The Terra UST fiasco makes me so bullish on the future of Minke.

First off if you’re reading this and you have savings in your Minke wallet - your money is safe and has never gone near the Terra Luna ecosystem. You will continue to earn yield as normal.

Since we started Minke we’ve been asked why we don’t offer access to Anchor or how we’ll be competitive with centralized apps that source their yields from it. Let me explain why we chose not to.

At Minke our core value is transparency, it’s why we’re a non-custodial wallet and it’s why we give direct access to yields that are organic and generated by demand for borrowing or through providing liquidity. No ponzis, no VC funded returns - not now, not ever.

With Minke you get access to leading protocols like Aave and mStable. You earn the full yield and we never take a cent in fees or margins on the interest you earn.

DeFi is one of the few transformative technologies that can make an impact across the entire socio-economic spectrum. Real DeFi drastically lowers the costs and improves the transparency in facilitating common financial transactions whether that be lending/borrowing or exchanging assets. This results in better consumer outcomes and more money in your pocket rather than a middlemans.

What happened this week with Terra puts that all at risk.

Throughout the last year, centralized wallets have been masquerading as fintechs that offer “safe” yields. They often paid you a fixed rate around 7%, while they earned 20% on Anchor (the leading savings protocol on Terra) and profited on the margins. Investors funded yields that were clearly unsustainable and built on a system bound to go into death spiral one way or another.

Unfortunately those new to crypto aped in, and now have the majority of their savings wiped out. Many of these people are in high inflation economies - thinking they found an escape from inflation that constantly eats away at their savings. Instead they woke up to the ugly reality of their savings cut in half in a day. Their trust likely lost not only in Terra but crypto as a whole.

In my early days of crypto one of the leading narratives was banking the unbanked, yes there were charlatans - but there was enough passion and real builders that it seemed like a reality. However today as a space we froth over ponzis and constantly push the latest crank (SHIB, DOGE etc) onto those who’ve recently entered the space. It’s time we get back to our roots, build on sustainable and ground breaking protocols, and start making a real impact.

We need to start doing this soon as well. UST’s collapse is no doubt going to bring regulators rushing into our space.

Stablecoins are an important bridge to a crypto nirvana where USD isn’t the only unit of account. I do believe that to get there we need a decentralized stablecoin, but we need to do everything in our power to avoid episodes like this happening again. FRAX and others show promising concepts and I’m excited to see how they evolve. It’s important we keep developing these as it’s only when regulators know they can’t win, that they choose to collaborate rather than condemn.

I believe the winning stablecoin will be decentralized, be born anonymously, and eventually be community-led, following the path of Bitcoin’s immaculate conception and evolution. Do Kwon’s arrogance and the ignorance from some in the community only paint a larger target on our backs.

However as an industry we’ve always faced regulatory uncertainty, yet we’ve consistently advanced and innovated. Bitcoin used to be the currency for drug dealers and child pornographers, but the community won over believers, created better consumer outcomes, then owned and controlled the narrative. When I first heard about Bitcoin, I never thought I’d see the day where parts of government barrack for its adoption.

This is now the path we need to follow as an industry and through this bear market. We must back principled projects and people, spotlight sustainable yield generation, and control the narrative about the better consumer outcomes we create. The seas will be rough, but I’m certain we’ll find shore.

Finally, to all the people who faded us after we refused to integrate Anchor in Minke - I told you so.

Josh - CEO/Co-Founder @ Minke