Where: GAINS Telegram (Telegram: Contact @GainsChat)
Date: February 18th - 12:00pm EST - 1:00pm EST
Attendees:
- GAINS admins
- Kellogg Fairbank (Nash, Bizdev Lead)
- Clare Saunders (Nash, Marketing Communications)
- Chris Fenwick (Nash, Editor/Copywriter)
Part 1: Questions from GAINS
GAINS : Let’s start by hearing a bit about you. What did you do before crypto and did you have any other previous venture in crypto?
Kellogg : I’ve worked as a senior exec for a number of FinTech companies, including Braintree/Venmo and PayPal. I’ve also been a co-founder of a couple tech startups. Like most of us, I’ve been an investor in crypto for a number of years. At Nash, I lead business development and marketing.
GAINS : Let’s talk about the project. What is the project about in a few simple sentences?
Kellogg : Nash bridges the gap between crypto and your local currency. Our crypto/cash exchange service combines the lowest fees with instant delivery to the safest software wallet. With Nash Link for business, merchants can easily accept crypto from their customers and receive cash. Our digital banking services will seamlessly integrate DeFi-powered high-interest savings and a crypto debit card.
GAINS : Is there any other crypto competitor(s) that seeks to do what you are doing? And what sets you apart?
Kellogg : There are other platforms, but they can’t compete with our fees. Also, most other platforms can’t compete with our wallet security, based on multi-party computation. You can read more about that here. Longer term, we hope to have unique digital banking offerings when it comes to making DeFi accessible.
GAINS : For how long have you been working on Nash? How many people are on the team?
Kellogg : I joined last summer. We have 34 team members
GAINS : Did you raise funds so far? And how did you handle them? Are you planning to do any future raises?
Kellogg : Yes, Nash raised over 20 million USD in our public security token offering and over 10 million USD from leading venture capital firms. Once we’ve successfully hit our growth metrics for Europe we’ll look to raise a Series A to push into new markets. The Series A will help fuel that future growth: licenses in the various jurisdictions, marketing and adding new team members
GAINS : How would you say adoption for your product has been? And what plans do you have to bring in more people to use your product
Kellogg : The exchange didn’t quite have the market fit we wanted. However, fiat ramp saw 20% month-on-month growth since launch in September 2020. Thankfully, we can use the exchange to power the fiat ramp, letting us offer our leading 0% fees.
GAINS : What is the use case of the $NEX token and how does it capture the value of the ecosystem you’re building?
Kellogg : NEX is a revenue-sharing token. Users can lock their tokens in a staking contract, with the maximum two-year lock offering a 75% proportionate share of company revenue. NEX offers a very accurate valuation of the Nash ecosystem, since dividends stakers receive are in direct proportion to the revenue we generate. Valuing the token according to a dividend discount model is hence very easy – although that doesn’t account for speculation about future success.
Because revenue-sharing falls under the traditional definition of securities, we registered NEX with the FMA of Liechtenstein as the first digital security token in Europe. We believe that other exchange tokens are in fact unregistered securities, which could have consequences for their investors should regulations be enforced. Look at what happened with Ripple (XRP). NEX investors are protected from such consequences, as well as market manipulation.It’s worth noting that NEX is the only fully compliant exchange token. Other exchanges that are compliant don’t have tokens, whereas those that do are not fully compliant. As such, NEX is the only way to invest right now in the possibility of much stronger compliance in the crypto space.
GAINS : What stage is your project at? And what should we look forward to in the coming months?
Kellogg : Growth phase, with a focus on Europe. We’ll be releasing a ton of new features that will simplify access for retail investors
Questions from Twitter 
:
Kellogg : Firstly, Nash will be able to offer better basic crypto buying/selling services than competitors. Our exchange lets us offer 0% fees for the main assets, and L1-only assets will still lead the market with just 1% fees. We won’t try to hide fees either by artificially inflating spot market prices. In addition to being the best priced option, don’t forget that Nash also comes with an ultra-secure MPC wallet. We’ll be rolling out even more security policies for this in the near future. This will be the safest software wallet available, and perfect for new users. We’ll be creating MPC wallets for new blockchains that we integrate, so in some cases will be the only MPC option available.
Secondly – yes, Nash will be offering some innovative DeFi services! We’ll be trying to make token staking and high-yield interest as accessible as possible, beginning in Q2. However, things will get even more interesting in Q3, when we integrate full checking accounts with IBANs into the Nash platform. You’ll be able to use Nash like a normal bank, but we’ll be giving users access to a simple crypto-powered savings account, making it possible for inexperienced users to take advantage of DeFi.
Kellogg : We’re no longer pushing the L2 exchange as our main retail product. However, it remains crucial for allowing our other products to work – it’s what lets us offer 0% fees for the main assets, and also powers our solution for merchants, Nash Link (where you can receive crypto and get paid out in cash without even managing a blockchain address). So the exchange isn’t going anywhere. We’ll double down on liquidity for the main pairs and be pursuing professional traders who are attracted by our combination of low fees and high security.
For retail users, yes, we envisage a mobile-first approach, with people purchasing and selling on spot markets through the mobile app, rather than placing limit orders with the exchange UI. It will still be there, but our focus will be on the simpler buy/sell interface.
Kellogg : I think the traditional banking world has finally caught on to the fact that crypto is here to stay, and safe to say is the future of finance. Banks that embrace crypto synergies will succeed in the short to long term.
We’re already seeing these kinds of synergies today. One of the more interesting is crypto card providers, powered by Visa and Mastercard. Crypto debit cards offer consumers the opportunity to earn significantly more in cash-back rewards than the traditional consumer card, including rewards paid in bitcoin and stablecoins. Companies like Nash, that can help bridge the gap between traditional and decentralised finance and seamlessly merge the two, are the future of this industry.
Kellogg : DeFi staking will be coming in Q2. We’ll be developing a simplified crypto savings product as well with the help of a partner. In Q3, when we add checking accounts, we’ll also be bringing out a simple interface between cash and DeFi-powered savings.
Nash has no plans for introducing NFTs at this time.
Part 2 - Quiz by Nash (led by Kellogg)
Quiz Question 1: What is the fee charged on Nash’s fiat ramps?
Answer: 0% fee
Answer: 2 years / 24 months
Answer: Multi-party computation; it increases wallet security
a. Integrated checking accounts
b. DeFi savings accounts
c. Crypto debit card
d. All of them!
Answer: D – All of them!
Part 3: AMA (Questions from the audience)
how secure is the funds and user data on Nash what kind of security system do you implement? Does Nash ask its users to complete KYC?
Chris : Users need to complete KYC to use the fiat ramp and trade above $5,000 per day on the L2 exchange.
You can find a description of our wallet system + signature protocol here: The safest software wallet for crypto
If you’re more technically inclined, we also open-sourced the wallet protocols so you can see what Nash is doing and how we generate seed phrases: GitHub - nash-io/nash-protocol: Typescript implementation of Nash cryptographic routines.
Kellogg : Our focus is on europe for now and we’ll look to expand to other regions perhaps later this year / next year most likely.
Ultimately we need $NEX to be listed, so do you have a realistic estimate for acquiring a Security Dealer’s licence, and subsequently an OTF licence? How long after launch before we can expect BTC pairs?”
Kellogg : This license is as you know very expensive so its not our immediate focus at moment. Our immediate focus is to be the leading cash/crypto exchange in Europe. Once successful, we can revisit
Clare : We agree that Twitter is not always the best place for a CTA or the only one. Many people confuse marketing and advertising. We have been marketing the product by bringing it to institutions and businesses and creating collaborations with folks like Gunbot. With every agreement we have we arrange co-marketing. Nash is only interested in data backed advertising. We do not believe in spending money if we are unsure if there is an ROI. As we said in Q1 there will be a stronger push to spread the word about Nash through various channels but we will not be putting our name on soccer jerseys 
Chris : Yes, we plan to add at least 10 more major coins this year. You can read about these plans in our 2021 strategy article: Bridging the gap between fiat and crypto: Our vision for 2021
The issue is that so far, Nash has offered a Layer-2 exchange. This makes it very hard to add new blockchains (state channels must be built). It also makes it harder to keep deep order books, because we cannot do paper trading and need all assets to be on the chain. Our L2 works amazingly for the top pairs, but providing liquidity on every pair is a challenge, and adding new chains (not just ERC-20 tokens) is a huge challenge.
That’s why we’re shifting to adding wallets and allowing direct trading on at spot prices.
Re. NEX: it’s a security, and we don’t have the license required to trade it. You can find it on other secondary markets like Uniswap. We even integrated the Uniswap pool into our mobile app.
Some countries restricted local banks from executing cryptocurrency transactions. Can Nash be of help to users in this scenario?
“With Nash Link for business, merchants can easily accept crypto from their customers and receive cash.”
Would this be in form of P2P? In case of transaction disputes between customers and merchants , would Nash step in?
Kellogg : Nash is a fully compliant cash/crypto exchange and complies with the local jurisdictions we operate in. Unfortunately, there are some countries that we can’t offer our services in where local law does not allow for it. For Nash Link, any European based company can use our services to accept crypto payments from any person or company globally.
Chris : We won’t really be competing for the same market with our new fiat gateway and digital banking services. Also: Uniswap is difficult for new users to get to grips with, especially given the crazy ETH fees at the moment. We’re really hoping for a more intuitive experience, especially when it comes to moving between cash and crypto. That will truly be visible when we integrate checking accounts.
Kellogg : Focus on Europe for for 2021.
Chris : If this is a complaint about us having moderators on our Telegram and community channel: This really isn’t analogous to governments censoring free speech, publication of political opinions, artworks, etc., and fining people or throwing them in jail. That kind of argument is just disingenuous. Those are our important marketing channels for us and filling them with FUD is a bit like defacing our website. They’re not some sort of public commons.
Chris : We’re partnering with Railsbank, as announced in our strategy article: Bridging the gap between fiat and crypto: Our vision for 2021
Chris : There’s no current plan to make an additional token bridge, but we will add an ETH-based staking contract in future.
Clare : The strong tokenomics is simple - it follows a dividend discount model. The longer you stake (up to 2 years) the higher % rate of dividends you will receive.
Chris : Our L2 exchange is unique when it comes to the main pairs: BTC and ETH. For our retail offering, we’re moving towards pushing the local currency pairs at spot price. We won’t be looking into building another DEX with totally different tech.
Chris : NEX isn’t a governance token. It is a revenue-sharing token. You stake the token and you receive a share of Nash’s revenue.
Chris : We’ll be beginning our main advertising campaigns this Q1.
We believe the token value will increase as we release more products and gain more market traction. We are not going to artificially pump the token. It’s a security.
Chris : Not on the roadmap for now afaik. We’re shifting our main focus for retail users to the fiat gateway.
Kellogg : No not at all, any fundraising would be done with existing shareholders as our priority. Remember, all Nash employees are also “shareholders” in Nash, and so we take this very seriously. Series A could be a combination of equity or tokens, or both, the details of which have not even been considered because its not a focus at this time. However, any fundraising will be for the sole purpose of expanding into new markets, mainly to acquire licenses (which are expensive when you expand globally) and pay for marketing.
Chris : Liquidity on our main pairs has increase dramatically over the last couple of weeks thanks to a new market making partner.
We aim now to compete mainly for retail users wanting simple buy/sell tools. In that regard, yes, we hope to compete with big CEXes because we will offer much better fees (0%!) and security (MPC), as well as digital banking services coming later in the year.
The L2 we will market to pro traders via our bizdev team. We know they are interested — the fee structure is good for them, as well as the security.
Chris : There was no pre-sale for Nash. All VCs bought it at $1, same as ICO investors. This was all in 2018.
Chris : We’ve had a number of audits by major firms, including NCC Group and Recurity. There were no critical issues.
Chris : The digital securities market is very small, so pursuing these licenses is not a business priority right now. If we want $NEX to appreciate, we need more users and revenue adding real value to the token.
Chris : We want to expand globally, but are focussing on Europe for now since that is where we have the licenses to operate. When we are profitable in Europe, we’ll start expanding elsewhere.
Chris : Nothing until we announce the partnership officially. These agreements come with planned co-marketing, etc. We’re excited about it, that’s for sure 
Chris : We’re not going to make a browser extension. The necessity of such extensions was kind of killed by WalletConnect, which we integrated (WITH MPC) into our mobile app already.
