Managing Debt and Helping Businesses with Sid Powell

Today we’re talking to Sid Powell, the co-founder and CEO of Maple Finance, an institutional marketplace for capital built on the Ethereum blockchain. Sid has a traditional finance background, where he worked in banking and mortgage and asset backed securities. He says he was always more fascinated by what it would take to build a business, so he joined a FinTech and ran the treasury department. It was at that time that he started learning more about Ethereum. Sid says he started thinking about ways to manage debt and help businesses expand by using smart contracts. That was the idea that became Maple.

Coming from banking, Sid had been exposed to the start-up scene, but he never saw huge financial innovation until blockchain. As he learned more, he could see a clear opportunity to have an impact on the financial system. He says what can start small in the defy space has potential to turn into huge protocols or companies. That’s one of the things that attracted him to the space. Sid says he could see that this was the internet of finance, so he knew there was going to be tremendous opportunity. Sid says he knew he would regret it if he hadn’t taken the plunge.

Sid believes that success largely depends on the effort and effectiveness with which you approach your tasks. He says it’s amazing how much resilience is a core competency you need to have in this business. He’s described it before as chewing glass and staring into the abyss. When asked what books have inspired him lately, Sid says the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. It’s a brief history of humankind that Sid says has highlighted the importance of focusing on the story you're telling your team, community, and customers. The book has also brought to his attention that most institutions, other than religion, are less than 300-400 years old. The Federal Reserve for example is only 107 years old. It’ll be interesting to see where the future takes us.

When asked what he could confidently predict would happen by the end of the year, Sid said he thinks we’ll see over a billion dollars in under-collateralized loans done. To put that in perspective, across all protocols, there were maybe 10-15 million on chain in defy in under-collateralized loans at the beginning of 2021. This would be 100x growth.

--
The Fortune Teller podcast is a discussion between industry leaders in blockchain and financial technologies. The podcast focuses on the development of blockchain-based financial services and outlines the current state of the industry and future predictions for the adoption of decentralized finance. Go to www.teller.finance/