Understanding Meme Coins with Mark Basa

george grombacher 0:00
Come on

bla bla, this is George G and the time is right on today’s guest strong a powerful Mark bass and Mark, you’re ready to do this show RAM. Excellent. Mark is the global brand and business manager with Hok finance. They’re an organization bringing decentralized financial products that challenge modern banking empower you to do more with crypto Mark excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work and why you do what you do.

Mark Basa 0:39
Show us a personal life. So Australian on living in Denmark for the last five years predominantly been in traditional marketing digital marketing for the last decade, discovered Bitcoin 2011. And didn’t really dabble into a serious crypto Korea up until about 24 months ago,

I invested in a ton of meme tokens, these tokens that predominately have zero value, and I made a lot of money. And then I basically wrote to these these companies, these meme targets and I said, Hey, I think I can fix your projects I think I can make, I think I can make you a lot of money and make this whole mean token industry a real thing. And so I wrote to hawk and a couple others, but Hawk responded pretty fast. And then I joined them. And my vision with Hawk finance was basically to turn them into a will from a volunteer meme projects into a serious defy player. So building a real company, whereby you have a, say, a suite of products, decentralized financial products, but they’re powered by what you would call as, you know, mean branding, so two logos, two dogs, viral memes, the community being leveraged in order to facilitate all this incredible brand and marketing power. And then of course, you have the amazing products that we build on the blockchain.

george grombacher 2:05
Nice. Well, I, I always appreciate when when people take initiative, and and you reach out and that’s how great things happen. So these these these memes whines the good is that they’re absolutely viral. And and, you know, you can’t stop an idea. Bad is that they have very little value. So what what is the long term vision that you see, why is morality good in in this case? Or what? How will the future be different?

Mark Basa 2:41
Sure. So I think that that mean, tokens really had their meme season. So you have Elon Musk endorsing Dogecoin. It, you know, it goes up like crazy it moons and you know, there’s like 15 year old millionaires that bought this token. And so then shiba inu comes out. And Hawk was also Hakata Inu was the original name. That was also one of the you know, the OG mean tokens. And basically, you know, a lot of these coins and tokens start with very little utility, you buy them, you kind of just like, it’s like a lottery ticket out of your nine to five, and they don’t really do much else. Lots of promises, made promises broken. There’s no real consistent strategy vision, there’s no teams like a coordinated team, you know, hierarchy, CEO, people, they just, they’re just run by a bunch of dudes from their computers. And there’s a lot of good people behind it. There’s a lot of, you know, dodgy people behind them, too. And so, short term mean, tokens really can’t do anything long term. And this is what I saw was that young people can’t, or don’t resonate with corporate banks anymore. You know, Bank of America is not online on telegram 24 hours, seven days a week, we are, we have a team of 46 people. And that’s really powerful. So people that want to use our, you know, these products that we’ve built, which as I said, as you said an introduction replicate traditional finance. So, for example, we have this, this multi Chain Bridge, it basically means you can take an asset like eath, and you can bridge it to, to binance chain or HECO chain, eventually, more and more chains are going to be added. So eventually, one day, you can take any asset on the chain, and you can bridge it across. It’s almost like if I was to exchange Danish crowns for USD, right, but you can do with any currency in an instant. And the idea behind this, this actual product itself right now it’s available on the on the hog token, but to make it public permissionless almost like uniswap with the dex tool, right. So you have this permissionless bridge, any projects any company can create an asset and Bridgette across maybe hundreds of chains one day, so that in terms of a financial product means speed, scalability, you can do anything with that asset. So that’s that’s our long term vision is to is to give the next crypto generation and the current generation, even millennials, these sorts of products that they can use in their everyday lives, crypto sending crypto spending, because they can’t get this from the bank. The banks are so far behind this. So out of touch. So where am I here to kind of lead that transition? Where meme coins mean tokens are taken seriously, we build utility, but we never forget our foundations of a meme brand.

george grombacher 5:32
Nice like that. That’s really well said right there. I think I understood most of it. Is it is an eye, you know, like, my brain wants to compare it to things. And I’m thinking, is it kind of like a passport? Is it like a, it’s but but it’s more of a new currency that will be accepted in every country. And there’s just no problem converting?

Mark Basa 5:55
Yep, yep. So basically, for example, you take our token Hawk that is on the Etherium chain, and we have Hawk also on the binance chain. So you have all these different chains. You even have USDC. So US dollar coin, which is built on the Etherium chain. So basically, these currencies can be moved and facilitated all sorts of new ways. So like a passport, yes, that you can use it anywhere with our currency, or any currencies, for that matter. On the chain is how we see future spending. So a lot of people say this thing to me quite often where they say, how are we going to have 5000 tokens? You know, in the future? How are we gonna have so many meme coins, I just want to buy a loaf of bread? Well, in the future, I believe you’ll just have your crypto wallet, and your assets, and many of your assets, many of your tokens will be on really big chains, popular chains, like Aetherium. And so you might have, you know, 10 different tokens all built on Aetherium. And you can pay with what you want, depending on who accepts it. But if that cashier, you know, accepts theorem, then you can use any of those chain sorry, any of those tokens. So, the future that we see happening is this really this massive adoption to cryptocurrency, through not just the acceptance from merchants, but the push from the consumer saying, I want to do more with my money, I want to do more of my crypto. So you would have seen these NFT collections come out that bought a yacht club and cool cats and Gary V’s doodles, you know, crazy, crazy prices utility behind them, you know, it’s growing, there’s a lot of really cool stuff they’re doing our NFT collection. And I don’t know if we’re some of the first or if not the first, but when you meant one of our NF T’s, it immediately starts generating yield. So it’s like it starts earning crypto, it starts earning money, the moment that you own one. So you get an ROI based on this NFT for just holding it. Now, because these are modular NF T’s we can upgrade them, as legislation changes in the future. So let’s say one day, right, fingers crossed, the SEC and all the other government bodies say we are now going to consider NF T’s as like common stock, or bonds, some form of security, we can be one of the first in the world, upgrade our NF T’s so they can replicate stocks and bonds, all on chain, cross chain, swap them, stake them do anything you want with them. It’s really difficult today to do that with stocks and bonds at such speed and scale. So that’s how we see that hot finance can lead the way with these sorts of things.

george grombacher 8:37
Fascinating. So when he talked about it automatically starts getting yield. Tell me more about that.

Mark Basa 8:45
Sure. So basically, the way that our lead engineer, drew for enters has set this up with his team is basically there’s a there’s like a pool, right? We add money to a pool. And that pool basically gets the money. And that gets lended out on these protocols, right. And so this is the big thing about defy decentralized finance, it’s your money. So you can’t go to your bank account and lend your money out from Bank of America or something that just doesn’t happen. The bank can though, they can leverage that and they can lend your money out. But decentralized finance defi, you can lend your money out. So we have this pool, we lend it out to people all around the world that want to lend us DC or sorry, borrow USDC, or ether or whatever. And there’s an API, there’s an interest rate that you get back. So that’s in our pool, we have attached that or you could say connect that to our NF T’s. So when you meant one, you pay a minting fee of like, I think it’s like 150 bucks. Right? And then it starts earning yield. 2% I think we’re up to like 2.9% the other day and it varies, but what we’re going to be able to do in the future will very soon is have that NFT in to various D fi lenders. So you can have an NF T or collection of NF T’s and have this incredible NF T dashboard. I’ve seen the designs recently, it looks incredible. You’ve got all your NF T’s. You can see what you paid, how much they’re earning, what’s lending out. And then you can actually choose which protocol you want to borrow from or lend to. So you can choose this API or this API. So it’s a really fascinating piece of technology. This this, this NFT craze is more. It’s more than just, you know, JPEGs. On the blockchain, it’s far more exciting than that. And as we grow, and as we market matures, we’re going to see more of this NFT utility.

george grombacher 10:43
Well, that makes sense. So it’s it’s inexpensive, to maintain NFT. Correct? Who who ought to be thinking about doing this?

Mark Basa 10:53
I would say, Well, if you take, for example, where crypto is going, if you’re if you really want to be an early adopter, and you think you’ve missed out on board, AYP, and you miss out on the other ones, I don’t think that our prices will reach the board at prices that that has its own brand. But I would say, if you’re looking to get into crypto and even like a safe way to get into crypto, you could buy an NF T and watch that yield, come back and get an ROI. Unlike if you invest into tokens, where it’s so volatile, you have no idea what’s going to happen. If you’ve bought into Bitcoin, or you know, eath back in the day short, those are like long term 510 year goals, you know, you want to take profits as the market changes if you can manage to track the market that way. But I would say to buy these NF T’s would be early adopters thinking do I want to experiment in crypto, do I want to hold something and I want to keep this for years to come. It’s just sitting there in the background. Imagine having a piece of art that was just you know, sitting on your wall, and it was generating money, you know, every second, like, that’s an incredible thing. Not many pieces of art can do that over time. But our NF T’s can’t.

george grombacher 12:05
Cool. I like it. You mentioned the safe way to get into it. And I think that the majority of the ordinary people out there don’t understand. I don’t understand the things that you’re talking about. I sort of have a very shallow understanding. But a lot a lot of people have have zero understanding. And so they read the headline about $600 million stolen, how do you think about security?

Mark Basa 12:31
Great question, crypto security. If you’re if you’re terrified about crypto security, I mean, the first thing you can do and some of the easiest things you can do is buy crypto on a centralized exchange. If you’re totally new to crypto, go to Coinbase. Like pretty simple. When you go to Coinbase, you can use your your credit card or debit card and you swap your US dollar for eath or Bitcoin. I don’t recall what the kind of hacking or insurance policy Coinbase has. But as soon as you buy it, you can take that crypto off, and you can put it on a decentralized wallet like meta mask or trust wallet, and then buy what’s called a nano ledger. Write like a cold wallet. And that basically is a little USB stick that can approve or denied transactions. So if you’re really really worried about getting into crypto and being hacked, take these sorts of things. Seriously. The other thing you could do, which I see all the time happening Kryptos people are using their everyday computer to buy and sell and trade crypto. And they’re joining up to NFT marketplaces like open sea or wearable or something like that. And they’re clicking on emails, like these are these phishing scams that says, hey, somebody just bid on your NFT for a million dollars, and they’re clicking them and connecting their wallets. Don’t do that. Don’t ever click on anything that anyone has ever send you. It’s 100% a scam. So I think there’s certain measures to take when you first want to get into crypto do what kind of the retail investors are doing. Right? Coinbase centralized exchange, it’s regulated. The government knows about your crypto, that sort of thing. Don’t go out there and maybe just start buying tokens randomly on random websites and connecting your wallet. That’s probably dangerous. I would say

george grombacher 14:29
that it makes sense. Thank you. So going back the the bridge across all the platforms across all the chains. Is that for the NFT and the coin?

Mark Basa 14:42
Okay, good question. Sure. Sure. So, so right now we have this multi Chain Bridge for the hawk token, and then eventually we’re going to have our NF T’s which will be cross chain. I don’t think that the two products will be the same, but in some way they will connect with each other So we have this product called hock premium. And that’s basically where the lending of your finances, your assets happen. So hog premium, you can take your, your eath, or your USDC. And we connect that to a big lending protocol, like Ave or Wi Fi or something. And these are massive, massive platforms that have billions of dollars staked, and they lend that out. So we connect to those. So it we enable you to connect with these platforms in a single destination. So we have all these different products that are out or that we’re building. But in terms of cross chain capability, they’re more individualized to the product themselves. So so the idea is basically to be able to take your NFT and move it across chain, but but that will also make it you know, difficult if you’re going to launch collections for certain chains, but it’s more that you might be able to connect to different yield pools in in the future without NFT.

george grombacher 15:58
Nice. So for somebody who’s, who’s listening, so this is really interesting. How do I how do I What’s what’s sort of the next step?

Mark Basa 16:07
So I mean, if you’d like, if you’re interested in getting in crypto, and you think I don’t want to miss out, I missed out on Bitcoin. Like so many people a, I knew back in the day missed out on Bitcoin. And you want to get into it now in an easy way that you can, but you can familiarize yourself with a brand Hawk finances doing that we make things really, really simple. And we’re a meme token. So we’re also a lot of fun. And we you know, we go viral as well, you know, throughout our 10s of 1000s, strong social media, go to hawk dot finance, and read up about what we’re doing, we have about meme tokens, and how they started and you know, the different meme tokens out there and start exploring about you know, the products themselves on the website, you’ll be able to find our telegram channel and one of our moderators will, will simply get back to you if you’ve got any queries around. How do I get started? Where do I buy eath from first to be able to then swap that for Hawk? Love it.

george grombacher 17:02
Mark kind of skipped ahead there. People are ready for that difference making tip, what do you have for the

Mark Basa 17:07
difference making tip? There’s about five years, 10 years before this whole market goes, employee, insane. And now is the time to start investing and exploring crypto. Do your due diligence, go to YouTube, go to Reddit read up on crypto and how to get in. If you’re scared, you know, listen to people and what they have to say understand the fundamentals. When you get that idea, start investing what you can afford to lose, but have some sort of exit strategy. So my main tip is that if you start making some decent returns, exit, swap your tokens for a stable coin or stable token, and then reinvest again and keep doing that. And that’s one of the biggest things that I think most investors in crypto don’t do is they don’t have an exit strategy. I know people that have been up 10s of millions of dollars and didn’t exit and the market crashed. And they’re a little bit unhappy about that. So don’t be one of those guys.

george grombacher 18:12
Why think that that is great stuff that definitely gets a Come on. It’s hard as human beings to to be able to take in or to make an exit like that. So putting a plan together on the front end. I think that that is a that is some of the finest advice that you can give. So I love it. Well, Mark, thanks again. Give us the website one more time.

Mark Basa 18:32
That’s a hawk H O KK dot finance.

george grombacher 18:35
Excellent. If you enjoyed as much as I did, and mark your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to HOKK dot finance, check out all the great resources. I was on the site earlier today. And it just has a ton of great information on there. So definitely check it out and follow marks, marks tip and just get involved and have a plan when you’re doing it. Thanks again, Mark. Thanks so much. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai