How to Find 100x Altcoins Early, Per Investor Who Got SOL at 33 Cents

• Yubo Ruan is the founding father of Parallel Finance, a decentralized lending and staking protocol.
• Through his VC fund, the 25-year-old invested early into high altcoins reminiscent of solana and polkadot. 
• He shares how to determine successful protocols and the way he plans to convey DeFi to a billion individuals.

At 25 years outdated, Yubo Ruan has in all probability achieved greater than his friends might think about. 

In highschool, Ruan began his first firm Alisimba Technologies in Beijing, China whereas successful 13 invention awards and 5 patents. In school, he arrange his first enterprise capital fund Skylight Investment to put money into disruptive applied sciences. In 2017, he launched his second VC fund 8 Decimal Capital to deal with blockchain and crypto firms. 

Now, the serial entrepreneur is making an attempt to accomplish his loftiest purpose but — to convey decentralized finance to a billion individuals through his lending startup Parallel Finance. 

Built on the polkadot ecosystem, Parallel Finance is backed by distinguished VC buyers together with Sequoia Capital, billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Polychain Capital, Pantera Capital, (*33*) Ventures, and extra. The startup was valued at $150 million after elevating $22 million in a Series A funding spherical in August. 

Ruan realized about crypto in early 2014. While engaged on his first firm within the well-known Garage Café in Beijing, which used to settle for bitcoin as cost, he met a bunch of bitcoin and ethereum miners who would later grow to be a number of the greatest crypto gamers in China. 

That expertise taught him the significance of being early. In 2019, whereas working the $60 million VC fund at 8 Decimal Capital, he made a six-figure funding in solana (SOL) at round 30 to 33 cents and poured over $1 million into polkadot (DOT) at under $1, in accordance to Ruan. 

The early bets have paid off handsomely. As of noon Friday, solana, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by

market cap

, was buying and selling at round $148, whereas polkadot, the Tenth-largest token, was altering palms at $27, in accordance to CoinGecko pricing. 

How to determine successful crypto tasks early 

Besides the 2 clear winners, Ruan additionally participated within the early rounds of chia (XCH), chainlink (LINK), 0X (ZRX), and digital asset firm Securitize. 

When making an attempt to determine tasks with long-term potential, he focuses on three components: (1) community results, (2) affordable as a substitute of low-cost valuation, and (3) the standard of the founder. 

A reasonably acquainted idea in tech and crypto, a community impact refers to the concept the larger the variety of customers who be part of a community, the extra worth it accrues. Social media platforms together with Facebook, Instagram, and TikTook illustrate the ability of community results, whereas main cryptocurrencies reminiscent of bitcoin and ethereum have additionally grow to be extra beneficial as extra individuals be part of the networks. 

Contrary to standard knowledge, Ruan likes to put money into tasks with valuations that may appear costly. Rather than specializing in low-cost belongings, he believes that greater, although not unreasonable, valuations might sign that the tasks have gained higher consensus and extra investor belief. 

“When we invested in solana, although it was like 33 cents, it was at a pair hundred million greenback valuation,” he recalled. “It was fairly insane at that point as a result of it is fairly costly for a community that had by no means launched something.”

It was an analogous story with polkadot, which he invested at under $1 however with an over $1 billion valuation, Ruan stated. 

The valuations additionally made sense to him due to the monitor report of the founders. Polkadot’s founder Gavin Wood additionally co-launched ethereum the place the vast majority of the DeFi and NFT actions happen right now. 

“I put at least 40% of the burden in direction of evaluating who’s the founder and what they’ve accomplished earlier than,” he added. “We really suppose that the entrepreneurs who’ve accomplished nice creation earlier than would seemingly proceed to create higher merchandise in the long run.”

Right now, Ruan likes StarkWare, an ethereum layer-two scaling community. The Israel-based firm not too long ago achieved a $2 billion valuation after elevating $50 million in a funding spherical led by Sequoia Capital. To be certain, Parallel Finance is constructing on high of certainly one of StarkWare’s merchandise StarkNet. 

Building the ‘Apple of finance’

These days, Ruan is not actively investing in crypto tasks. With the purpose of bringing DeFi to a billion individuals, he’s 100% centered on constructing Parallel Finance into the “Apple or Google of Finance.” 

The younger founder has quite a bit to show although.

DeFi, which refers to monetary companies actions automated by software program, is notoriously troublesome and sophisticated to navigate. Meanwhile, scams and frauds have mushroomed as merchants flock to high-yielding DeFi methods like yield farming. According to a Chainalysis report, buyers lost $2.8 billion to DeFi rug pulls in 2021.

With about $700 million in whole worth locked, Parallel Finance has a distinct segment market dominance as the most important third-party program on polkadot, in accordance to DeFi Llama.

To develop its 100,000 world customers to a billion, Ruan stated he plans to construct a one-stop ecosystem the place customers can conduct all kinds of monetary companies actions associated to their DOT token holdings, whether or not it is crowd loans, buying and selling, staking, or minting stablecoins.

The firm can even construct a permissioned app retailer to root out frauds and scams. 

“We will choose what sort of purposes can run on our chain in order that we are able to do away with the scams and problematic protocols,” he stated. 

Eventually, Parallel Finance will develop onto different chains in addition to polkadot. For now, he’s centered on making the platform easy-to-use, environment friendly, scalable, and compliant with regulatory necessities. 

“We are actually all in favour of constructing a holistic ecosystem the place when customers log in with their wallets, they will simply do the whole lot from funds to incomes yield to buying and selling derivatives with one click on,” he stated. “The solely approach that it really works for 1 billion individuals is to simplify the method as a substitute of letting customers go to 10 totally different web sites to do 10 various things.”