiquitous at this point. Ethereum DATs and ETFs are becoming ubiquitous as well.
Excellent. Hey, thanks, Shuba, for kind of outlining that for the audience here.
And what is maybe the differentiator here
between sort of the INJ DAT and some of these other ones?
I think you've kind of touched on it
with some kind of staking properties,
but is there any other thing that you could point to that's like, hey,
here's how we're really kind of differentiating these as far as the vehicle and deal structure
goes?
Sure.
I can explain the staking et cetera side, but I'd love Shiva to chime in on some of the
synergies that we saw with the business.
So Injective is unique in that its yield is way higher than many
other chains. So when you look at the injective yield or staking yield today, it sets at about 12%,
right? If you look at something like an ETH, it's sitting at around 4%, which is not necessarily
attractive, especially as the interest rate environment is going down now, which means
effectively, like it's just not a competitive yield in the open market.
So effectively, what we're telling traditional Wall Street investors is, hey, there's an asset
which represents on-chain finance, and you're getting a 12% yield, which is very hard to beat.
Obviously, people on Wall Street don't know much about staking. They don't care
much about security or anything. They don't know much about staking. They don't care much about security or anything.
They don't know that stuff.
They care about yield and they care about generating passive yield in the form of getting dividends on their stock.
So that's one thing that makes Injective very, very unique because what these asset managers will do, and we have two asset managers on this, right?
So we have Canary Capital, which, as you guys know, filed for our ETF.
We also have Monarch, which you guys might not know, but they manage one of the largest
Bitcoin debts today.
And what these two asset managers will effectively do is take that IJ, stake it on the network,
and also run interesting strategies, like let's say loop staking, et cetera, to juice
of that yield even more.
So just by owning PAPL stock or the PAPL stock, you're getting exposure to this
yield. That's hard to beat. So that's number one. Number two, the differentiator comes down to some
of the synergies we saw with the business itself. And I'll let Shiba chime in more, but effectively,
when we were exploring the entire landscape and we were approached by so many different companies,
because a lot of companies are interested in deploying sort of DATS strategies.
But the issue I had personally with DATs in general is you're effectively getting some
random shell that has nothing to do with finance or crypto that's just trying to ride the crypto
wave. So with many of these companies, not to call anyone out, you saw random biotech companies,
you saw cancer research companies, you saw random like cannabis businesses
all trying to deploy suddenly into a DAT strategy, which makes no sense if you really think about it.
It's like, why would a weed company suddenly start buying crypto other than just to like,
you know, ride the crypto wave? So it didn't make much long-term sense. And unfortunately,
this has not gone well with the sec or the nasdaq or the
nyse because many of these things are also starting to get delisted um so we recently
saw one cannabis company dad get delisted because it just didn't make any sense so people are
catching on so we wanted to make sure that there was a lot of sector alignment when when we worked
with a company.
And Pineapple is just that.
I think this is the first that where it's an actual fintech company
with an actual multi-billion dollar business.
And I want Shubha to sort of chime in here and talk about that business
and what we plan on doing with Pineapple and Injective.
Yeah, thanks, Marissa.
I think that you hit the nail on the head. And again, not to call anybody out, but, you know, there was a lot of misalignment of, you know, what type of businesses or that that's would go um how significant they
would become and there were early stage you know discoveries let's call it but as they began to
mature as the strategy began to mature and you know by maturing i mean we're still only a few
months in right so we're not you know that. But we were able to really discover that that type of
strategy wasn't going to have long term creative value towards both parties. So, you know, Merza
mentioned the yield, great for us, great for the shareholders, great for the token holders. But what
was also very integral and very important in this transaction was how can we make sure that the
businesses line up? How can we want to make sure that the underlying business is strong because that's important from a regulatory perspective mercer
strength on their balance sheet they have revenue in. They have a real business that's underlying
the debt. And for us, we're originating over $3 billion a year in mortgages right now.
We've built one of the leading technology platforms being used across Canada to fund
and originate mortgages. We've been the first leader in AI integration into the mortgage landscape. So all of those boxes check off.
Then when you consider what the future potential is with the strategy being connected to real world
assets and how that can evolve into tokenization and into the real estate market and into the
mortgage finance market into the future, I mean, the potential is just so immense. And I think that's really the key differentiator. We are the first DAT
strategy on record right now, where it's not just a DAT strategy, but there's actually a follow-on
business strategy that's underlying it. No, that's very well said. And I can't stress
how significant that is, because if you think about it, Pineapple already had this really core existing business generating billions of dollars in mortgage loans.
So if we're able to digitize and tokenize those assets on injective, that's immense, both from a TVL perspective, from a adoption perspective.
It would effectively 100x injective adoption
in every single possible way in it and give us that sample of approval that we've been
seeking.
You're getting a lot of people talk about tokenizing assets and you see effectively
zero demand for these tokenized assets.
No one's effectively trading them on chain across the board. I think Injective today leads the tokenized stock landscape. And even that's
just a blip on the radar. It's doing like $2 billion today, which is great, which is way higher
than every other platform out there. But at the same time, in the grand scheme of things, the stock market is doing that every minute. So for us to get that adoption, we really felt like Pineapple is an amazing
vehicle for this because yes, they're purchasing ING in the open market, which is fantastic. But
at the same time, if they tokenize these assets on our chain, we immediately get way higher leverage and way more adoption than every other chain that
exists today out there. So that's, I think, the most compelling part about the pineapple strategy
and why the foundation and Injective are so behind it as well. Mirza, just to note on that,
it's not if we bring mortgage data and mortgages on chain, it's when, you know, we will make that happen and we will be the first to do it here at Injective and Pineapple.
Fantastic. No, those are great points, you guys, and appreciate kind of you shining a spotlight on those areas that this is more than just a sort of vanilla dat and how sort of there's a dual structure here.
ADAT and how sort of there's a dual structure here. Moving to a little bit about, you know,
maybe from the user and or like investor perspective, Mirza, I think you touched on it a
little bit, but like, what is the, what is the main difference here of like, why should an investor
sort of purchase shares in ADAT versus just like going to ADEX and purchasing, you know, INJ directly?
shares in a dat versus just like going to a dex and purchasing you know inj directly
uh yeah no excellent question and obviously i'll try to dance around the legality of the answering
this question but there's two things right so like for everyone on this call um most of us
know inj right we know exactly how to open up a finance coinbase account we know exactly how
to get inj via helix or a decentralized exchange.
We know that stuff. But the average person has no idea how to do that. The average person has
no idea how to create a crypto wallet, how to do bridging, how to set up, going through the
hurdles of a Coinbase account. A lot of boomers or traditional people or family offices are just
going to call up their bank or their brokerage account and buy stocks that way or buy shares that way. So this is effectively a way for us
to reach that base of investors that typically wasn't there for us before. So that's number one,
just being able to reach a different investor base. Secondly, it's to minimize the hurdles
needed to get that yield that I was mentioning
earlier. A lot of us are well-educated and we know exactly how to stake on chain and earn that yield
ourselves. But a lot of people have no idea how to do that. So imagine it's as easy as you opening
up your Robinhood account and just with the PAPL share, you get access to that yield. You don't
have to go through the complexities of learning about crypto.
So it just opens up these new rails for us onto Wall Street, onto institutions.
And most importantly, it's compliance. A lot of these institutions are actually quite qualified and way more educated on crypto than you guys could believe.
They know exactly how to set up a MetaMask account and stake, et cetera. But they can't do it for the company accounts because the company accounts don't recognize DeFi
or we still haven't gotten the green light from DC
for companies to be able to participate
into DeFi in a big way.
So for those companies and with the billions
and trillions of dollars on the sidelines,
this is the way that they're accessing these digital assets.
That's why MicroStrategy often trades
at a higher multiple than Bitcoin itself, because a lot of these family offices are just purchasing
MicroStrategy stock. And then MicroStrategy is using their asset managers to go and buy Bitcoin
on behalf of these asset managers who can't buy Bitcoin directly. So it's really about that.
It's about opening up access to yield. It's about opening up access to institutions and also everyday retail investors who might not know about crypto.
And piggybacking off of that, Mirza, you've touched on a couple points here. And I want to
make sure that if there's any sort of new people coming to the space, learning about Injective, learning about Pineapple.
Can you maybe just shine a light quickly on sort of Injective's infrastructure
and how it's kind of uniquely positioned to, you know, support the DAT
and just the broader sort of institutional adoption of crypto as well?
Yeah, I mean, everyone on this call probably knows, but Injective is a blockchain
specifically catering to finance. I think especially for the Pineapple case, what we
provide that other blockchains don't is a set of core modules like our central limit order book,
our real world asset module, et cetera. So when Pineapple wants to come and tokenize these assets
like mortgages, they can do it on Injective far more easily than on any other chain because it's as simple as them coming on with the asset.
And we already have set up all the rails to be able to take those shares like we have set up the QIC rails.
We've set up the rails with the custody providers.
And it's way simpler than on any other chain where you have to go through those hurdles to tokenize those assets.
And the second part is just the secondary trading and liquidity aspect.
Because you guys might have noticed, our open interest has gone up significantly over the coming weeks.
So we've integrated a lot more institutions than before with a lot of huge guys, like let's say even Falcon X or Galaxy Digital, now starting to participate on-chain, on Injective in a big way.
So you're seeing that liquidity inflow come in.
So when we end up tokenizing these mortgages or tokenizing other assets on-chain,
you have access to this core central limit order book and this liquidity layer.
And most importantly, and what I'm really excited about,
is as our EDM goes live in Q4,
we also, any of those dApps will be able to leverage this.
So it's not just about tokenizing the asset.
It's about unlocking utility for those tokenized assets.
And I mentioned this many times, but it shouldn't go amiss because effectively,
a lot of companies are just creating replicas of what already exists on Wall Street. But an average person doesn't care about buying stocks on chain or
buying anything else on chain. What they care about is different utilities they get, whether
they can trade it on leverage, whether they can take a loan out against those tokenized stocks
or tokenized assets. So imagine you could put mortgages on chain and use it as collateral
to trade derivatives. You could use it to take loans out against. So those secondary market
utilities is where Injective really shines because not only do we have the modules to allow people to
come and tokenize assets, but you can also enable a lot more secondary market utility, whether it be perpetual trading derivatives, taking loans out
against it, trading binary options against these assets. The world is basically your oyster. And
I think that's what crypto people really want. They don't just want a replica of what exists,
they want to see, hey, what is the next level or second order of thinking that we can enable
with crypto? And that's really what's going to attract everyday users, in my opinion. It won't just be, hey, you can now trade Tesla
on chain. That's not what's going to bring an average person on chain.
Absolutely. No, I think we've kind of covered the foundation there, you guys. And, you know,
hopefully that gives everybody a good idea of sort of what's
happening with the INJ DAT and just DATs in general. Let's maybe dive sort of one layer
deeper and get into the specifics of, of, of the sort of INJ DAT and maybe some of the inspiration.
So Shuba, as you were sort of exploring this, this DAT strategy for Pineapple, you know,
what were some of maybe the inspiration
you took, right? Like, like, what were some of the other DATs that you maybe pulled inspiration from?
And then, you know, what, what was sort of your approach when approaching this topic and, and
getting it across the finish line? Yeah. And I think inspiration's a, an interesting word in
this context, because, you know, inspiration was more of introduction in this world.
Because I think, you know, what Pineapple and Injective have done here is just so different and so groundbreaking that I don't know if anybody or anyone specific that strategy necessarily inspired how we accomplish this and what we intend to accomplish going
forward. But there's certainly been a few that have inspired us to look into this and
to begin processing what can be done here. There were some great ones like Bitminer,
Utexi, DeFi DevCorp, which were some of the first ones. I think that was originally Janover was the company that was underlying it.
Those were some of the first ones that we were kind of, you know, really looking at and kind of getting excited that, hey, this can be done.
It can be done in a big way and maybe it can be done in a different way.
And those really got us introduced to the world of that strategies.
They showed us that they can be successful.
They showed us where some of the challenges lied as well.
You know, being able to learn from some of the predecessors and some of the mistakes that happened, what the industry, you know, really engaged with versus what they didn't, what the investor base liked versus what they didn't like.
Where did they respond well, where did they respond
well, where did they respond poorly. So we were able to make those adjustments in real time and
ensure that our transaction and our DAT strategy was really built off of some of the gaps and some
of the challenges that were discovered ahead of us. So I think we're sitting on really solid
footing today. I think we've been able to be inspired and learn from a lot of the predecessors.
And I think that we have an incredible opportunity to set the stage for what a lot of other future companies might want to use as the blueprint.
Absolutely. Yeah. And speaking of that, you know, as you were going down this path, you know, after you decided, hey, this is the right strategy for us.
this path, you know, after you decided, hey, this is the right strategy for us, you know,
when you started going down that path and you started considering, you know, asset managers
and custodians and sort of all the partners involved, right? Because it's more than just
sort of one person involved or one entity. It's multiple entities that really, you know,
made this happen and sort of brought everything together. What did you really look for in these partners? And, and like,
like, what maybe attributes did, did you look for? And, and what, you know, ultimately led you to
sort of picking the partners that you end up picking?
Well, you know, something I love to say in the world of business, there's, there's a saying
that says it takes a child to, or sorry, it takes a village to raise a child. I always say it takes a village to build a business.
And there's nothing different in this or anything else that we're going to see.
It takes a village.
There's incredible people behind the scenes, incredible organizations, and everybody playing
their role to make sure that this comes to life.
And the asset managers, the custodians, and everybody else that's been involved or that
needs to be involved in this is no different.
So what are some of the things that we look at?
And, you know, we can talk about this from a professional perspective, obviously, of
some of the skill sets and some of the things that we need.
But the first place that we really love to start is people.
That's just been a philosophy and a mandate at Pineapple.
You know, we want to make
sure that we're aligning with the right people that have the right morals, the right values,
the right ethics, and we're all working towards the same goals. Because if we're working towards
different goals and different paths, that at some point we're going to veer off, we're going to
create a fork in the road, and it's going to just extend and get larger and larger. But if we're
aligned, if we're working in parallel, if we're working in sync with the right synergies and the right values behind us, you know, the opportunity is immense. So the
first thing that we really look for is that character in people. Who are the people we're
working with? Are they aligned towards the same goals? And are we all working towards the right
destination? Once we've achieved that, and once we've found, you've found synergistic paths from that perspective, we'll look towards the skill sets and the credibility of the organizations that we're aligning with.
We want to make sure that they have some history of what they've achieved and what they've accomplished.
We want to make sure that they continue to stay driven towards success, maintaining that high standard.
We want to make sure that they have incredible levels of experience.
Compliance is important to us in our world, risk management, et cetera.
So we just start going through the list of, you know,
now what do we need for this person to actually be effective in their role?
And I think the team we've put together, Merza, correct me if I'm wrong,
it's, you know, the best of the best.
And I think that we have an amazing group here behind us. No, it's absolutely correct. Like we were, we, you guys have no idea how much work went into the construction of this behind the
scenes over the last three, four months. You guys might have noticed I've been like awfully quiet on
Twitter the last few months, like way more than usual. But basically,
we selected the best of the best in every category. So for the asset managers, we got Canary and we got Monarch. Monarch has run up some of the best stats out there for Bitcoin.
Those stats are all trading above MNAV. It's actually fantastic what they've done. So they'll
be making or helping with purchasing the INJ.
Canary is helping with staking the INJ.
They do it for ETH and so many of the largest chains.
And on the advisory front, we got some of the best as well,
whether it be Josh Lim, who runs Falcon X,
previously was running Galaxy Digital.
We also have Vanessa,
who previously ran CoinFund and ConsenSys.
So we really have some of the best people
around the table to help us,
not only in purchasing the IMJ,
but also in making sure that,
hey, this has the right governance structure,
this has the right alignment.
And speaking of alignment,
and you normally don't see this on DATS,
me, Cooper, Eric,
all sit on the advisory board of Pineapple just to ensure that the treasury strategy is sort of maintained long term, that IMJ is sort of a focal point for this company long term.
Not that it already is.
And of course, Shuba and everyone else is aligned.
But that's the type of commitment we're making. And when you see the S1 come out, you'll also notice that the foundation, Eric, me,
we put in quite a bit of our money as well into this just to show our support long-term.
We also locked ourselves up long-term that you normally don't see in these stats.
Normally in these stats, even the foundation founders get unlocked within the first 30 days.
We did nothing like that.
We locked ourselves up for over a year and are more than willing to lock ourselves up for even longer because we're in it
for the long haul. Even with INJ, we've been here for five plus years. And you normally don't see
that in crypto. You don't normally see a long-term outlook. People are just not to be crass looking
for get-rich-quick schemes in the space, which I think detracts a lot from what this space could be
and the adoption I see coming for the years and decades to come for this space.
And I want Injective and INJ to be a staple of that category-defining industry.
It's not about being a flash in the pan and whatever bullshit people talk about
for the next week in crypto, but still being here five years from now
and still being a top project
and going up even more and more over time, both from a recognition and brand perspective,
but also from an adoption perspective. That's really what we're all here for. So
that's why we also surrounded ourselves on this board with the custody provider, everyone
with some of the best, because these people are also the same long-term minded
individuals that we want around the table.
So yeah, that's how we sort of came to it and how we created the data in the first place.
And just Mirza quickly to not skim over the significance of what you just said, you know,
the fact that the foundation and the people involved are so heavily
invested, they have skin in the game, that is another very significant key differentiator in
this transaction. Locked up, invested, and believing in what we're building, not just looking for a
short-term liquidity strategy, but actually building something of substance here. And, you know, we talked earlier about differentiators, and I think that's one that's often not talked about
as much as it should be in this deal. Yeah, no. And it will become more and more clear,
I think, and this is me, actually, I will just call out a bunch of people now,
I think a lot of these stats are absolute Ponzi. So what's happening is, and if you guys look into
what's happening with the actual money, the money's not actually going into the open market on most of
these debts. What's happening is people are buying out locked tokens from investors or founders,
et cetera, and founders are getting liquidity via the shares. Basically, just to put it simply,
founders, let's say that are locked up or have locked tokens are taking their locked tokens, putting it into the treasury and getting shares that are freely unlocked so they
can sell the shares in the open market and get early liquidity for their tokens, which is an
absolute scam. I think INJ is very different because obviously INJ has been fully circulating
for years now. There's no more locked tokens. There's no more locked investors who can
run this kind of scam. And actually, all the capital that was raised is going directly into
INJ and to the open market. So I think that's very, very different from other dots that you see.
And it's very important. And I think investors and retailers also catching on to this to look
into this and where the money's actually going and making sure it's in the right place.
So I think that alignment, that long-term alignment and making a clean structure is
extraordinarily rare, let alone like doing something with Pineapple Injective where we
have actual business synergy on the tokenization front.
So all in all, like this just checked a lot of boxes for us that a lot of other
dot strategies simply do not today.
Awesome, you guys. Yeah, I think everyone can really tell that the synergy is here.
And that, you know, one quote that I think encapsulates what was just said in a very
poignant way is, Naval
said, play long-term games with long-term people.
And I think that's really what's going on here.
It's that we're both locked in for the long term on sort of making this happen and going
to ride sort of the wave as long as it'll take us with regards to institutional adoption and really,
you know, expanding the horizons with regards to, you know, bringing this all on chain and making
this a successful sort of collaboration here. And so with that being said, you know, now maybe
let's jump into some of the purchase strategy, you know, as much as we can really discuss here.
But, you know, everyone has been sort of pinging us on Twitter and Discord and every channel
basically is asking, hey, you've raised this $100 million, you know, what now?
When will the INJ purchases begin?
Can you maybe set up kind of the roadmap or give the folks here a bit of an idea of like what
happens next?
Yeah, happy to touch on.
Oh, go ahead, Marissa.
Oh, no, both of us can go.
So yeah, I know.
So I know this is the question on everyone's mind, like, hey, when will you guys start
buying INJ?
So what we plan on doing is we can't, and I think a lot of people want this,
they want an exact date, but based on legal compliance, like we can't give people an exact
date because they might front run our trade. So effectively what we're planning on doing
is we will start deploying the capital. And as we deploy the capital, we'll publicly announce it on
Twitter. Pineapple will announce it on Twitter.
But rest assured, you will see it much sooner than you think.
That's all I'll say.
I can't give an exact date because that would be going against fiduciary duties.
But yeah, I mean, it will be made public.
You'll be able to see it.
But I'll let Shriva touch on it because obviously there's a huge legal quagmars if I talk about buying INJ in any way. So maybe Shriva can touch on it. But I'll let Shriva touch on it because obviously there's a huge legal flag Mars if I talk about buying INJ in any way. So maybe Shriva can touch on it.
Well, the same goes. So, you know, I think you hit it on the head. You know, we're definitely
going through the process right now. We're following all of the proper regulatory and
compliance channels. We're ensuring that, you know, everything is being met with
science channels. We're ensuring that, you know, everything is being met with the regulators and
the various exchanges that are involved. And very shortly, you know, you'll expect to see
momentum on that side. So yeah, we're not going to give an exact date here today, but it's
certainly in process and just going through the standard protocols, I'd say.
process and just going through the standard protocols, I'd say.
Yeah, perfect. And, you know, I know we can't talk about specific dates and things of that
nature, but is there any sort of maybe different accumulation strategy that's employed here
that's maybe different than some of these other dads out there?
Yeah, I mean, I alluded to this earlier. The biggest difference is we're actually the asset managers will actually just be purchasing INJ in the open market.
So through the same sexes indexes that you know, and love, unlike other ones where the money is
actually going to the foundation, etc. None of the money that was raised is going back to the
Injective Foundation in any way. It's not going back to me or Eric in any way.
All of this is made public.
So I think that's the biggest difference,
the fact that we're just going to deploy it in the open market to acquire these assets,
which I think is the best thing for any DAT to be able to do.
But unfortunately, only 1% of DATs today do that
where they purchase the token in the open market.
MicroStrategy is the best example of it
where they're just purchasing in the open market
and so is Bitmine.
So we really think
those are some of the best examples,
unlike some of these other dots
that have come out
that are not really doing it
and are doing more nefarious
things out there.
Yeah, you know,
there's a saying where,
you know, if you want to know the truth,
just follow the money.
And I think that your point is just that
if you follow the money of,
you know, what's happening here and what the business is doing, you know, the foundation
is not getting rich. The founders at Pineapple are not getting rich. This is a long-term
vision. This is a long-term plan and a long-term strategy to do right by the investors and those
that believe in this strategy and what we're looking to achieve with it.
100%. Yeah, thank you guys. Moving to a bit, you know, let's maybe zoom out a little bit from
the actual sort of IJ data and move into more of the, you know, institutional adoption of crypto
at a very high level, you know, with, you know, I think it was Ernst & Young published a report recently
that said essentially 83% of institutional investors are planning to increase their
crypto allocations this year and moving forward. And so with regards to maybe high-level trends
and things you're seeing, what are the most compelling in your mind?
Yeah, I'm just going to kick off with maybe just a very quick story on that note.
And I just want to rewind the clock. You know, maybe we have some,
some of the pineapple audience on here as well,
maybe about a decade ago into the mortgage landscape.
And I just want to kind of draw some similarities from it. So,
but a decade ago, you know, and when we started funding mortgages, we reached out to the investor
community. And, you know, at the time, if you wanted to invest in a mortgage, you need to have
a minimum $200 million check size, you know, you're buying it through bonds or covered bonds
and, you know, securitization, etc. I won't go into the intricacies in detail to bore everybody
with it, but you have to be a huge investor. And we started going to the retail level and we started talking
to investors about, hey, did you know that you can lend money and earn incredible return? Let's call
it yield for the purposes of this conversation. And the yield was very similar to what, you know,
INJ is currently returning in or around, let's say, 12% on a mortgage.
So we started talking to all these people.
And I started talking to my family and my friends and, you know, accountants and lawyers and all these professionals.
And none of them knew how to do it.
None of them knew what opportunity was available.
None of them even knew how to gain access to it, how to underwrite a loan, how to originate it, how to service it, et cetera.
So we essentially built the framework for that in the early days.
And we started bringing and raising capital from all these retail level investors
that didn't otherwise know how to enter that space and how to accomplish that goal.
So what we were able to do there is very similarly what we're looking to accomplish here
with allowing those
that might not be overly familiar with the crypto space here in the early days to have access and
have involvement. And, you know, like the Ernst & Young report that was just referenced, Deloitte
referenced that there's a $4 trillion, you know, real estate tokenization market upon us right now.
And as we're seeing more and more people begin to enter the space, we do also have to acknowledge that outside of the early adopters
in this industry, that most citizens don't understand. They don't know and they don't
understand where they'll be involved or how they'll be involved. So where do we see a lot
of this starting?
We see it starting from the high level,
from the institutional perspective,
where they're going to act like we are as custodians
for other people's investments into an area and an arena
that they might not otherwise have acknowledgement
or involvement about.
As more and more infrastructure gets laid over time
and as more and more things get built upon that infrastructure that, you know, regular everyday people can see, feel, touch, understand, they'll become more and more involved.
And I think what's happening today is that the infrastructure is being laid for the future to be built upon.
And something I've been saying a lot is that tomorrow starts today and we are building.
People just don't see
what's being laid right now.
So that's kind of my take on it.
But Mirza, I'm sure you have
a lot more insight.
No, I think that's extraordinarily
well allocated and said.
So I think
the most interesting trend for me,
actually, is the regulatory perspective of it,
which we've been sort of working really hard on.
As many of you know, not only did we file ETFs, like Canary filing ETFs,
the SEC now opened up the review period on it,
but also our policy papers are getting accepted by the SEC.
We published one on DeFi.
We plan on publishing
more on tokenization on lending, real estate lending specifically in the coming weeks,
which we again hope the SEC will accept and look into. So I think that regulatory green light,
especially with the Clarity Act, with the Genius Act, have really helped open up these gateways
for institutions because I know what's happening behind the scenes. I talk
to these banks in New York. I talk to these family offices. A lot of them want to get in on the space
because the reality is they think that crypto is one of the best performing asset classes, right?
Full stop. In the last decade, Bitcoin is the best performing asset out there. And they want to be
allocated not just into Bitcoin, but also altcoins,
etc. Because many of them serve a different purpose. But they've just been sidelined,
not because they don't know and don't want to purchase, but because that regulatory clarity
was lacking. But now that these sort of green lights have been given by the government with
the president directly participating in crypto in a big way. Whether you like him or not politically
matters less, but it's obviously a fact that he has opened up a pathway for crypto adoption,
which is great for the world. And now you see many major nations starting to adopt because
the US is leading. Injective is also an America first company. So it's a great boon for us because now we are a beacon of hope
and an example. And that's where I think the institutional money or trend that you will see
in a huge way in the coming years specifically, because what's going to happen next year
politically is the midterm elections are coming up in the US. And as soon as midterm elections
come up, you will see that Republicans
and Democrats alike will try to get a lot of bills, et cetera, passed because many senators
and many Congress people know that they might not be here after the midterm election ends.
So you will see a lot more movement in the world of crypto. Behind the scenes,
what's happening is extraordinary. The Genius Act and the Clarity Act
pales in comparison to what's happening with the rate cuts,
what's happening with regulatory clarity.
And you'll just see that trend continue,
not just in tokenization,
but actual sort of institutions coming on chain,
participating in these stats.
And that's why Injective wants to be a first mover
on all fronts.
Like we had the infrared
and the institutions were sort of sidelined.
And now we actually have exposure on Wall Street where institutions can get access.
So I think that's really the trend I'm most curious about to see where,
like with all this regulatory hurdles being sort of met or being escaped,
how much further can we go as an industry in the coming years?
Yeah, thank you, Mirza. You talk to all these institutions, you talk to these banks,
you know, day in and day out, you're on sort of phone calls and Zooms and all that.
When you talk to them, what do you think, like, what do they tell you with regards to, like, what makes INJ so compelling?
And how do those products, you know, like the DAT, like the ETF, affect us, you know, part of, you know, all those that are part of the ecosystem?
Yeah, no, that's a fantastic question.
So basically, a couple things, right?
ETF, the DAT, is a stamp of approval, first and foremost.
It just shows that Injective is a legitimate asset in the world of crypto.
It's been here, and it's now being accepted on Wall Street in a big way.
And I think that's really what opens the floodgate for us as an ecosystem,
where institutional money can participate, where everyday retail investors can participate,
even if they don't know crypto, or they don't know all the crypto jargon. That's the first point.
The second thing that they really care about Injective is a couple of different things. One,
they really tend to care about the fact that Injective is a fully circulating token.
When we were doing the roadshow to raise capital for this DAT, that's one of the main things that people love.
It's like, oh my God, we've seen so many of these tokens pitch us, but most of them are trying to sell us their locked tokens or doing some other shady things.
But Injective is fully unlocked. You guys have been here for so long and you guys have done amazing work from building performant infrastructure that works.
The second thing that they care about is the fact that institutions have already integrated with us in a big way. Most of these other chains don't necessarily have all these
different market makers, all these different institutions integrated like Jump, Galaxy,
Falcon X. These guys are not participating on other chains in such a coordinated way,
which I think also is a huge stamp of approval for us that institutions
tend to care about. And they also care about the metrics. They care about the fact that so much of
the supply is staked on chain, which you don't really see in many other chains. Many other chains,
only 25 to 30% of the supply is staked. But with Injective, way more than that is staked. Over 50%
of the chain is currently staked on-chain,
which they tend to love. And they also care a lot about the revenue metrics. So the revenue meta is new in crypto, right? I think Hyperliquid really is leading the way
when it comes to the revenue meta and so are many other companies out there.
But one thing many people don't realize is Injective is the best performing asset when
it comes to revenue. So when you look at our
fully diluted valuation and compare it against other companies, whether it be Solana or ETH,
we trade at a much, much better multiple than those, which effectively for these institutions
means that Injective is undervalued. And they care a lot about this because in the world of finance,
in the world of TrapFi, they care not just about how much revenue you make, but also the fact that you are trading at an attractive multiple.
is primed for disruption and it's leading in many metrics,
whether it be revenue, whether it be adoption metrics,
whether it be new infrastructure stack that they're developing
with the multi-VM layer, et cetera.
I think all these things combined really spoke to the institutions
and what I think will be hugely beneficial for us
in the months and years to come.
And then I know we are almost at the top of the hour.
So last question for you guys,
and I'd love sort of insight from both of you.
Almost as many institutions,
about 74% plan to engage with on-chain finance
in the next two years.
And these are sort of large institutions, right?
These are multi-billion, multi-trillion dollar AUM institutions, plan to engage with DeFi within two years.
In your view, what does the convergence of TradFi and DeFi actually look like?
From our perspective, it looks like exactly what we're seeing today, which is first, you know, a stamp of approval and first, you know, an integration to the mainstream.
You know, in other industries, we see it happening all around us.
And if we just take one, you know, from from Bezos and Musk, you know, from the space side of it, you know, they're laying an infrastructure that we may or may never even see in our lifetime of what's going to be built upon it and what's going to be used upon it.
You know, the infrastructure of blockchain and of crypto is there.
It exists. It's already been built.
And now it's up to, you know, those participants, the industries and everybody else involved to be able to start building and bringing that up to the mainstream.
So the first aspect of the convergence of traditional finance to DeFi is that stamp
of approval, that credibility and that visibility of an existing infrastructure that can now
be utilized and built upon.
From that point forward, you know, it's going to take industry leaders and forward thinkers from the TradFi space to be able to say, hey, how can we start looking at DeFi strategies?
How can we start looking at on-chain strategies?
And how can we begin evolving our businesses to tomorrow's world of finance, which, you know, again, is clearly moving in this direction and with the spirit of DeFi at heart.
So I think the convergence of it is going to be a work in progress.
It's going to take some effort from the current TradFi industry
to be able to forward think and future think and future proof themselves.
able to forward think and future think and future proof themselves.
But it's also going to be met with, you know, significant
DeFi players that are going to want to
encroach upon their territory. And that's healthy.
That competition is healthy. It's healthy for progress. It's healthy
for the betterment of what we're all trying to build. And I think that we're
upon it right now so that's just
a very high level from from our side of it but marza off to you i think that's perfectly encapsulated
um i think the the most simplest way to put it and i'll only spend like 20 seconds talking about
this um because i mentioned it many times. But I think the
best convergence would be when you don't realize that something is crypto. And I think that's
what's missing in the space where everyone is trying to convince you to like, hey, switch over
on chain, like switch over to decentralized tech. But if it takes like 50 hops to do this stuff,
no one's going to do it. And that's why I think adoption across crypto is lackluster. Like you only have maybe a couple million real DeFi users out there, right? It's not immense.
Even a normal social media app has like billions of users, if not at least hundreds of millions
on any app. Even for you to raise like a Series B or C at a traditional consumer company, you likely need more than
5 million active users. I would be hard pressed to see if DeFi even has that. I think the biggest
issue and the biggest thing people have missed out on and the thing that Injective is trying to fix
is we want to be the rails behind the scenes where you could be trading on a platform or you could be
using a private equity shop or you could be using your traditional bank account.
And Injective and crypto is the rails behind the scenes that you don't necessarily see.
That's the real convergence.
It's not about DeFi replacing TrapFind anyway.
It's what can DeFi unlock for TrapFind that previously wasn't possible, where previously maybe you were able to get mortgages.
And Pineapple's done a great job at that.
But maybe now you can use your mortgage
to do more interesting things,
whether it be using it for derivatives,
whether it be taking loans out against your mortgage
and participating in more sophisticated strategies
all from your normal bank account
or all from one singular account.
I think that's where the future is,
where it just starts to blur the lines
between Trapi and DeFi and you just get more optionality, more access, and more opportunity moving forward.
Fantastic. I think that's a great place to stop this conversation. It's been wonderful, you guys.
I've had a lot of fun, you know, just hearing about sort of the future of finance and how it's all kind of coming together here.
So thank you, Mirza.
Thank you, Shuba, for being here.
And then for all those in the audience, thank you guys for being here.
And I do just want to plug a couple things, you know, definitely look into the DAT more.
There's some, you know, announcements just above this space to kind of gives you all the details on the DAT,
you know, who Pineapple is, what they're doing.
And that's just a great way to kind of get integrated with the news
and, you know, start looking into it in greater detail.
If you are a developer, we do have two accelerators
that are currently in the application phase,
both with Cointelegraphs as well as Outlier Ventures.
So definitely plug in there
if you're building some unique applications.
And then finally, if you're going to be in Singapore
for Token or KBW next week,
we are hosting a couple events there.
We'd love to have you guys participate.
But we'll go ahead and pause the
conversation there and pick up next time so again thanks everyone for joining
thank you Mirza thank you Shuba and we will catch everyone on the next
injective spaces thank you guys thank you take care Thank you. Take care.
