Unveiling DeFi's Best-Kept Secret
I can't stop thinking about it. This hidden gem is literally keeping me awake at night. I've been in DeFi since its inception, probably like a lot of you out there, and I've invested in So. Many. Stupid. Things.
I’ve been scammed, rugged, rekt, high, low, richer, poorer, hopeful, in disbelief and just kept going because I believed that ever since the birth of Bitcoin (which has never let me down) and then the birth of the DeFi movement, there was no going back for me. I was ALL IN on debanking and showing others how to free themselves from a broken system.
Being a pioneer is hard, though. We need genuine builders, teachers, developers and supporters along the way, as well as the stoicism to keep up the search when the chips are down.
Despite all that, I knew that eventually someone GOOD, wholesomely good, would enter this space and develop something that would be the needle in the haystack, the thing that solved so many of the world’s problems by putting personal power back into the hands of the people.
We tend to think that power is granted by material success and measured by how well-known or popular someone becomes, but it’s not.
It’s having all our human needs met on every level; it’s sovereignty, self-sufficiency, financial autonomy, acceptance into the community in which we live, and being fully able to stand on two feet and freely do the things we were put on this planet to do, without being hindered by occupational, political, or socioeconomic circumstances.
That level of power should be easy to give, and yet, since forever and a day, it’s been held back by the hands of the greedy and the corrupt centralised systems of control and manipulation that govern almost every aspect of our lives.
I can’t sleep at night because the more I look at, read about, listen to, talk about, write about and play with it, the more I see that Elephant.Money could verifiably be that shiny needle in the haystack, the man known as “Bankteller” that good and selfless human being who was meant to create this platform to solve real-world problems, and the hard-won victory of unleashing sovereignty and power to all people be ripe for the picking.
And I can’t believe my search may very well be over. Somebody pinch me!
With a central policy of "Cash Flow For All" and a community driven by the ethos "Each One, Teach One”, let’s dive in and unpack the Elephant Money ecosystem.
Tony Perkins a.k.a. Bankteller/BT: A Visionary in Finance
Finance, as we know it, is undergoing a remarkable transformation, and at the heart of this revolution stands a visionary—Tony Perkins, known in the financial world as Bankteller or simply BT. With a storied history as an early coder, a computer scientist, somewhat of a Fintech savant, and someone headhunted during his career in TradFi, Perkins's expertise and innovative drive have birthed something truly extraordinary.
Just take a brief visit to his LinkedIn profile to reveal decades of experience, including several attempts at cracking the cash flow code before finally cultivating the perfect decentralised formula for the financial independence of all. From strategic roles in major financial institutions (former CTO at Fidelity Investments, for example) to a trailblazing path that's seen him navigate the turbulent waters of the blockchain industry, Perkins really stands out.
To name just a few accolades:
Over 30 years in fintech serving at Fidelity and State Street
Mined BTC in 2011 and started building DeFi in 2018
MIT / BU computer scientist and business executive
Hands-on full-stack builder and systems architect
Community builder and philanthropist
BT's knack for innovation and an acute understanding of market dynamics set the stage for what he says is the culmination of his life's work and his most groundbreaking creation—Elephant Money.
“When you're joining Elephant, there’s a clear Mission. We want to serve people who are underserved…"
"There’s a lot of inequity in the world. There's a huge gap between the haves and have-nots [and] this solution, in this community is cash flow for all. Not ‘cash flow for poor people’. Not ‘cash flow for rich people’. Not ‘cash flow for the people in the middle’. It's cash flow for all. We think that we can normalise being able to put food on the table and make that available to as many people as possible.” - Bankteller AMA
Elephant Money: A Sustainable High-Yield Model
Elephant Money is a paradigm-shifting platform that redefines the landscape of finance. It’s a community bank that operates like an online business and its flagship product is sustainable high yield.
The $ELEPHANT token is the cornerstone of the platform's ecosystem with a fixed supply of one quadrillion Elephant tokens (1000 trillion). More than just a digital asset, the Elephant token serves as the conduit for the various yield products available within the Elephant Money platform, which users can opt into depending on their financial goals.
$ELEPHANT also just happens to have been the best-performing asset of 2022, thriving even during the bear market. Just check out these stats:
Source: https://twitter.com/NyeTheWineGuy/status/1693955839189528706/photo/1
Elephant Futures: A Revolution in On-Chain Cash Flow
One of the most groundbreaking features of Elephant Money is the innovative Elephant Futures. Unlike traditional futures, Elephant Futures aren't about speculative asset trading. They represent a unique opportunity for users to magnify their capital and generate a regular and recurring income with an initial balance of only $200, through high-yield investment accounts rooted in the platform's treasury - the affectionately named, ‘Bertha’.
This approach harnesses intelligent investment strategies to produce a daily maximum return of 0.5%, with user-initiated compounding by way of periodic deposits. Sustainability is ensured by curbing runaway compounding with the use of limiter rates, and user accounts have a fixed maximum balance/TVL of $1m and a maximum yield payout of $2.5m to serve as protection against adverse whale activity.
Futures, in essence, transform the traditional concept of personal savings and investment accounts into a potent cash flow engine that harnesses the all-powerful Compound Effect.
Until now, Futures utilised BUSD for deposits and payouts on the BSC Network. With Paxos ceasing the minting of BUSD, the decision to transition to depositing and paying out the dollar equivalent of BNB has been a smart move.
A Closer Look at Bertha and the Elephant Token
The Elephant token serves as the golden goose within the EM ecosystem, providing holders of $ELEPHANT passive income through reflective and non-inflationary rewards (RFI rewards) by simply holding the token in their wallet. These rewards are derived from transaction fees for buying, selling and transferring on the EM website or PancakeSwap (PCS). Other rewards come from the staking of the Unlimited NFT series.
The Elephant Treasury (AKA Bertha) is the $ELEPHANT reserve of funds that is used to absorb the circulating supply of $ELEPHANT and also provide a reserve of last resort for withdrawal liabilities of Futures.
Since the Elephant Treasury acts as a whale-sized HODLer, it will also collect RFI rewards from incoming trading volume from $ELEPHANT and therefore continue to grow. Bertha is the whale that never dumps on her herd though, as she is driven by her code to continue to grow her token balance.
Bertha will soon start to buy up and burn a new yield coin, $TRUNK. $TRUNK was initially created to be a stable coin for the ecosystem, however, with regulatory institutions clamping down on the issuance of stables, the transformation of $TRUNK into a yield coin with deflationary applications seemed a more progressive move for the ecosystem.
Here’s a great video by YouTuber, 1986 Celebration, which outlines the transition and mechanics of the $TRUNK token brilliantly. This new token can also be used to mint TRUMPET (a smart contract), which is a single-sided liquidity pool of $TRUNK that allows users to further compound their yield, outside of regular price appreciation.
Unlimited NFTs - Earn $ELEPHANT
Unlimited NFTs are yet another yield product and are unlike any other NFT project out there. When a user mints an NFT using BNB, 100% of the BNB is used to purchase $ELEPHANT, which is then sent to Bertha, the Elephant Treasury.
To be eligible for rewards, NFTs must be staked on the Elephant Money dApp. All staked NFTs share 1% APR of the Elephant Treasury. Rewards are calculated in real-time and it is up to the community to sweep available rewards to distribute the rewards to all Unlimited NFT staking participants.
Users are free to claim their Elephant Token rewards at any time. Upon claiming, the Elephant Tokens will be sent to all the participants’ wallets and those wallets will in turn start benefiting from the RFI Rewards mentioned above. So, it’s a circular system of perpetual yield.
The NFT mints double in value after every round of 10,000 mints. Users can choose to sell their NFTs bought at earlier rounds at a profit in the dApp marketplace or continue to stake them for rewards.
Joining the Herd
Central to the Elephant Money ethos is its community-driven nature. The platform emphasises collaboration and engagement, aiming to create a vibrant and inclusive financial ecosystem where users actively participate in its growth and evolution.
The Herd (Partner Program Network) is the first-of-its-kind onboarding system that benefits both team builders and new participants to the Elephant.Money ecosystem alike. Participation as a partner is completely voluntary and flexible (partners can change as users see fit), however, by utilising the partner network, not only are participants rewarded for building out their teams organically, but newcomers are provided equal incentive to participate.
Unlike a multi-level marketing referral system, which consists of pyramid structures, tiered referral trees and so on, with EM there is only one level of affiliate rewards, similar to eCommerce affiliate structures such as Amazon Affiliates: User A refers User B and both receive airdropped rewards as a 50/50 split.
If a user chooses not to participate, as is their prerogative, they simply do not receive a share of airdropped rewards allocated to the partner network - it makes no difference to any other aspect of the platform or their abilities to engage in its activities.
The Herd’s system was thoughtfully designed to disincentivise bad actors, the need for self-referrals, and leeching rewards. Reward credits, equivalent to 1% of the earned deposits or yield, are issued whenever the referred individual deposits or earns yield in the applicable Elephant Money yield-generating products.
Speaking of which, if you have enjoyed this article and need a partner to boost your rewards, head to this link, connect your wallet and click 'update' to receive your share using our Queens of Capital partner address.
Safe and Secure
The Elephant Money ecosystem prioritises transparency and security, leveraging blockchain technology and smart contracts to ensure trust and reliability in all transactions and operations.
Their audit history is readily available inside their GitHub and they have implemented three different strategies to defend against the threat of flash loan attacks, after having experienced such an exploit on their reserve back in early 2022. Founder, BT, saw that exploit as a blessing in disguise that allowed him to repair any leaks in the code - things that ought to have been picked up by the early auditors.
Nevertheless, user deposits and withdrawals were not affected and the Elephant Treasury is now stronger than ever.
Probably Nothing? Hmmm...🤔
I've personally been involved in DeFi since its birth in 2017 and in that time, I've not seen an ecosystem or tokenomics as intriguing as Elephant Money.
With a fully doxxed and more-than-qualified developer leading the charge, an open-source protocol that "focuses the financial attention of a community of people to solve the problem of cash flow", and an underlying token that outperformed the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap during one of the toughest bear markets in recent history, this financial cooperative and community bank is probably not nothing.
I suspect it's going to gain some traction over the next few years and who knows - perhaps 2024 will be the Year of the Elephant.