Meet MELD — Nehal Khushal
Welcome to Meet MELD
This is a series to provide some insight and understanding of the faces behind the MELD team. We have a vast range of engineers, designers, economists, advisors, and researchers from all parts of the world including the United States, Norway, Sweden, Vietnam, Japan, and Canada, and with more partnerships, new team members, and advisors joining the MELD team, this list just keeps on expanding and getting better!
Continue reading to find out about Nehal’s role with MELD…
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❓ Questions and answers…
Nehal Khushal — LinkedIn Profile
Nehal is a Strategy and Financial Risk ex-banker, trusted advisor, and team leader with 15 years of experience in Corporate Banking across strategy, distressed debt, start-up/innovation environments, capital management, sector reviews, and portfolio credit risk mitigation — now working in the Crypto sector 🚀
What’s your job position at MELD + what do you do for MELD?
I’m the Chief Strategy Officer at MELD and my role is to establish the regulated institutions that are required to enable the MELD product vision.
What that translates to is launching a Neobank (aka a Challenger Bank) and any other legal entities we require to deliver users access to the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and any future MELD products.
I am also involved in decentralized finance (DeFi) product development, helping to imagine and scope products and services that the MELD Protocol could offer. We’ve got some exciting ideas in the works, some you will have heard about, and others that are totally fresh!
What did you do before working with MELD?
Before joining MELD in mid-2022, I was consulting for IOG (IOHK) as a Senior Program Manager, helping Charles and his team design and create the ‘Institutions and Bureaucracies’ that are required to further the Cardano vision. I was also fortunate enough to work with the Cardano Foundation. It was an absolute pleasure to work with the talented teams in both entities and I learned an incredible amount about how one of the world’s largest blockchains operates.
I left banking in November 2021 after 15 years in the sector. For the majority of those years, I’ve been based in London, working at Natwest (formally RBS), where I was fortunate enough to lead a few teams that always had exciting remits. Some of the specializations we covered included distressed debt, portfolio strategy, portfolio sales of corporate debt, asset securitization, asset and liability pricing optimisation, regulatory capital management, credit risk insurance, bank stress testing, sector strategy reviews, and using data science and AI to spot areas of the portfolio that could benefit from optimisation. Our team helped improve the Commercial and Private bank’s capital and returns metrics from industry laggard to leader in a few short years and with innovative thinking.
When did you first get involved in crypto?
My journey toward crypto is a fairly common story for us, blockchain enthusiasts. I bought some BTC, ETH, and ADA back in early 2019 and the value kept going up. So I started paying more attention. What was this technology? How did it work? I fell down the rabbit hole. For around a year I would wake up super early and do 2–3 hours of research, then I would be back at it after finishing my work day. I became passionate about the technology, philosophy, and innovations occurring within crypto and DeFi.
What really kept me coming back was that realized that I truly believed in the ethos of Web3. Giving value to those who create it, work hard, and be an active community member and you can be rewarded, transparency and building in the open, a (more) level playing field for underserved regions, permissionlessness, trustlessness, etc
Our current systems are not fit-for-purpose for the vision of global equity. But we are seeing this shift towards decentralization in governance and technology to enable us to deal with some of the biggest problems in the world today. Web3 is critical in the solution space. It has the potential to spark so much innovation and deliver so much value across the world and MELD is a step toward that.
I believe that Blockchain today is like silicon valley in the early 90s. We will need people of all skills and backgrounds, not just developers and technologists, to deliver the potential and the promise of the blockchain. In my view, the promise, at the bare minimum, is to revolutionize parts of the financial system. And if we truly deliver, it holds the potential the change the way we connect with people, the way we self-organize, and disrupt art and creativity as we know it. We need people like us to come in and really work hard in an ethical and passionate manner to deliver. I believe that many of these web3 principles are embodied here at MELD, that’s why I’m here now!
What do you like the most about crypto?
The promises it makes of a better future. But we have a long way to go before we’re delivering wholeheartedly on this promise.
Another thing is, I love how a small sovereign island nation, so vulnerable to an economic shock, can be connected to the global financial system on their own terms, or that a 15-year-old crypto enthusiast living in a little village needs only needs a laptop and an internet connection to connect to dApps, deploy code, and participate in the future.
Pre-crypto, you needed permissions, software, and expensive fiat rails amongst other things to deploy anything analogous to a dApp. Crypto levels that playing field, in regard to value transfer, creative production, and where productive work can be performed.
Lastly, I love the people working in this space. I’ve met so many walks of life, coming from such unique different backgrounds. It’s a fascinating space with new things and advancements happening on a daily and it is amazing to be a part of the action.
Do you have any predictions on where crypto will be 5 years from now?
I’m not going to make any overarching predictions because so much can happen between now and then but I will say the next wave of crypto adoption is incumbent on us, the people here now, to show people that they can actually use their crypto:
“What crypto should I buy?” is one of the questions we in the space always get asked by our friends and family. My response is now, “Did you know that you can actually use your crypto? For example you can stake it and secure the network, or you can lend it and earn interest?”. A much more healthy and curious conversation. I believe we need to show crypto is more than just a speculative asset, but that there is utility and real functionality.
One prediction I have is I expect there to be a significant rise in the risk management segment of crypto. Specifically in the C-suite level risk management role. The downfalls of many systems recently have shown that risk management, and the specific executives that are responsible for their risks, are not as prevalent or in some cases non-existent.
What do you like doing outside of crypto and MELD?
I go on adventures with my wife and my puppy, Bee. I love traveling and exploring London and Europe. I’ve explored most of the big cities in Europe, although I’d love to do more.
I enjoy art galleries, trying different cuisines, and experiencing immersive theater.
Read more…
👉 Meet MELD — Andrew Klein
👉 Meet MELD — Christian Katz
MELD — Be Your Own Bank
We think it’s essential for everyone to gain control of their financial lives and have equal access to financial instruments used by professionals, not just centralized institutions, governments, or the 1%. We want to provide financial freedom and control to the masses, including the unbanked.
We have a long-term goal to enable the $15 trillion that is currently locked out of the global economy, including 2 billion individuals worldwide that are either underbanked or have no access to banking services whatsoever, access to these tools. These are the people that are paying the highest fees, and getting the worst customer service, and they are the ones that are having the most problems.
Our vision is to create an ecosystem that empowers individuals to regain financial control by providing them with the tools and services they need to manage their money on their terms. Whether that be creating a collateralized debt position (CDP) with cryptocurrency, earning an interest return for lending fiat to borrowers, or even participating in reward incentive programs, we strive to provide our users with the functions they need to manage their own financial lives.
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