Why We Started Cred: From the Co-Founder
An in-depth look at the founding of Cred from co-founder Dan Schatt
If you haven’t heard of Cred President and Co-Founder Dan Schatt, then you may be new to the blockchain industry. Dan has been a cryptocurrency advocate and visionary since the early days of bitcoin.
Before founding Cred, Dan was the general manager of financial innovations and mobile at PayPal. His team’s innovations included PayPal’s first partnerships and product initiatives with virtual currency providers, PayPal’s presence at the physical point of sale, and the company’s first cash products for the unbanked. His book, “Virtual Banking, A Guide to Innovation and Partnering”, is an Amazon bestseller and his conclusions have proven very relevant to the current crypto landscape. Besides all of these accolades and accomplishments, we wanted to give our community and the public a real-world look at the founding of Cred.
Dan has been on a decades-long journey in search of expanding technology and improvement of payments and currency to users across the globe. As we discussed a wide range of issues together, it really became evident that Dan Schatt is not someone just blowing in the trade winds to make a quick buck on some crypto. Dan is truly a visionary who sees what a global, decentralized financial network could accomplish for the people of the world, and what we need to do to get there
“I became interested in the blockchain and crypto space in 2012, back when I was working at PayPal. I later published a book in 2014 called Virtual Banking, with a chapter on bitcoin and crypto. My big realization at that point was that while PayPal made the process of moving money simple, all of the information revolved around a centralized database structure that it had amassed — something that would never allow it to become the ‘internet of money’, which is what is possible with a decentralized ledger structure.
I had the ‘Aha’ moment that if this moved to decentralized ledgers, not only would this be potentially a lot more secure, but you could significantly scale up the ability to move not just money around the world, but value as well.
Just before founding Cred, I spent a few years building a fractional share brokerage, where you could buy a gift card that was good for stock — think $25 of Tesla or Apple stock you could buy just like an Amazon gift card. In a sense, this was the first “tokenized” product for public stock. We got the requisite regulatory approvals and took it to market. But it occurred to me that crypto would allow all assets to become tokenized. It wasn’t just [US] Dollars that were becoming tokenized and made easily accessible through stablecoins, but it was the ability to take artwork or real estate — really any asset class — and tokenize it. It won’t be too long before you can buy a fractional share of stock in the form of an Ethereum token.
When I came to this realization that all asset classes would eventually become tokenized, I thought ‘what are the biggest things that need to happen infrastructure-wise to make this a happen on a massive scale.’ It occurred to me that you need liquidity more than anything to make a new tokenized ecosystem.
You need a form of decentralized banking to occur — global matching of those who hold crypto deposits wish to earn a return, and those who are looking for more funds need the ability to borrow against this new asset class. Reputation and credit ratings just don’t carry over from one place to the next when they sit in one database. That is why we created Cred.
A bitcoin is a bitcoin anywhere you go around the world, you should be able to value it the same as any common digital asset, and borrow or lend against it. You no longer have this situation because you are in a specific country with a specific set of credit infrastructure where you might not be able to get a loan for under 30%. Now you can get single digit interest rates anywhere.
When I was traveling from country to country earlier in my career, every time I would open a new bank account and apply to get credit, each bank would start me off with a $500 credit line. I would say ‘I worked my way up in the U.S. or other countries’ and they would say ‘well you’re in a different country and with a new bank now’ and I would have to start from scratch each time. This idea that my reputation — the sum total of all the responsible things I have done in my life — could have been recorded immutably on a blockchain, my reputation or ‘cred’ could be more equitably acknowledged and I could get more economic value for what I had done. My reputation should be able to follow me no matter where I go in the world.”
Dan is currently on the Board of Directors for Gift of College, a company that has pioneered gift cards for fractional securities in the United States. Previously, Dan was an investment banker with Salomon Smith Barney and held positions in Asia, Europe, and Africa for Citigroup. Prior to Citigroup, Dan managed payment and capital market infrastructure projects as country director of FSVC for Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Dan received a master of business administration and a master of international affairs from Columbia University.
Excerpts taken from UP Alliance, read the original interview here.
About Cred
Cred is a decentralized global lending network that facilitates open access to credit anywhere and anytime. Founded by former PayPal financial technology veterans, Cred is a leader in the lending industry, specializing in blockchain technology. Cred is set to revolutionize the lending industry by merging an established global lending network, a diverse team of entrepreneurial leaders, machine learning, and the power of blockchain technology. To learn more, visit www.mycred.io.
Buy Cred’s LBA Token on Uphold: https://uphold.com/
Join the waitlist to access a Cred loan: https://www.mycred.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ihavecred
Telegram: https://t.me/ihaveCred/
Email Inquiries: info@mycred.io
