🎙 Scoopy Trooples of Alchemix: "Liquidity Mining is Like a Drug; You Have to Wean Yourself Off it Over Time"

In this week’s episode I speak with Scoopy Trooples, co-founder of Alchemix, a protocol that offers self-paying loans without the risk of liquidations. Think about that; here’s a DeFi application that promises to automatically pay users’ collateralized loans, and on top of that, guarantee they won’t be liquidated. Scoopy explains how something like that can work and it’s all about plugging into other money legos like Yearn Finance to earn yield off collateral and use that yield to pay off loans. We talk about how DeFi’s composability is key for protocols like Alchemix, which simply wouldn't be possible in Tradfi. But we also talk about the risks of having so many applications relying on each other. 

Scoopy also goes into Alchemix v2. The plan is to open up the protocol to collateral options beyond the current Dai and ETH, and also expand to other yield strategies, so users can decide what level of risk they’re willing to take. 

Scoopy also goes into what he believes is a new movement in DeFi, which he helped coin as DeFi 2.0. Scoopy says dapps will now have options besides yield farming to attract liquidity to their protocols, which will allow teams to better control assets in their smart contracts, increasing capital efficiency. 

To him, what’s most exciting about what’s coming up in the space is how we can leverage tools like money legos and DAOs to make an impact in the real world. 

The podcast was led by Camila Russo, and edited by Alp Gasimov. Transcript was edited by Owen Fernau.

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🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

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👀 Only paid subscribers have access to the full interview transcript below.

Camila Russo: Okay. I just want to get this out of the way. How did you come up with the pseudonym Scoopy Trooples? And of course, you all watching on YouTube will see that Scoopy has an anime face on like many others in the DeFi ecosystem. He is an anonymous founder which is a growing trend in crypto, thanks to DeFi. So if you can give a little bit of background on that?

ST: Well, this is my real face. I am a 2D character. Let's make that clear. So as far as how I got started in crypto and how Alchemix came to be, first, I think it was way back in 2011, I read an article about the Silk Road, and I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. And I went down the rabbit hole a little bit, and then I went to a site to buy some Bitcoin. And right before I hit the buy button, I was like, this isn't for me, and then I tuned out of Bitcoin for years at that point. Big whoops right there! I think it was less than $1 at the time, so it's like, oh well. I probably would have spent it on the Silk Road stuff anyway.

And then next time I heard about it was in 2013-14 when it had its big run up, and then subsequent crash. And some people I knew were like telling me to get into it, but I was like no, it's a bubble, and then when it crashed, I felt vindicated about it. And then I looked at it again in 2016. I had some windfalls come my way and I was like I need to invest these and I started looking into doing different investing things. 

And I looked at Bitcoin, I saw that it was trending back up after being in a really extended bear market. And I was like well, it didn't die? It's still around? And at that point, I really started taking it seriously and decided to throw all my chips into Bitcoin at that point. And then once you're in, you have skin in the game, then I think everybody can attest that it becomes an obsession, you go down the rabbit hole, and that becomes all you can think about anymore…

“...once you're in, you have skin in the game, then I think everybody can attest that it becomes an obsession, you go down the rabbit hole, and that becomes all you can think about anymore…”

CR: Were you experienced in trading assets outside of Bitcoin?