Umami Labs CEO Alex O’Donnell grew up on the outskirts of Philadelphia earlier than attending Temple College to check literature and economics. That path led him to commit seven years of his life as a financial journalist at Reuters, the place he specialised in M&As IPOs.
He stated his educational focus created a “fairly pure synthesis” when it got here ot financial journalism. Nevertheless, he stated he grew to become “disenchanted” along with his trade whereas he was cooped up at residence throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. “There actually was a three-way alliance between journalists, authorities officers and know-how corporations making an attempt to manage the circulation of data,” O’Donnell stated in an interview with Cointelegraph.
He started tinkering with cryptocurrency, which led to his introduction with Umami DAO — and in the end his creation of Umami Labs.
O’Donnell and his spouse, Sanjana, are getting ready for a “third, smaller individual” to affix their household subsequent yr. Within the meantime, he stated he’s additionally gearing up for one more crypto-related enterprise. The small print aren’t absolutely public but, however he stated he plans to launch extra data the months forward.
1) How’d you make the transition from journalism to crypto?
I’d been a journalist for the higher a part of a decade primarily masking mergers and acquisitions. I at all times had an curiosity in finance and tech. However I began changing into a bit disenchanted with the mainstream media across the time of the pandemic. That was the primary time I began changing into a bit extra cynical about my very own trade’s position within the data economic system. So I began paying extra consideration to points like privateness, censorship and different issues I had not taken as a lot curiosity in earlier than.
Alex O’Donnell at
his marriage ceremony in 2023. Photograph credit score: BR Studio’s Christian Garcia.
In 2020 I spent most of my time masking the Covid-19 pandemic. There actually was a three-way alliance between journalists, authorities officers and know-how corporations making an attempt to manage the circulation of data. It wasn’t even that the official line was flawed. It was that dissent was being stifled within the first place. That basically peaked my curiosity in decentralized platforms.
At that time, I began to turn out to be meaningfully excited about crypto. Provided that I got here from financial journalism, decentralized finance (DeFi) specifically caught my curiosity. I actually began actively investing in several crypto protocols as a retail investor in 2021. I used to be getting extra concerned in DeFi communities, and considered one of them was the predecessor to Umami — ZeroTwOhm.
2) How did that result in you creating Umami Labs?
I received concerned in ZeroTwOhm as a daily retail investor aping in as many individuals did. It was a fairly small neighborhood, so I used to be capable of fairly shortly get in touch with the builders constructing the protocol.
However they didn’t actually have a transparent sense of course about what they wished to do subsequent. That they had bootstrapped a number of tens of millions of {dollars} in capital that was largely simply sitting there. It felt like any individual wanted to step in, and the builders had been, frankly, more than pleased handy duty off to another person, which ended up being me.
3) What are you targeted on now?
What I’m most excited about now’s zeroing in on an issue that grew to become very clear to me throughout my time at Umami. Primarily, as Umami Labs geared as much as launch our first product in early 2023, I used to be assembly with a whole lot of crypto-focused hedge funds and enormous particular person buyers. There was this gaping want for some strategy to securely earn curiosity on USDC, USDT, and different stablecoins with out having to simply utterly transfer off-chain.
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I already targeted at Umami on creating one other product that was designed to generate returns on stablecoins, however the true want is for one thing that’s as safe and boring and dependable as a standard financial savings account, however for individuals who had been holding stablecoins on on-chain wallets. There have been forays into that space by different gamers, however I’ve but to see an entire resolution to that downside. It takes a mix of getting the precise regulated entities off-chain and seamless mechanisms for on- and off-ramping on-chain.
That’s one thing I’m personally targeted on now. I’m collaborating with some others on creating one thing, and getting suggestions from potential early customers. We’ll have extra particulars to share inside the subsequent couple of months. However for now, it’s nonetheless within the early levels.
4) What do you suppose would be the greatest crypto traits in 2024?
In my private opinion, I do suppose that the high level of the crypto market in 2021 actually was the high-water market of this period of very DIY, unregulated, form of community-run bootstrapped protocols. I believe that stepping into subsequent years, together with now, we’re going to see a fairly stark shift by which DeFi stops trying a lot like a totally separate ecosystem. It can for all intents and functions turn out to be a subset of TradFi.
Associated: Coinbase launches regulated crypto futures providers for US retail merchants
I don’t suppose the DeFi versus TradFi distinction goes to final. Clearly, we’re seeing various ETFs present process the registration course of. Within the background, main gamers are acquiring licenses to have interaction in a wider array of financial actions within the U.S. Coinbase, for instance has, registered as a Futures Commission Service provider and in addition as a Designated Contract Market with the CFTC. That authorizes them to function an alternate and open accounts inside the futures markets. These shall be focus, after all, on Bitcoin and Ether.
Coinbase and Circle are accumulating totally different elements that may permit them to turn out to be deeply built-in operators inside conventional finance. I believe that may be very attention-grabbing. In parallel to that, you could have people akin to Constancy and Franklin Templeton and BlackRock creating regulated crypto funding merchandise. Franklin Templeton is creating its personal tokenized Treasury Invoice ETF. It’s fairly clear that shall be a supply of momentum for the trade over the following a number of years.
5) What’s essentially the most attention-grabbing to you as an funding proper now?
Actually, the one factor in crypto that I’m excited about as a long-term funding is Ether and its staking and re-staking derivatives. I believe we’re nonetheless at some extent the place the overwhelming majority of potential investments in crypto are extraordinarily speculative. The underlying value proposition of the tokens remains to be unclear. I believe ETH is without doubt one of the few exceptions. So I do maintain ETH, and I’m snug with it as a long-term funding.
I’m taking note of the staking protocols like Lido and Eigen Layer. Eigen permits individuals to take ETH they’ve already staked and re-stake it to any variety of associated staking protocols. That very considerably expands the vary of actions that may be achieved trustlessly. I count on to see, over time, a whole lot of constructing on prime of Eigen and different comparable protocols. I believe we’ll see a proliferation of funding funds and ETFs focusing on taking ETH and staking it and re-staking it.
6) What do you suppose is the primary hurdle to mass adoption of blockchain know-how?
There must be an entire fusion of protocols on the bleeding fringe of blockchain, and extra established corporations which might be built-in into the normal financial sector and able to working compliantly from a regulatory perspective. We must see established gamers integrating subtle good contracts and taking full benefit of blockchain’s potential. Then we’ll begin to see blockchain changing into a part of on a regular basis financial transactions and actions.
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