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

Into the Bytecode

Mike Sall and Blake West are the founders of Goldfinch, a decentralized protocol facilitating uncollateralized credit.

“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."

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.

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.

3:09 - The 'lightbulb' moment

8:20 - The financing gap for emerging-market borrowers

13:04 - Borrower profiles; Tugende, DiviBank, and Greenway

15:43 - Interfacing with Goldfinch

20:37 - Crypto-native KYC and how UID works

23:18 - Bottlenecks for the global adoption of crypto

34:40 - Compliance requirements for Goldfinch in the United States

45:25 - Compliance requirements for borrowers in emerging markets

50:56 - Demographics of ‘Backers’

52:43 - Incentive alignment and fraud-prevention

1:03:53 - Learnings from shipping a production smart contract system

1:15:01 - Launching GFI token and governance of the protocol

1:26:04 - The macro point of view

Check out our website for other episodes: intothebytecode.xyz

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates: bytecode.substack.com

Twitter: twitter.com/sinahab