Investment Bank on Hedera! Hashfarms & Pary Fund and King Solomon (Part 2)

This interview was originally published by Genfinity.

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King Solomon interviews HashFarms as part of the Hedera Corner in the LightHouse by Genfinity! Brought to you by LightHouse Report sponsor Hedera Hashgraph and in collaboration with our partner and Hedera wallet provider HashPack.

Transcription

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍100%, I was looking through, and I have to give a gigantic shout out to HashPack and what they're doing from the community standpoint, to provide as much information as possible across the breadth of the ecosystem within Hedera. I was reading through what you guys had written up in there as well, and kind of the OTC trading and marketplace aspects from Hashfarms. If you could maybe touch base on that, as far as like the OTC aspects, and what that looks like.

HashFarms / Pary Fund – David Lane - Founder
‍Okay, so, yeah, some people like to do, some people like to trade anonymously. There are some people who trade in larger box sizes, and while you can do that through HashPack, via NFT secure trade, which is an awesome feature when it comes to actual token transfers, there we react as an escrow, so it's like a third party, a trusted third party. I mean, I'm completely doxxed. You've got all my information. I've done a lot of interviews, people. I think you can figure out where I live, so I try to provide a service where people can trade not anonymously. They can keep it discreet, and they can move larger block sizes without having to worry about the safety of someone rugging them or paying. Some people like to avoid transaction fees, and I look at this as a way to, I do it for free, because we provided the service for free, because it helps expand our network. We get to meet other people who are doing business within the ecosystem, and if it's a part that we can facilitate, it's something I do all the time in a primary form of employment, so it translates well to our current situation. However, with marketplaces, we had an idea of perhaps purchasing a marketplace earlier in the year, but we've seen the sector grow so rapidly that, as we figured, it's best, rather than throw another pizza parlor in a college town, why not help professionalize the current marketplaces? There's only the one battle we wrestle with as investors and supporters of the ecosystem, is the total addressable market. So, like, we're seeing a bunch of marketplaces come in, but there's only so big of a market, so everyone's shares becoming smaller. What we ultimately want to do is grow the entire marketplace, so that there's just a larger pie for everyone to eat out of.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍100%, and within that, same kind of document within HashPack, you know, structured products and direct lending, working with investors to structure products that best fit their financial needs. So, from an investor standpoint, with kind of the contacts that you guys have, when you get into discussions with certain projects that are building out on the Hedera ecosystem, if there's synergy with your kind of relationships that you have, whether that be whatever stage a project is at, you know, from a VC and an angel investor standpoint, or even at the basis, you guys are able to potentially make some of those contacts. Um, where, if you do have investors that you know are kind of out and your contact group, you meet with a project and you're helping them for free, you know, you can kind of create those synergies as well. If it's a fit.

HashFarms / Pary Fund – David Lane - Founder
‍Yeah, we do it all the time, and what we do have, we have a lot of angel investors that come to us, and that do not, they don't want to broadcast their interest, but they will say something. A lot of investors right now are looking at lending protocols, they want to generate yield, so what we try to do is team them up with other projects. There's a lot of projects that want to avoid the more formal VC route. They'd feel more comfortable going with an angel investor who's also a Hedera enthusiast. Oftentimes, these angel investors who are the Hedera enthusiasts have a large amount of hbar to help facilitate operations in the beginning. So, we try to do these meetings all the time. Um, unfortunately, I can't believe people don't know about it, because we try to keep it private. We respect people's privacy, oftentimes we sign NDAs. So, I can't like broadcast it on Twitter, like, hey, we put these two together. Uh, I do hope that, if it's successful, that they speak highly of the project down the road, and we go with that, you know, word of mouth advertising. But, um, uh, yeah, we've been doing a lot. I will say this, um, with regards to funding, if projects are looking for funding, it's a tough environment right now. The average person is getting, uh, my Wells Fargo account is almost like a HashPack with my Hbar. I'm getting five, my money's getting 75 basis points stronger every month by doing nothing, so what I tell people is, like, as an investor, you, I'm making five percent a year doing nothing. So, how are we going to get you over five percent to encourage people to want to invest? You know how are we going to help generate a return? It's a tough environment right now. We also do have some people who are looking to do direct funding who are willing to not invest in a project but loan projects and they're willing to do it at a lower interest rate. We're looking at that to help facilitate. It's just a matter of getting legal document with regards to the loan. There's a collateral that comes into play, so we're working on kind of like a legal template to be able to facilitate this. It's kind of a Q1 project. I'm anticipating interest rates to go up another one to two percent over the next, I don't know, six to 12 months. So, in that time, we're going to see the lending market expand, so we want to be able to help facilitate that. But it's just my annual retentiveness. I want to make sure we have everything structured legally correctly in the background before we start doing this.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, you touched on it a bit, and I'm just curious, like, how you're managing all the time to provide these free services because you mentioned legal and tax aspects as well, where you're starting to get into, you're at least starting to consider getting into, you know, doing more of that to help projects out. Like, how much, you know, with the free services that you guys provide, how much time are you spending right now getting into discussions and really, because it's going to be growing.

HashFarms / Pary Fund – David Lane - Founder
‍Yeah, what was like five to ten hours a week is slowly becoming more and more, so we're hitting a part where, how do we, where do I expand the team? If we expand the team, what direction do we go in? We're kind of getting to an inflection point right now. But with regards to time management, everything so far, I haven't had that many people use it. I get probably three to four calls a week, so it's manageable. But, if it grows, then we're going to cross that bridge when we get to it. Interestingly enough, there is, as much as people think the market is dead in my town, Norwalk, Connecticut, there's still a great interest in crypto, and there's a lot of people who are willing to kind of give services in kind to get educated. There's a lot of people, there's a lot of people with legal backgrounds, a lot of accountants in town, and a lot of people are looking at they see this kind of as the future. Like, there's a lot of lawyers who are looking to expand their practice. A great way to do it is by working with crypto startups hand in hand, give them that experience. Crypto accounting, especially on a retail level, is a huge concern with how to manage capital gains about long-term, short-term tax write-offs, so there's a lot of personal practices in here. Just a matter of teaming up, it's a lot of its networking and it's just kind of knowing we're acting as a middleman. It's easy to facilitate now, but if it grows maybe we'll need to bring more people on staff. But right now the staff is free, so it's hard to find people who want to work for free.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍No, I certainly appreciate it. As far as like where we could drive traffic to, like where's the best place to go and get in contact with David? How can I learn more about Pary Fund? How can I learn more about what Hash Farms is facilitating? Is it through Twitter? Is it kind of DMing through Twitter?

HashFarms / Pary Fund – David Lane - Founder
‍Through Twitter, I'm also on Telegram, it's @Paryfund (p-a-r-y-f-u-n-d). You can DM me on Twitter anytime and I'll give you my Discord link as well. Yeah, a lot of it, you know, pardon my 42-year-old ignorance when it comes to web3 applications. I'm still getting used to like the Discord and everything. My, I always joke, my 12-year-old daughter, uh, by the way, she kills me in tic-tac-toe. I saw your Tweet the other day. Yeah, I'm like convinced she's cheating, and then she's like, yeah, it's tic-tac-toe, how can I cheat?

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Well, that's because she always starts in the middle. The middle block is the way to always win. If you let your kid start in the middle, it's like, I have to start and I'm going the middle. I'm like, well, okay.

HashFarms / Pary Fund – David Lane - Founder
‍Yeah, no, but it's funny because I, I joke that my daughter's like my IT person, um, so like when she doesn't want something, she holds it over my head, uh, with regards to help, but our lack of advertising is not intentional. It's more, uh, I wasn't in a rush to, you know, occupy all my time with everything, so I was kind of trying to take it case by case to see how the model would work, uh, and so far I think we've been able to help projects. Um, you know, if there's people who haven't found this helpful, I always encourage feedback. I'd love to know, you know, constructively how can I better it because you know I'd like to make my time as efficient as possible, but I also want to be cognizant of Founders' time. I mean, if you're a founder and you're talking to me, you're not building, right? So, like, how do we maximize our time together to make it as efficient as possible, but, you know, a side note too, that's one thing I try to tell Founders is, um, you know, when you create these Discords, it's great that you have that community feedback, but try to manage the expectations of the community needing updates with your ability to build. Because what happens is a lot of guys get tied into these Discords, a lot of projects, and then people start questioning the price and they're trying to defend like the floor price of an NFT, there's a token price, uh, at the price of their token. And what their investors don't realize is that every second that they're bothering this founder, I shouldn't say bothering, but they're asking time of the founder, they're taking away from their actual investment so, we try to work with time management as well on that. Yeah, we expect an update once a month, right, end of the month you get your update. I mean, I think nowadays Discord makes it a lot easier to facilitate real-time communication and everything, but, um, you know, we just try, we try to help people manage expectations.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, and I mean, even like from the from like an art standpoint, if you're a team of one and you, you create great art, but then you have a Twitter and a Discord and a Telegram to manage, it's like, well, I can't create more art because I'm in the Discord and the Telegram and on the Twitter 24/7. It's just almost impossible to facilitate. So, and I think that you can extrapolate that out with pretty much every project. Like, there's so many different social channels and, unless you have a team or unless you have moderators kind of running the show from that regard, I mean, I can't even imagine how much time some of these people are spending, uh, in these social channels.

HashFarms / Pary Fund – David Lane - Founder
‍That's a lot, too. And then some, that we deal with some, there's a lot of um projects we're seeing that are, uh, very bootstrapped, and you know, one of their biggest expenditures is doing like the fifty dollars a month Nitro on Discord, and we were like, you know, do you really need it, like, you know, because you're telling us right now that, like, you know, if 100 bucks is moving the needle, we want to respect that, uh, why are you spending 50 bucks a month on a Discord subscription when technically it's a free service? Like, um, you know, let's get you to the point where the subscription is necessary, is it really necessary? Is, you know, what we look at.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yep, 100%. Well, I really appreciate your time today, David. Uh, yeah, definitely gonna drive some traffic hopefully towards Pary Fund and Hash Farms, and I may be reaching out to you as well, uh, but, yeah, looking forward to, uh, having an additional discussion with you guys in early 2023 as well, and again, a shout out to HashPack, um, shout out to the whole Hedera ecosystem. Check out what David's doing and the work he's doing with Pary Fund and Hash Farm. So, thank you so much, David, we appreciate it.

HashFarms / Pary Fund – David Lane - Founder
‍Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate what you do for the ecosystem. Really do. It's, uh, people like you will make it a better place.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Thanks, man, appreciate it.