In this week’s episode of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Alex Mashinsky. Alex is the founder, and CEO of Celsius, a next generation lending wallet that aims to be the ‘Killer App’ of the bitcoin and cryptocurrency revolution. Celsius attempts to overcome the limitations of a traditional banking system by leveraging technology and rethinking lending for the 21st century. A serial entrepreneur, Mashinsky is the founder of seven New York City-based startups with over three billion dollars’ worth of exits to his name. He is a serial inventor with over 35 patents, relating to exchanges, VOIP protocols, messaging & communication. Alex Mashinksy is also one of the inventors of Voice Over Internet Protocol with a foundational patent dating back to 1994.

In their conversation, Demetri attempts to understand the mechanics behind the Celsius Network, as well as how the company intends to manage risk, execute short sales on behalf of institutional clients, and lower borrowing costs for its users. Who are Celsius' main competitors, and how does its lending wallet differ from the competition? How are loans issued on the Celsius network? How does the CEL token work, and how does it incentivize the network to service its customers and not some financial middleman? What is the revenue model for this network? How does Celsius generate income from lending, short sales, and staking? What are some of the unintended consequences that could arise from a securitization market in cryptocurrencies? What are the risks associated with hoarding utility tokens in a proof-of-stake system? Could Celsius and other networks become central points of attack for malicious actors looking to destabilize the Ethereum once it moves from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake? Finally, what is the timeline for Celsius' new wallet and how soon will crypto holders be able to rely on it as a real source of credit and interest-bearing income?

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Join the conversation at @hiddenforcespod

Alex Mashinsky was born into communism, reared under socialism, and is currently thriving under capitalism. He is a prominent Israeli-American entrepreneur who has founded several companies over the years, including GroundLink, Transit Wireless, Elematics and Arbinet.

Alex's success as an entrepreneur stems from his acute ability to identify winning trends and assemble world-class teams. Two of his companies, Arbinet and Transit Wireless achieved a monopolistic hold in their respective industries and pioneered new business models and technologies used today.

Alex has a long history with tech in fact, evidenced by his powerful intellectual property portfolio. He has authored over 50 patents that cover aspects of the Smart Grid,  Ad exchanges, Groupon, Twitter, Skype, App Store, Netflix streaming concept and many other top performing web companies. He is one of the leading evangelists of web-based exchanges and is even considered to be one of the early developers of VOIP.

Due to his extensive experience as a prolific inventor and a business strategist, Alex has been a featured speaker at over 120 international conferences. He has also made numerous TV appearances on talk shows.

He has received numerous awards, notably the prestigious Albert Einstein Technology Medal in 2000, the Technology Foresight Award for Innovation (presented in Geneva at Telecom '99) and Crain's Top Entrepreneur Award in 2010. He has also been nominated for E&Y's Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2002 and 2011.

After years of entrepreneurship, Alex subsequently gravitated towards investing in startups, founding his early stage venture capital firm, Governing Dynamics. Over the years, Alex has raised over $1 billion in venture and private equity funds to help position his startups as leaders in their fields. Arbinet's fundraising efforts were even documented in an HBS case study in 2001.

Currently based in New York, Alex serves as a Managing Partner of Governing Dynamics. The firm has a keen interest in helping Israeli startups scale-up in the United States. The immense growth potential of the "startup nation" and its advances in high-tech - particularly in AI, biotech and cybersecurity - interests Alex greatly, who has a strong affiliation with Israel.

Having grown up, attended college and served in the military there, many of his ventures started out based in Israel - which he then went on to scale in the US. Thus, he has been fostering Israeli-American business ties for years, and he hopes to continue to do so with his work at Governing Dynamics.

Alex has invested in over 60 startups over the years, recording many successes and an equal number of failures. As a prominent figure in the New York entrepreneurial scene, he has previously been a member of the YPO's NYC chamber. He believes that "the secret to success is finding something to do in which your skills can exceed your ambitions."

@Mashinsky