One of the projects under the radar yet making investors serious gains is Defichain. The guy out front, Dr. Julian Hosp, has a history in crypto you may want to know about before you go apeing into this project.
Defichain
The stated purpose of Defichain is to provide defi on bitcoin. Key word defi. I say that because in order to fully participate in the project, you must sign up with Level 2 KYC on a website called Cake Defi. You must also download a desktop app to participate in staking. The project is currently enticing investors with a 300% APY on tokens.
Full disclosure — I own a bag of Defichain. I chose not to participate in the project after finding out I had to KYC. I'm just holding for the capital gains. When I think the price has topped out, I will sell for a defi project that actually sticks to a defi philosophy.
So far, however, everything in the project is going well. Hosp is directing the project over social media channels and is not hiding his participation. As a matter of fact, he is centralizing himself, often taking the lead on explainer and philosophy videos.
Julian Hosp
I got ancy about the KYC, so I did one of my favorite research tricks on a project. I search the project name in Telegram. I only read the messages from people outside of the project group, and I only consider messages from accounts that pass a number of stress tests. This is to clear out any fake accounts that the project creates to shill its own shit.
When looking up Defichain, most of the comments were on Hosp, not Defichain itself. And all of those comments were bad. A short summary of this guy's history in crypto:
Hosp gained notoriety as frontman for a couple of ponzi projects, Lyoness and TenX. TenX was the crypto project, which participated in the 2017 ICO hype cycle. Hosp was basically the Mark Cuban of the space, cashing in to the tune of $80 million and selling before the price dropped. The nature of his sale was dubious, but crypto was definitely not regulated back then. There is nothing technically wrong with selling your shares before a huge drop if you know its coming. And of course as an insider, Hosp probably knew it was coming.
A lot of people got rekt on that project. Hosp and co. had promised to deliver many services including credit cards.
The Chad Factor
Hosp is definitely a frat boy type. He's the guy who wears pink polo shirts with too-tight sleeves and the collar flipped up for no reason. Although he is touted as a blockchain expert, his education is in medicine and he has no notable achievements outside of his timely trade out of TenX.
I'm not seeing the "expertise" here. However, he may have enough money from his previous ponzis to cover his shortcomings as a man and mistakes as a businessman this time around. As long as you can hire enough help, your expertise really won't make or break a project. Honestly, the guy just seems like he wants to be known. Maybe his daddy didn't love him enough.
My Final Thought
I don't think Julian Hosp is any kind of expert in blockchain. Not even close. Right now, he's just a guy with a lot of money and the ability to throw it into projects. He's exhibited behavior that might get him arrested in traditional finance, but the crypto space is wide open. You can do whatever you want here for now.
I think the guy's need for attention is driving this project, but he may be able to hire enough help to actually deliver on his shit this time. I won't be in this project long enough to find out, but good luck if you stick around.
