Mike Sall & Blake West: Goldfinch, uncollateralized loans in emerging markets.

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/sall">Mike Sall</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/_blakewest">Blake West</a> are the founders of <a href="https://twitter.com/goldfinch_fi">Goldfinch</a>, a decentralized protocol facilitating uncollateralized credit.</p><p>“One of the borrowers is a company based in Uganda. They provide rent-to-own loans for motorcycle taxis to thousands of customers. They've borrowed $5m to expand their operations."</p><p>Thousands of people in countries like Uganda, India, and Brazil have been financed by Goldfinch loans through local lenders, largely without realizing crypto is the source of funds.</p><p>These local lenders are largely innovative fintechs in the global south, and have historically fallen into an uncanny valley — they need too much capital for what is available in their local financial markets, and too little capital to navigate foreign institutional markets.</p><p>3:09 - The 'lightbulb' moment</p><p>8:20 - The financing gap for emerging-market borrowers</p><p>13:04 - Borrower profiles; Tugende, DiviBank, and Greenway</p><p>15:43 - Interfacing with Goldfinch</p><p>20:37 - Crypto-native KYC and how UID works</p><p>23:18 - Bottlenecks for the global adoption of crypto</p><p>34:40 - Compliance requirements for Goldfinch in the United States</p><p>45:25 - Compliance requirements for borrowers in emerging markets</p><p>50:56 - Demographics of ‘Backers’</p><p>52:43 - Incentive alignment and fraud-prevention</p><p>1:03:53 - Learnings from shipping a production smart contract system</p><p>1:15:01 - Launching GFI token and governance of the protocol</p><p>1:26:04 - The macro point of view</p><p>Check out our website for other episodes: <a href="https://www.intothebytecode.xyz/"><strong>intothebytecode.xyz</strong></a></p><p>Subscribe to our newsletter for updates: <a href="https://bytecode.substack.com/"><strong>bytecode.substack.com</strong></a></p><p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/sinahab"><strong>twitter.com/sinahab</strong></a></p>