Cap 創辦人 Benjamin：鏈上債務市場如何連結現實經濟

0:00Cap 的成長與 DeFi 現況

0:00大家好，我是 Benjamin，是 Cap 的創辦人。Cap 是一個由 Franklin Templeton 支持的私人信貸平台。去年我們贏得了 TOKEN2049 的新創競賽，感謝主辦單位今年再次邀請我們。過去一年變化很大，我們已經處理了 60 億美元的放貸量，最高存款達到 5 億美元，持續為許多公司提供貸款。Hey everybody, my name is Benjamin, and I'm the founder of Cap. Cap is a private credit platform backed by Franklin Templeton. And as the announcer mentioned, we last year won the Token 2049 startup competition, and so that was a year ago and thank you to the organizers for inviting us again this year. A lot has changed over the year. We've processed $6 billion in loan volume, and we've reached $500 million in peak deposits, already lending to a lot of companies, so very much ongoing.

0:40現在 DeFi 正處於一個關鍵時刻。過去六年，DeFi 一直在打造讓金融更透明、更可驗證的產品與基礎設施，但現實世界其實並沒有真的在用這些平台。如果我們希望 DeFi 能持續發展，就必須把這些基礎設施連結到真實經濟活動。今天我要談的，就是 Cap 如何專注在債務這一塊，把鏈上債務市場連結到現實經濟。And now we sit in DeFi in a very pivotal time. Because for the last six years in DeFi, we've been building products and infrastructure to make finance more transparent and more verifiable. But nobody is really using these platforms at all. The real world is not using DeFi. And if we want DeFi to survive, we must connect these rails to real economic activity. And that's what we're going to talk about today, how CAP is focusing on. The debt side of that, connecting on-chain debt markets to real financial activity in the real economy.

1:12私人信貸的現實與挑戰

1:12我們選擇用私人信貸來實現這個目標。所謂私人信貸，就是資金直接借給公司，這些債務交易不會在公開市場上流通。相對的，公開債務就是公司發行可在交易所買賣的債券。這個模式自 2008 年以來成長很多，但也有重大缺點，最主要的就是抵押品重複質押的問題。當借款人把同一筆抵押品質押給多個放款人，發生違約時，大家就會搶同一份抵押品。像去年 JP Morgan、Apollo 和 Blue Owl 就因為 Tricolor 和 First Brands 的大規模詐騙損失了數億美元。And the way we're going to do that is through private credit. So private credit is, you know, when funds lend directly to companies, and these debt transactions are not publicly traded. So the opposite would be public debt, where companies issue bonds that then can be traded in exchanges. Now, this model, while it has grown a lot since 2008, it does have some major drawbacks. The principal one being double pledging of collateral. That happens when borrowers pledge the same collateral to multiple lenders, and then when they default, the lenders are caught fighting over the same collateral. Just last year, JP Morgan, Apollo, and Blue Owl lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of high-scale fraud at Tricolor and First Brands.

2:03那我們來看看私人信貸是如何運作的。很明顯地，你有想要在美元上賺取收益的投資人，所以他們把美元存入基金。而這些基金現在可以透過貸款，將資本分配到經濟體中。這個模式很棒的地方在於，基金正在把資本投入到實體經濟。為什麼這很重要？因為任何時候，總會有某個產業願意借款。總會有收益的來源。這不是一個循環經濟。不過問題在於，這是一個黑盒子，而且非常依賴信任。So let's look at how private credit works. So obviously you have your investors that want to earn yield on the dollar, and so they deposit those dollars with funds. And now the funds get to allocate that capital to the economy via loans. Now what's great about this model is that funds are deploying the capital into the real economy. Why is that important? Because in any time, there's always going to be an industry that is willing to borrow. There will always be a source of yield. It's not a circular economy. The problem, though, it is a black box. And it relies a lot on trust.

2:40舉例來說，基金經理會告訴他們的存款人他們的收益是多少，而借款人則會告訴貸款人他們抵押品的價值是多少。最後，整個系統是由人類和法律協議所控管，而這些都可能被腐化。For example, fund managers tell their depositors what their yield is, and borrowers tell their lenders, you know, what the value of their collateral is. And finally, the whole system is gated by humans and legal agreements, which can be corrupted.

2:58鏈上基礎設施的優勢與現實落差

2:58那麼來看看私人信貸。他們在我們這個圖表上實現了一個部分，就是他們能夠連結到現實世界，獲得那個可持續的收益來源。然而，在可驗證性方面，仍然是一個黑盒子。他們完全無法被驗證，正如我之前提到的，這確實會導致一些問題。那我們要怎麼解決這個問題？我們要怎麼讓私人信貸變得更可驗證一點呢？幸運的是，加密貨幣已經建立了一些重要的基礎設施，這些東西已經運作得很好，並且可以改善私人信貸。舉例來說，穩定幣現在已經是基本配備了。在Genius Act之後，全球各地的公司都在使用穩定幣，而且對使用穩定幣非常習慣。接下來你還有RWA。So taking a look at private credit. They achieve one part of what we have here on the grid, which is they are able to connect to the real world, that sustainable source of yield. However, in terms of verifiability, there's still a black box. They're not verifiable at all, and like I mentioned earlier, that does lead to some issues. So how can we fix that? How can we improve private credit to make it a bit more verifiable? Well, luckily, crypto. Has built some important plumbing, right, that already works and can improve private credit. For example, stablecoins are table stakes now. After the Genius Act, companies all around the world are using stablecoins and are very comfortable using stablecoins. Then you have RWAs.

3:41RWA 熱潮持續發燒，未來會有越來越多資產上鏈，例如黃金、私人信貸等等。而只要這些資產上鏈，我們就能徹底消除重複質押的問題。The RWA craze is continuing, and there will be a lot of assets on-chain, like gold, like private credit, etc. And just by having these assets on-chain, we completely remove the problem of double pledging.

3:54但問題就在這裡。這些基礎設施很棒，但現實世界其實還沒有真正使用它們。現實世界依然沒有從我們的借貸市場中借款，所以，現在發生的很多事情，其實就是五年前從區塊鏈借款的那些同樣的大戶、同樣的機構，現在還是我們在爭奪的對象。我們其實並沒有在區塊鏈上新增任何真正有意義數量的借款人。我們只是建造了新的基礎設施而已。你可以從數據中看到這一點。每當Bitcoin下跌時，DeFi也會跟著下跌。我們DeFi裡的活動完全被綁在Bitcoin上，而本來不應該是這樣的。But here's the problem. This plumbing is great, but the real world is still not using them. The real world is still not borrowing from our lending markets, and so. A lot of what happens today is that the same whales, the same institutions that were borrowing from the blockchain five years ago are the same ones that we're fighting over today. We have not added really any or any important number of borrowers on the blockchain. We just sort of built new plumbing. And you can see it in the numbers. Every time Bitcoin goes down, it takes DeFi with it. We're completely tied to Bitcoin for the activity inside of DeFi, and it shouldn't be like this.

4:36如果 DeFi 真的是全球金融體系的未來，那麼比特幣的價格是多少其實就無關緊要了，因為在任何市場狀況下，我們都能為經濟體系帶來某種價值。但事實顯然並非如此。If DeFi really was the future of the financial system in the world, then it wouldn't matter what the price of Bitcoin was, because in any market condition, we would be able to provide some value to the economy. But it's certainly not the case.

4:51鏈上可驗證性與現實連結的困境

4:51現在的 DeFi 很透明、可驗證，技術上沒問題，但沒人用，這其實很危險。時間拖越久，DeFi 就越有可能被金融市場淘汰。所以我們必須找到一個能真正被現實世界採用的模式。這也是我們 Cap 正在做的事：保留區塊鏈的可驗證性，同時把它帶進現實世界，讓這個模式可以永續發展。Here's what we have today. DeFi is very verifiable. It's transparent. It works great, but nobody's using it. And it's a very dangerous position to be in, because the longer we're there, the more likely it is that DeFi will not play a part in the future of financial markets. And so we have to find something that can actually be used in the real world. And that's what we're trying to do at Cap. Maintain the verifiability that we already have on the blockchain, but bring it to the real world so that it can also be sustainable.

5:23我們的做法是這樣：我們保留所有鏈上的可驗證性和基礎設施，但現在這些工具是用來放款給現實世界的公司。那為什麼這些公司過去沒來鏈上借錢？因為他們的抵押品跟區塊鏈不相容。鏈上放款人想要的是流動性高、可替代、容易清算和定價的抵押品，但很多現實世界的公司沒有這種資產。像有些公司只有八個月後才會兌現的稅務抵免，或因為法規無法代幣化的抵押品，所以他們根本不會來鏈上借貸市場。And so here's a high level of what we do. We maintain all this kind of verifiability, all this on-chain infrastructure, but now we're using it to lend to real-world companies. Why haven't these companies borrowed on-chain so far? The reason is that their collaterals are not compatible with the blockchain. Blockchain lenders want liquid collaterals that are fungible and that are easy to liquidate and price. However, a lot of real-world companies don't really have that. Maybe they have tax credits that will last eight months. Maybe they have collaterals that, because of regulation, cannot be tokenized. So they simply just don't come to on-chain borrowing markets.

6:02引入承銷商：鏈上與現實的橋樑

6:02這也是我們為什麼引入『承銷商』的原因。承銷商是一家或一組持有像 Bitcoin、ETH 等可接受抵押品的公司。我們要求他們評估每一位借款人，承擔其鏈下抵押品的風險，然後用自己的鏈上抵押品（如 Bitcoin）在我們平台上為借款人質押。為什麼他們願意這麼做？因為他們想用這些資產賺取收益，而這些資產並不是借款人真正想借的東西（借款人想要美元）。所以，承銷商其實是在把鏈下抵押品的風險轉換成鏈上流動性抵押品，並收取手續費。And so this is why we've introduced the underwriter. So the underwriter is a company or a set of companies that have collaterals that are accepted, like Bitcoin, like ETH, etc. And what we task them with doing is assessing each one of our borrowers and then taking the risk of their off-chain collaterals and then placing their own collaterals on our platform on their behalf. Why do they do this? Because they want to earn yield on these collaterals that are not really what these borrowers want to borrow. We're talking about Bitcoin, ETH, whereas these borrowers want to borrow U.S. dollars. So, to summarize, these underwriters are transforming the risk from off-chain collateral to liquid collateral in exchange for a fee.

6:44如果發生違約，這時候承銷商質押在鏈上的抵押品就會被清算，然後承銷商可以去追討借款人原本的鏈下抵押品。這個模式已經上線，不只是想法而已。我們現在真的有在放款、吸收存款，累積放貸量已經突破 60 億美元，存款也有 5 億美元。目前有 22 家承銷商在我們平台承作信貸、賺取收益，也有 30 家借款人，其中很多是第一次從區塊鏈借錢。Now, if there's a default, this is where the collateral steps in. On-chain, we're able to liquidate this collateral that the underwriter has placed, and then the underwriters can pursue the borrower for the off-chain collateral that they've already established beforehand. Now, this is live. It's not just an idea. We are lending. We are sourcing deposits. So far, we've crossed $6 billion in volume and $500 million in deposits. Also, we have around 22 underwriters that come to our platform to underwrite credit and generate yield, and we have around 30 borrowers that are borrowing today, many of which have never borrowed from the blockchain before.

7:22實際案例：從金融到電影產業

7:22我來給大家一些例子，讓你們看看這在實際運作中是怎麼進行的。Flow Traders 是一家在荷蘭上市的公司。他們並不是從區塊鏈借款，他們是從花旗銀行借款。但現在，他們是從我們這裡借款。他們在我們的平台上有一筆三千萬美元的定期貸款。當他們來找我們時，他們表示有來自母公司的擔保，這是一個非常棒的抵押品。他們是一家上市且有信用評級的公司。然而，這並不容易代幣化，也不容易用來質押借款，因為它不是流動性資產。擔保並不是很有流動性。因此，我們與另一個團隊合作，這個團隊叫做 Lombard。Lombard 是我們的其中一個承銷商。他們希望能夠讓他們的 Bitcoin 產生收益。I'll give you guys some examples so you can see how this works in practice. Flow Traders is a publicly traded company in the Netherlands. They do not borrow from the blockchain. They borrow from Citibank. But today they're borrowing from us. They have a $30 million term loan from our platform. So when they came to us, they said they had a guarantee from their parent company, which is a fantastic collateral. They are a publicly traded and rated company. However, that's not very easy to tokenize and to borrow against because it's not liquid. A guarantee is not very liquid. And so we partnered with this other team called Lombard. Lombard is one of our underwriters. And they wanted yield on their Bitcoin.

7:58所以他們所做的，是與 Flow Traders 達成協議，讓 Flow Traders 承擔那個鏈下擔保的風險。接著，他們到我們的平台，代表 Flow Traders 存入 Bitcoin，這樣他們就可以開始借款了。而這也是他們第一次從區塊鏈上借到這麼大規模的資金。就像我之前說的，其他的放款方是像 Citibank 這樣的公司。So what they did was get into an agreement with Flow Traders to take the risk of that off-chain guarantee. And then they went to our platform and deposited Bitcoin on behalf of Flow Traders, so that they could now borrow. And this is the first time they borrow this size from the blockchain. Like I said before, the other lenders are companies like Citibank.

8:17不只金融業，如果我們希望加密貨幣和 DeFi 未來有一席之地，就必須走出金融圈。我很高興宣布，我們現在已經資助了第一部電影。這部電影由 Cole Sprouse 主演，是一線演員團隊，他們來我們平台是為了稅務抵免融資。這種稅務抵免幾個月後才能兌現，不值得代幣化，所以他們找到我們平台上的 Bitcoin 持有者，讓對方用 Bitcoin 賺收益，自己則能拿到穩定幣。這部電影的導演以前從沒用過穩定幣，也沒在區塊鏈上借過錢，但現在透過這個系統，他們也能上鏈借款。And it's not just financial services. If we want crypto and DeFi to have a place in the future, we have to expand outside of finance. So I'm happy to announce that we've now financed our very first film. So this film is a film starred by Cole Sprouse, it's tier one actors, and they came to our platform because they wanted a tax credit financing. Again, tax credits they redeem in a couple of months, it's not worth tokenizing. So they came to a Bitcoin holder on our platform that wanted to earn yield on their Bitcoin, and now they're able to source stablecoins from our platform. This film, the directors, they've never used stablecoins before. They've never borrowed from the blockchain, but now because of the system, they're able to come on-chain.

9:00承銷商網絡的無限擴展性

9:00如你們在這裡所看到的，我們並不是將這些借款人帶上鏈的人。我們依賴承銷商來進行盡職調查，並為每一筆貸款及其抵押品進行承銷，這樣他們才能上鏈並向我們借款。而這個系統的美妙之處在於，我們可以無限擴展，對吧？因為如果一切都能透過程式碼自動化，我們就可以引入具備不同技能組合的承銷商。也許有些人會專注於交易，也許有些人會專注於機器人技術。但我們不需要擁有所有這些利基知識。為什麼這很重要？So as you can see here, we are not the ones bringing on these borrowers on-chain. We rely on underwriters to do diligence and underwrite each one of these loans and their collateral so they can come on-chain and borrow from us. And the beauty of the system is that we can scale infinitely, right? Because if we can have, if everything's automated by code, we can onboard different underwriters with different sets of skills. Maybe some of them will focus on trading. Maybe some of them will focus on robotics. But we don't have to have all that niche knowledge. Why is that important?

9:34因為在私人信貸的世界裡，你要靠在較小的市場擁有利基知識來獲勝，這些市場能帶來更高的收益，但風險卻沒有那麼大，這些地方是像大型投資銀行和大型私人信貸機構這樣的大型放款人無法涉足的。而透過擁有無限數量的承銷人，我們就能進入無限多個利基市場。Because in the world of private credit, you win by having niche knowledge in smaller markets where you can get higher yield for not that much risk, places where large lenders like the bulge bracket banks and the large private credit shops can't lend to. And so by having an unlimited amount of underwriters, We can enter into an unlimited amount of niche marketplaces.

9:56這就是我們對 DeFi 的想像：要連結越多現實世界的企業越好。現在的加密貨幣生態，其實跟五年前沒什麼兩樣，借款人沒有擴大。我們認為這個模式可以改變現狀，讓更多企業願意上鏈借款。And this is what we want DeFi to be. We want to connect to as many businesses as possible. Like I said before, crypto today doesn't look much different than crypto five years ago. We have not expanded the set of borrowers that are coming on chain, and so this is how we think we can make that happen.

10:14鏈上資產的巨大機會與邀請

10:14機會真的很大。現在有三兆美元的鏈上資產還沒被好好利用，大多都拿來交易和投機。如果能把這些資產連結到現實世界市場，就能為經濟帶來可持續的長期收益。這就是我們正在打造的東西。如果你有興趣了解更多，歡迎掃 QR code 聯絡我們，或在 X 上追蹤我們。謝謝大家！The opportunity is huge. There are three trillion dollars of assets on-chain that are not being put to use. They're being used for trading, speculation, and they could be connected to real-world markets so that we can provide sustainable long-term yield to the economy. So this is what we're building. If you're interested in learning more, you can hit the QR code and contact us or follow us on X. Thank you, guys.