This is a transcript from our weekly YouTube live AMA:

SPEAKERS: Anita Mlakar and Sandi Bitenc.

About AMA: On this AMA, we are giving you our Weekly update and Q&A.

AMA Duration: 35:57

Introduction:

Anita Mlakar: 00:28

Hello everybody and welcome to this week AMA, Anita Mlakar is my name, and I’m happy to have you here. We are here every Wednesday, normally at 5pm Central European Time, but this time a little earlier. And I hope you are with us too. Sandi Bitenc, the CEO of 3air will be also with me in a couple of seconds. And we will be talking about 3air and the project of bringing internet to Africa. But first, let me invite you to be a part of our channels, of our communities.

01:01

We are inviting you to be with us on Telegram or Discord or Twitter, we are there. You can also follow us on social networks, 3air and you can subscribe to this channel, to YouTube. Where you can follow all of our AMAs. And please do join us, you can also recommend us to a friend, if you think that there is a friend who would need that. But before that, let me tell you a little more about our project so that you will know how to introduce this project to.

01:33

So 3air is a blockchain based telecom platform. We are focused on bringing broadband internet, digital TV and telephone to millions of Africans. And our mission is to connect Africa. To connect the unconnected population to the rest of the world through blockchain based ultrafast wireless broadband access. You are underpowered in a way if you are unconnected, so what we are trying to do is give people internet connection to empower them. And at the same time, we want to educate them. We are doing that with two technologies, K3 last mile solution and our 3air internet.

02:16

We’re also creating your digital bank account giving you a custodial or noncustodial wallet, we are providing financial services. We have Fiat onboarding and off boarding ramp and peer to peer cash, crypto onboarding, DeFi and so on and so on. We also have outside partners that will provide additional digital revenue streams. And once we put you through all of those steps, you are connected, banked and empowered.

Sandi Bitenc, CEO of 3air Joins the AMA:

Anita Mlakar: 02:45

Let me say welcome and say hi to Sandi Bitenc, CEO of 3air.

02:50

Hello, Sandi.

Sandi Bitenc: 02:52

Hello, Anita.

Anita Mlakar: 02:53

Hello! All looking good today in a shirt.

Sandi Bitenc: 02:57

In a shirt? Yeah, I changed after we met.

Anita Mlakar: 03:02

Oh my god. Yes, we did meet today. That is something new, right?

Sandi Bitenc: 03:08

Exactly.

Anita Mlakar: 03:09

For the first time live and once again, Sandi, welcome to Slovenia. Welcome to Maribor but I think that the weather is doing a little problem or presenting a little problem for you, right? Because there’s no sun and hot weather.

Sandi Bitenc: 03:24

Well, yeah, it is still hot. And it’s quite humid. And it rains. I think it rains every day, since I’m here so. It is a bit unusual.

Anita Mlakar: 03:37

Yeah, it’s not something usual for us I have to say. Although June could be a little more rainy but now, we have like sun, rain, sun, rain. It’s amazing.

Sandi Bitenc: 03:49

I don’t really mind so and I haven’t seen rain for quite some time, so I don’t mind so much.

Anita Mlakar: 03:58

Okay, but I was talking to Petra, and she said it’s a little cold here. It is colder than in Dubai, of course.

Sandi Bitenc: 04:05

Yeah, it’s not so cold really but a little bit.

Anita Mlakar: 04:09

Before we start with 3air and the market. Right now, Sandi just tell me how are you feeling, let’s say at home?

Sandi Bitenc: 04:18

You know what? it’s pretty tough to define what’s home now. So, I guess this is still kind home, right? Although I do feel like a bit like a tourist here at this moment in time to be honest. Not a lot of things have changed really but some did and then you know walking down the street. Yeah, it’s not the same anymore. Really…

Anita Mlakar: 04:50

Okay, because you’re a tourist and you have this different perspective of Slovenia and Maribor right now if you’re a tourist.

Sandi Bitenc: 04:59

It is. Also, when you come home you usually are in a place where you have your stuff and everything. Now we’re just in an Airbnb and it’s not the same as going home. Although I think we’ll be staying here for a few weeks. So, let’s say after a few days or maybe a week or so you start feeling a bit more at home.

Anita Mlakar: 05:27

Yeah, I know and you’re always welcome here at my place, it’s a little more home, I think. I can make us some coffee or something.

Sandi Bitenc: 05:35

Yeah, you know, be careful we might really come in and just occupy.

Anita Mlakar: 05:44

Of course, I didn’t mean that you would sleep here or stay here although you could do that.

Sandi Bitenc: 05:48

You said, like you know, like home.

Sandi’s view of the current market conditions:

Anita Mlakar: 05:51

Yeah, but I’m inviting you to come to have a drink with me to have a chat with me to get something nice, you know. Great Sandi. Now, we don’t have a guest today that will be next week. We were already talking about it, and we will have our conversation later. But right now, Sandi, let’s look at the market a little bit what is happening what is new in this last week? Because you are really following the market.

Sandi Bitenc: 06:22

Yeah, although I’ve been travelling a lot and right now, I’m pretty occupied with everything here in Slovenia. But yes, so we are following the market because 3air kind of depends. The launch depends on it not the project itself, but the token launched us. And the weekend wasn’t really great. We’ve seen quite a few records broken and not in a good sense. So, one thing that happened is that Bitcoin is the kind of indicator, we just use Bitcoin as the indicator of what the crypto market does, although in the end Bitcoin right now also follows the stock markets pretty closely. But there were a few events.

07:16

So, one thing is that Bitcoin fell below $20k and that actually means that for the first time, Bitcoin fell below the previous market cycle tops. So, we are now for the first time below. Again, the market sentiment got down to level six, and that also stayed there, I think for two or three days even. That’s unprecedented. So, it wasn’t so low. Never in history. And what happened is, we talked a bit about Celsius on previous week, so Celsius, they prevented withdrawals, and it looks like everything is going quite bad there. So right now, there is still quite a lot of liquidity that’s verifiable on chain. So, they have a bit over a billion in liquidity. So, some of the money is there, nobody knows if all the money from everyone who deposited with them is there. So, there’s a lot of fud being spread around. They also cancelled their weekly AMAs on Fridays and now there’s a bunch of lawyers now that are working with them. And also, some guys that usually help and did in the past help restructure. There’s a talk about. So maybe buying something or there’s a lot of talk, nobody really knows what’s going on.

09:01

I think that Alex stopped talking about it, just because the lawyer said he shouldn’t. And I also know that I heard that a lot of different US states are now investigating Celsius, so they need to be careful in that regards. I don’t think that the all the funds are gone. I also had something deposited there myself. Firstly, nothing from 3air was deposited there. So, none of the funds were there but my personal funds, a bit. Not a lot, but some was there. So, I’m following a bit, what’s happening. I don’t think that the funds are lost, at least not all of it. But let’s see, what’s happening, what will happen in the future. There’s a lot of stories now going around that, it all starts with Luna. We talked about the Luna crash a month ago or something like that.

10:06

I know that Celsius had quite a lot of deposits in Luna and they were asked to actually help and bail out in the Luna, and they said no, we want to protect our community, and they didn’t. And I think there were some people that really didn’t like it. And now at least there’s some rumors going around, and there was an attack, a big attack on Celsius, a lot of fud spread and so on. If you can imagine it was kind of a like a bank run so people ran there and started to withdraw everything and of course there was not all of the funds that they had which was liquid so they just at one point they ran into liquidity issues and of course with the market turning down nobody really knows if they lost money or not or everything is just locked up. They also had a lot of money in stETH from Lido and that one depict also quite a lot. So that was a big thing.

11:23

In the end, they needed to stop the withdrawals, and now they’re just hoping that Bitcoin won’t fall below, I think they have a big Bitcoin position that gets liquidated at around $13,500-13,700. So, if that falls, then they get liquidated. All the markets, really, the big dumps now, since 30k, when Luna crash together is because of cascading liquidations, it’s just that one company is bound to the other and to one set of price and you know, once that price gets reached, they get liquidated and on liquidation event, actually, their funds get sold. So, if somebody put up Bitcoin as a collateral to take out the loan, and then the price of Bitcoin falls so low that they don’t have their loan covered anymore, then their position gets sold. So there older Bitcoin gets sold. So, this loan can get repaid.

12:35

When it gets sold, it gets sold on the open market. So that’s why at that point, the price actually drops more and a lot more. So, this is now happening, a lot of bigger companies are getting into liquidity problems, and the biggest one is actually Three Arrows Capital. And I actually spoke about Three Arrows Capital, I think, a few months back because we as 3air we were talking about, you know, using Three Arrows Capital to actually deposit some money and get some yield on it. So, Three Arrows Capital, they were a huge player, they were actually the biggest VC in the space. So, I think they were managing $18 billion. And they got you know, they ran into liquidity trouble right now. So yeah, thankfully, we didn’t go into any collaboration with them, but it just shows how fragile the space still is. That you really need to make a lot of research with who you do any business.

14:01

So yeah, that’s the other one that was now responsible for the big price drop down to $17800 or something like that when Bitcoin and that was because of the liquidation event from Three Arrows Capital. They’re just selling everything they have, you know, even small position. They are literally sending amounts of few $1,000 to exchanges to actually get some money out and they’re selling everything that they have. They’re also quite a big holder, actually the biggest holder of Greyscale trust so GBTC and they actually sold I think all of it. So right now, GBTC is actually I think they have almost it’s something over 30% discount on Bitcoin it’s crazy. So yeah, the market right now is really crazy. I could not have imagined that this would be happening. So, such big companies actually going down.

Sell or hold?

Anita Mlakar: 15:22

Yes. Now Sandi, you are an investor, you have this big picture but what is going on and people are reacting differently now some of them are panicking, of course some of them are just common waiting. Let’s say there’s a difference between you and me. You are someone who knows a lot about the market. And I’m the one who let’s just say put something in. What do you think it’s the best thing for an investor for someone who did put something in it to do right now? What is the best thing to stay calm? You know, to let’s say be in peace with yourself? What is the best thing to do?

Sandi Bitenc: 16:00

So, you mean like if you put something in generally into the crypto market?

Anita Mlakar: 16:06

Yes.

Sandi Bitenc: 16:06

Yeah, it depends, you know, where you are, if you’re invested too much in, you know, if you invest more than you can afford to lose, and you need some money now for living expenses, then you’re in trouble. So, then you should be thinking about, you actually don’t have anything else to do as just, you know, sell and take the loss. But if not, the markets always rebound, and I do think this one will rebound. I think, that’s my personal opinion. I think we have around a month and a half to two months, till the markets will start rebounding, it does come down to what the Fed will do, and they will do the what the inflation does. So, if the inflation plays well and it starts coming down, I think they’ll become a bit more dovish again and stop raising rates.

17:10

Then I do think there is a lot of money parked on the sidelines. And once there is a bit more certainty in the markets, the markets will again rally. So, if you can afford to wait, I think the best thing to do right now is just to just close down the computer, go to a vacation, come back in September and look what’s happening there and then make a decision. I don’t see a lot of downside anymore. And I think from here, if we look, for the next few years, there’s a really small chance that things go lower, and there’s a big chance that things go higher. So of course, both the possibilities are there. But the possibility that things will go higher, are they’re far greater, but really far greater.

18:11

If this is the bottom, it’s hard to say. There’s still some information out about Three Arrows Capital, that they still are getting some funds on locked, and so on. So, they still might be dumping the markets. How much downside there is, I don’t know. It’s hard to say, I do know that if we go down to 13k and Celsius gets liquidated, then we’ll probably also go down to 10k. So, it’s not that it’s impossible. If it’s likely. I don’t think it’s likely that it’s going to happen. But of course, that’s not something that, you know, you need to know if you can afford to wait, even if it goes down there, it’s going to come back up at one point so it’s really a tough decision.

19:04

So right now, I mean, personally, I’m waiting. So, I’m not doing any trading at the moment. I had some leverage positions open before and I closed them a while ago. So, once I saw you know the big drops, I just closed everything. And I’m just waiting right now, and I have a bit of capital on the side. And I did deploy something this week, just after the crash. Not everything but just something and I’ll deploy either if it really goes down, you know below let’s say 15k or around there. Or if I see the trends turning then that’s the time when I’m redeploying a bit of my own capital.

Anita Mlakar: 19:58

Okay, thank you for the advice. The Bigdid says just hold, no point selling at a loss, buy more if you can.

Sandi Bitenc: 20:12

Look, the first rule is that you don’t put money into crypto and into any assets that you really can afford to lose. If it’s like this, okay, there was the money, I’m putting it in and I just say, okay, I put the money in, I’m forgetting about it, this will go to zero, it will be zero and I don’t think about that, that’s not my money anymore. So, this is what I lost. So, if you can start investing in kind of with this mindset, it’s going to be far easier. You’ll be making far better decisions because then the worst thing is going into markets with some emotion. So, emotion makes you lose, always. So, it needs to be unemotional. So that’s one thing. So, I know that everyone’s repeating this, but it’s really true, you never invest more than you can afford to lose. That’s the recipe for disaster. And also, you do not go leverage if you don’t know, if you’re really not a pro, then you don’t go leverage. So, you never use leverage. That is also the recipe for disaster.

K3/3air in Ethiopia and DRC:

Anita Mlakar: 21:26

Okay, good points, good advice. So yeah, thank you. Sandy, we were talking earlier or before in our AMAs, also about what we are doing in Africa right now. And we do have some team there, right?

Sandi Bitenc: 21:45

Yes! There are already some pictures in telegram. So, I did want it to share some pictures with you. But actually, I came behind the computer, and even a few minutes late, so I couldn’t prepare anything today. But we are posting some pictures and some videos directly from Ethiopia, Denise and Davor are there, they’re walking around the bit, looking at landscape there and so on. And, of course, Mohammed is also there. And I think we have them also on the call at one point in time. They’re quite busy there. So, it’s nice to see and I’m really happy that they sent some pictures in and we should just ask them for more, you know, everybody should just ask them to send a bit more pictures. I don’t know exactly how long they’ll be staying there. I think it’s a week trip there and then the next week they are in Congo and DRC. That’s our two main countries that we’re targeting and they’re visiting now and so on groundwork is kind of starting or being prepared and discussed and everything.

Anita Mlakar: 23:13

Okay. Now, there’s also opportunity for your questions, because Sandi is here right now on this AMA, this is such a, let’s say normal AMA in a way, it is opportunity to ask questions. And I see that a lot is going on also in our communities. I was just looking at telegram. Also, the questions are always coming up Sandi because people of course like to know what is going on. And they are having all sorts of question. And it’s good that we are answering them. So, you are also a part of that. Thank you, Sandi.

Bitcoin dominance:

Sandi Bitenc: 23:49

Maybe, what I wanted to also say when we were talking about the market and so on. So, there’s one thing that gives me a bit of hope and that is that Bitcoin dominance came down quite a lot. So, for those of you who don’t know what Bitcoin dominance is, it’s actually the measurement, how strong bitcoin is against the market that all the other tokens. So, it’s like the total market cap of all crypto minus bitcoins market cap so and usually it’s like when everything is really bearish then everyone- so bitcoin is still considered the safest asset of the crypto space. And once there’s so much uncertainty, everyone just takes usually money out of the smaller caps and mid-caps or the other crypto projects and puts it into Bitcoin and that’s why then the Bitcoin dominance shoots up and of course there’s also a lot of going into stable coins. This is also driving the Bitcoin dominance up and right now the Bitcoin dominance actually came down. So, it looks like people still have conviction somehow in the crypto space.

25:13

It’s amazing that we saw really a big drawdown from Bitcoin, but there was not so much selling of other coins. Usually there was a big discrepancy there. So, if bitcoin goes down 5%, the altcoins will probably go down 20%. And that’s when the Bitcoin dominance all shoots up. So, this time when Bitcoin went down, actually, the Bitcoin dominance also went down. So, you know, it’s either it’s really just a few companies that are right now getting liquidated and the coins that are getting liquidated go really down. And the rest of the market is, as we say, the paper hands, they were shook out already. So, I don’t think there’s a lot of sellers left, unless there is some liquidations happening.

26:12

So, this actually gives me hope that the liquidations will stop and then only the buyers are still left. So, all the sellers have left the space, I think and that’s usually what indicates the bottom of the market. But let’s see if there still can be some downside of it.

26:36

What I wanted to point is that if there was still conviction in the market, then it’s also easier to launch a new token in this, although it’s really hard, always hard to launch a token in a bear market. But if there is conviction still in new tokens, it’s still possible. And as I said, the current drawdowns don’t affect 3air and 3air token at all, until it’s launched. So, once we launch, we want to launch in an environment that will support us. And this needs to be in a kind of a you know, at least in a neutral market. And the better if it goes you know, if it’s a bit bullish, the better. And the more people trust in alt coins, the better it is.

Are the current conditions usual in crypto?

Anita Mlakar: 27:28

Okay, and there is a launch in front of us and this month to come. So yeah. When the moment is right, like you said, this will be done. And the community is also for the fact that you or we are waiting. And then, of course when the right opportunity comes. Sandi, something else is this totally, let’s say new situation for the crypto market, is it something that, let’s say was not experienced yet, in that kind of way, you know, and now to expect what exactly will happen? Is everybody, all the experts more guessing what is going to be? Or is there let’s say they usually say when it goes down, it also goes up Is that so?

Sandi Bitenc: 28:16

So first of all, everything that we are talking about the market is always a guess, nobody can know, that’s one thing nobody can really know. So, unless you have a crystal ball, and you can see into the future, you speak your opinion, you know, there’s maybe some matrixes that you can kind of use and just you know, look at the history and see maybe it’s like this, but it’s always maybe. So, it’s an opinion nothing else. And so, we’ve been through a few bear markets, I don’t think this bear market was really expected at least not so earlier as it came. And it just came together really well with the with some of the macroeconomics environment that’s happening with the war and with the rate hikes and with the previous money printing and so on and everything was leveraged and too much leverage in the system. That’s for sure. And there are some things that are new. So, where Bitcoin for sure was not present in a recession. So, we don’t know at all we have no data, how the crypto market actually performs in a recession and the recession it’s there, you know, I think we have like a few more days till the end of the second quarter. And the first quarter was already, you know, speaking about the US economy was already in a decline the whole economy and so two quarters in a decline one after the other is actually technically a recession. But I do think we are in a recession already. Just the question is how long will it last?

30:13

Bitcoin was never in the recession before. So, there is no way about telling anything about it. Because Bitcoin was actually born to solve the issues and the things that led us to, you know, into the previous recession. So, it was actually created during the previous recession and put on the market just after it. So, there were a few new things, but the bear markets and, you know, we have now a 70 something percent decline that we saw before a few times already.

Anita Mlakar: 30:52

Okay. Sandi, I was just looking at Telegram, and I see that we have some videos also from the ground, not only pictures, so great.

Sandi Bitenc: 31:01

Yeah.

Anita Mlakar: 31:01

Great! More of that, because there are a lot of our members who said that they would really like, you know, to follow what is going on, wherever we are in Africa.

Sandi Bitenc: 31:15

Absolutely! So, you know, now the real work is starting the on ground work. So, we will give more updates more images before that was only more or less like planning and talking and, you know, getting the investors and it’s hard to share those things. So, like, this is now going to start, you know, some dynamics is going to be there, something’s gonna be happening all the time. And that’s something that I do think that we should be sharing. So, we’ll also start shooting some videos and a documentary and that’s all-in plan.

Anita Mlakar: 32:01

And as market go so do our people here because they don’t seem to have a lot of questions these days, Sandi, or you’re explaining everything so well so that everything is explained and clear.

Sandi Bitenc: 32:16

I don’t know. We are also here all the time. So, it’s not that so much things happened with 3air from previous week. As I said, right now we are tuning old stuff down, we stopped a few marketing campaigns and so on because it’s just, it doesn’t make sense. Nowadays still, everyone still charges the same amount of money. And but the return out of it is less than half let’s say it like this, from what we gather before and right now we are at quite a good stage. So, we have a 30,000-email big list. That’s quite an amazing feed that we managed. We have like 30,000 emails on our waiting list for the token launch. So of course, we’ll up the marketing again. Once we determined the exact launch date but right now it’s more just the background work, development work and those things.

Anita Mlakar: 33:31

Okay, Sandi, should we close up this conversation or is there something more to add?

Sandi Bitenc: 33:37

I think it’s fine. I think we can close it down. Wrap it up today. It’s either way, I know that you are kind of in a hurry also. So, you have another event that you need to attend to. Yeah, I think we can wrap it up. Sure.

Announcing next week’s AMA guest:

Anita Mlakar: 33:57

Okay, so the invitation is on. Please stay with us on our channels, in our community. Welcome to join us discover 3air, ask questions to be here every week on our AMAs and next week, Sandi, 29th of June will be special one.

Sandi Bitenc: 34:15

Yeah, so next week, we are hosting on our AMA the CEO of SKALE Network so Jack will be here talking with us and yeah, we need to prepare some questions for him and there will also be some giveaways going on. So, it looks like 3air is putting up something for the giveaways and let’s see maybe even SKALE comes up with something. So, it’s going to be something a bit bigger this time and it’s going to be bounced to the questions and we’ll be collecting questions throughout the week for Jack. So, just start posting them on all our social channels, Twitter, Telegram, Discord, just start posting your questions. You can ask anything you want about SKALE, 3air. We’ll be there to answer any questions. So, and I do think so Jack is really one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. I think this is going to be a really good AMA next week.

Anita Mlakar: 35:26

Great looking forward for that. Prepare your questions. I will prepare mine, I promise. And we will have a great conversation. Thank you very much Sandi for being with us. Let’s not forget next week is again at 5pm Central European Time, old time. That is the term that we use. And I’m looking forward to the discussion Sandi have a great staying in Slovenia. And I hope to see you soon. Thanks everybody, for being with us. Bye bye!

Sandi Bitenc: 35:57

Bye.

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