Independent Reserve - looking forward to the next decade
Lasanka Perera of Independent Reserve
Jun 26, 2023
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1. It's now been 10 years since you founded Independent Reserve? Any regrets?
2. What have been the highlights?
3. Are you enjoying your new role in Singapore?
4. Have digital assets evolved in the way you expected?
5. What are the priorities for the next ten years?
Video transcript
1. It's now been 10 years since you founded Independent Reserve? Any regrets?
Absolutely not. My business partners, Adam Tepper and Adrian Przelozny, back in 2012, early 2013, we tried to buy Bitcoin. The infrastructure to do this securely was not there. We thought it might be a great idea to build something that you can buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin securely and easily; something that all Australians or New Zealand customers could use. We thought that would be a fun exercise and then something that would be useful. And particularly because we'd read the Bitcoin whitepaper, we tried some transactions, and we just thought this is something truly different to the banking system, and the international money transfer network. We thought this would be far superior, and it's become that and so much more and it's going to serve billions of people around the world. We're very happy with Independent Reserve and what we've done and look forward to continuing to help more people access digital currencies over the next 10 years.
2. What have been the highlights?
One of the highlights is working with your friends, to building a great enterprise with some close friends, which becomes an even bigger group of friends. And now we've got a team that spans four or five countries, so it's great to have this big family that's growing every week, every month. Also our customer base, which is growing, so it's like a big happy family, not just at Independent Reserve, but also the broader crypto ecosystem. That's a very big highlight for me. And then from a business perspective, we've achieved some very interesting things like becoming the first to become regulated in Australia, the first to get licensed by MAS in Singapore. Some of these things are definitely very big highlights.
3. Are you enjoying your new role in Singapore?
Having spent my formative years in Sydney, Australia, Singapore is obviously a very big difference. I find myself closer to a financial hub. It's certainly very, very different. And I look forward to establishing Singapore as the new Asia hub for our business as we look to growing Independent Reserve in Singapore, in Asia and abroad.
4. Have digital assets evolved in the way you expected?
There are a few differences. Initially I recall thinking the Bitcoin was the only asset at the time when we started Independent Reserve. I thought Bitcoin would grow as a medium of exchange, a means for a payment, faster than it did. It didn't ultimately grow as quickly as I wanted. However, 14 years on, there have been a number of incidents around the world, such as the US banking crisis, COVID, and people being displaced by war and famine. We see acceleration of the adoption of Bitcoin now 14 years on as a store of value, as an asset that someone can hold onto, the 24-word passphrase in your head, moving countries, passing an asset that's unable to be confiscated. The narrative of an alternative to the fair banking system is really started to gain traction quite recently. The other thing that has surprised me is the innovation that's come with Web3 and alternative platforms enabled by Ethereum, Solana, use cases around DeFi. Those are not quite what that we envisaged back in 2012-2013, but it's very exciting for us to see it and be part of and to be able to support.
5. What are the priorities for the next ten years?
We just want to build more product to help our customers, enhance our customers' experience in digital assets, whether it be buy, sell, hold, do complex financial transactions, to be able to hedge their risk, to be able to participate in other ways, whether it be gaming or NFTs or other use cases that we haven't yet come across. And increasing our geographical footprint. That's a priority for me given that I'm seeing so much of Asia now as a resident of Singapore.
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