How Will I Explain This to My Daughters — Petar Atanovski | Curvy Protocol

Okay. Hi everyone and uh welcome and thanks for being here. So the this talk is obviously inspired you know by by the current state of the market and also by by my family and how do I explain to them uh everything that that we do and why why we do that. uh three years ago. This is a picture of us at the very first ETH Belgrade.

Uh you can see uh my wife Nea and Masha and there our daughters. Uh it was like the the first conference that we we went to uh together. Also uh this was Masha listening to another Masha on the stage and other Masha is my my friend, partner and co-founder uh at Kurvy. That was also also at the very first uh ETH Belgrade and this is again us uh last week in uh in Greece in Teslaniki. So as as you can see time flies.

Um and for a lot of us if we take a look at the the at the industry uh these three years were were really really challenging and it was like a a free fall you know and yet if you take a look we we are we are still here. But the question which is which is important and usually you know if you look at this like golden circles uh video famous video by by Simon Synynic you will say start with why the question is why why are we still here and despite all the challenges and everything why why are you here still after these turbulent periods? For me, my personal answer starts with with those uh three pictures. And today I will not talk about uh how to teach uh your kids blockchain, how to explain ZK to them. It's not uh it's not about this.

Uh this talk is actually vice versa. It talks about what parenting taught me and what are the some things and principles that light your way and that make you move forward no matter what what is happening and how market is uh what how market is performing. So the first topic that I have for today is obviously privacy and why we are actually build building curvy protocol and why privacy u matters. So uh when you say privacy uh what is the the the the the first thing the first answer the first reaction that that you get anyone here

exactly it is I have nothing to hide and uh it's like by by by default it's the the the most common answer that that you would get uh there is no need to for privacy if you have nothing to to to hide and obviously it's wrong on so many so many levels. Why why is that wrong? I will start with some some principles unrelated to to to to obviously web free privacy or anything. Why what we try to teach our kids kids. First thing is it is completely fine to have your boundaries and if you if you if you set your boundaries others need to to to respect them.

But also you have to respect the boundaries of of other people. Uh you say uh out loud and clear if you are discomfortable with with something and uh if if you don't like something. So you just say say that I'm here for you no matter what is happening. This is like your safe zone and we can speak openly about about anything. No matter what I will be there to support you and you always have a choice.

So these are like some things which are uh universal which are unrelated to to to to to web free or anything and which are like some principles that we try to to to to teach uh our kids. So when you take privacy away what actually happens at least three of these five principles are gone. So you don't have boundaries anymore. You don't you cannot say out loud if something makes you uh uncomfortable because you have obvious discomfort and you lose your choice. So losing privacy is also about having much less options, having discomfort and losing completely completely your boundaries.

It's not about like if you have something to hide or if you're doing something wrong. It's just about being completely unsafe, uncovered and not being able to to to to do things as you want and as you should. Another topic web free uh quite interesting because I was participating in multiple conferences uh in a previous period and you can see enterprises and large companies entering this market but they don't want to hear web three they don't want to hear blockchain they don't want to hear crypto crypto is like a blacklisted word you can say digital assets you can say stable coins but that's it like all other uh words that I mentioned and that were like for us something that we relate to are somehow blacklisted in the in the in the enterprise world. Anyway, few few examples why why this matters. Seven years ago, uh my my cousin uh from from Macedonia was diagnosed with a cancer and I I wanted to send him some some uh funds uh in in order for him to to to be able to pay for his surgery.

Do you know what was like the most efficient uh most efficient fastest and the cheapest way to send those funds to from from Belgrade to Scopia?

Pigeons.

What?

Pigeons. It was Yeah, it was a good alternative. Yeah, I I I can come and relate to that a bit later. Another envelope. Yeah, not safe, but uh it it it could travel fast enough.

Envelope uh through through a bus driver.

Crypto. Yeah. Uh back then ECD used to have also like ECD is the local crypto platform uh well known here in Serbia, one of the pioneers of of the crypto industry here in Serbia. Back then they used to have also the the the the office and the branch in uh in Macedonia. So the most efficient way for me was actually to send funds to his ECD account and then he he had zero clue about crypto just for for you to understand.

He never used it before, but it was the most efficient way back then to send funds so he can get actually fiat into his bank account uh from from me in Belgrade to him in in in in Scopia three years ago. Uh this is their and me. Um this is actually a picture from from from V Island in Croatia. And there is this number 20 23%. Can anyone guess what is 23% here?

It is definitely a hard one. Anyway, one day um there she wasn't feeling well. So, so uh we had to take her to hospital in Split. She stayed in Split for for for a day. Um everything was very very professional and great from from from people there.

But two years later I received uh I received an additional invoice and it was like okay this is like what you paid but we forgot to include this uh into your bill. So if you can pay like the remaining amount of €150, uh 23% was actually the fee that I paid in order to move these funds from Belgrade to Croatia through a bank account after like bunch of paperwork that I had to go through just to move simple €150 from my bank bank account to to to account uh in in a split um uh hospital. Two years ago, I decided to be uh LP in a Silicon Gardens uh VC and actually I had to move funds um logically I had to move funds there uh through through a bank account, my own funds again from from myst account here in in in Belgrade to their account which is uh in Tesla Sa Paulo in Ljubana and it wasn't possible to do that like I had back and forth back and forth for two weeks with the bank also my lawyer was included. We had like uh all of course the papers but just there they said no we don't support and we don't do this kind of transactions. So you're not allowed to do that uh in Serbia.

You cannot invest in foreign uh VC uh from Serbia. So what the what I had to do I had to change a bank go to another bank here in Serbia um add one additional paper uh that they requested and then the the the transfer went through after several weeks. Anyway, that was the moment when when um I had to to switch a bank for to do this. Coming back to a pigeon. Uh this is actually uh not not not a pigeon, but it was my way to describe uh to describe the situation that we had a few months ago.

Do you know what is 28 days here? how long it takes funds to arrive from one bank account to another bank account from Serbia to Croatia. So it is like 400 kilometers distance from Belgrade to Zagreb and uh we opened we opened Kore protocol uh company in Croatia. Obviously, if you want to open a a company, you have you need to have like the the the um the initial capital and we try to fund four of us, four partners, six fun 650 euros each. So, I'm mentioning the amounts because the amount is also important.

It's not like we are transferring multi-million amounts here. We are transferring you know small amounts of funds through a traditional uh banks like systems which are established trusted for decades which should work and obviously for us they don't work from one example to another. So it took exactly 28 days for funds to arrive from Belgrade to Zagreb through two intermediary banks in Germany. Somewhere in between funds were blocked for one of us. For another of us uh another uh guy had to also to change the bank in order to make that transfer and for two of us it went so somehow smoothly but again with few days delay.

Anyway, when we went through this nightmare and finally after, you know, a month of back and forth realizing where uh are those missing funds, then we got this response from from a creation bank. Unfortunately, you cannot read it at this screen and also it's in Creation, but essentially what they say, they say that they are not able to open us a bank account. There was no reason. But do you assume what what the actual reason was exactly? Um actually their risk department combined those two two two risks.

You have Serbs which are like third world country not EU members and you have a cryptoreated company. So they can most probably they might be able to to to bear one risk but not two of them at the same moment. So they are not allowed and they don't need to to to give you their reasons why then they don't want to establish relationship with you and open you an account. But anyway, we again had to think about what are what is the alternative because we have a company there and we need to have uh the bank account but like I cannot travel to Zagreb every day and then wait for a few days to see if they will actually open me account when I come back and then go vice versa etc etc. Uh luckily we we had u we had a revolute so we could open that although revolute is not uh um uh creation bank but we we we could do that online again that part was not easy but I I won't go into details now and then two weeks ago uh similar story new letter this is again from the bank in Serbia I was trying to move $150 to interactive brokers and they just said attached is our internal policy.

You're not allowed to do that. You cannot move your funds to to interactive brokers. So, it was like it was not a crypto exchange. It was a regulated broker um in the EU and also in the US, but you're not allowed to to move your funds and you're not allowed to do um what you want with your with your money. Why why do I mention all of this?

Because two months ago, I spoke with a guy from Creation VC who told me, "These problems are solved and you don't need stable coins. There is no real use case for you crypto guys. What are you actually still doing here?" And I told him, yeah, it is maybe solved in your world where you have access access to Revolute and where you have a choice. And if Revolute doesn't decide for any reason to close your account, they are still not uh they still don't need to disclose what is the reason for that.

They can just decide to to to freeze your funds and to say, "Okay, you're not allowed to to access them anymore." But anyway, if you don't come to that, let's call it the edge case, you're good to go. And it's pretty efficient and it's pretty fast. And yeah, one of the things that I forgot to mention the the transfer that took 28 days. It was actually initiated few weeks after we had this like Serbia entering SEPA and you can do it like in a day and you can do it cheap etc.

It wasn't cheap and uh the the the fees were super high and it took as I mentioned 28 days. So it's easy maybe if you live in EU or if you live in US to think about some of those things and to forget how things used to look like before and to think that you know these problems are actually solved. But for the majority of the world and for for for the most people on this earth we still have to be very very creative how to manage our funds and how to use our funds in a proper efficient way. and how just to to to keep track with with with everything that is uh happening. So you know where I come from which is Belgrade Serbia you don't have access to revolute but you what you used to have during like these previous 30 plus years is sanctions hyperinflation natural disasters wars migrations.

So again owning your assets and having a control also means having a choice and then when you have a choice you can have your own boundaries and the third topic is obviously entrepreneurship and this is like the non-romantic version of the entrepreneurship because it is you know super easy when you have you know successful exit and when uh all newspapers are writing about your stories and when you go to the stage and talk about that. Anyway, recently like few few few weeks ago, I was listening uh there there was one uh interview of uh Vladian, one of my you know favorite musicians and he talked about you know parenthood and he said that uh what what really changed for him is that level of accountability that you have for someone else. And when you have that kind of accountability for someone else and when it's not only about you anymore, uh it's not easy to make like the same choices and to have the same level of freedom because if you want to play guitar at 4:00 a.m., you need to think as well about others and what are like the consequences of your like simple everyday uh moves.

And if parenting taught me one one one thing, it is that to respect my time. Not because I respect myself and I value myself more than before, but because I value actually the the the my conscious choice not to be with my kids and not to spend time uh with them, but actually to do something else. And if you take a look at the previous like three years in between those pictures that you saw at the beginning, we during those three years closed all other businesses that we had. We had like multiple companies um multiple companies that brands that people knew us for. I also spoke about different things and the first and the second ETH Belgrade.

We also had to downscale from 80 people to two 10 people uh team at one point of time. We also spent every every cent of our personal funds and uh also had like to to borrow funds to to cover for the expenses uh because obviously there is no US we are 10 people team but obviously if you're doing something that you you actually believe in then um you push those boundaries and then you need to explain to yourself and explain to others why you're pushing those boundaries and does it does it make sense. So when you start asking does it make sense it's not romantic anymore. Uh but it is also about having a choice and doing what you believe is right and what you believe is actually needed. So there is this you know uh commercial Apple commercial from 1997 uh for for to those crazy ones.

And me personally, I want to be a role model for my kids. But also, luckily, I'm not the only one. You know, there are bunch of crazy ones here at this conference, including you here, including you know, Peter, Tanya, and whole ETH Belgrade team and all Solana Summit people who actually made it happen despite all the challenges and despite everything that market was telling us for previous years. And last year when ETH Belgrade team rented a plane to fly people from Prague to to to Belgrade, that was a crazy thing. Uh but it was somehow a vision that that will connect those two cities and make enable communities to live as one and to move people from from from Prague to Belgrade in the same day and to enable them, you know, to visit both conferences in a very short time span.

So yeah that was crazy. Uh we still think uh it is crazy but it was on the other side very bold. But this year we came to the position that it is crazy at all to organize the conference and it was you know very very extremely hard looking behind the scenes what those people did in order for us to get here in order for us to still be um to still be in this industry. Not just because of the industry, not just because of the ideology, but because what we actually do matters. And me personally, I want to do those things that matter.

And I want to leave that kind of legacy and also to be that kind of role model and that kind of example to my kids. And I think that we all deserve a world where having a choice and having your own boundaries is not a privilege of the few but actually it's something which is included by default and that's what we are building and that's what we are fighting for. Thank you.