Recap AMA : ENREX-Why Enrex is destined to conquer the sustainable crypto market
We were so excited to host AMA with Julius, The COO of Enrex.io. He shared great insights about; competitors, project implementation and tokenomics and even measures to fight the effects of #coronavirus and the #FederalReserve anti-inflation measures — all was answered here —
This is also a re-share medium post from Enrex, original link : https://medium.com/@enrex/why-enrex-is-destined-to-conquer-the-sustainable-crypto-market-74518fd3c353
Shout out to ENREX TEAM ❤
Let’s start with a short introduction about yourself and the project
Alright! My name is Julius, I am the co-founder and chief of operations at Enrex. My background lies primarily with environmental commodities markets — educated in finance with a spice of carbon finance and energy markets. Most of my experience comes from working with environmental instruments such as renewable energy certificates, guarantees of origin, biofuels, energy efficiency, carbon allowances, carbon offsets, green gas and green hydrogen. That comes through regulatory perspective, as well as commercial and voluntary.
What makes Enrex unique compared to other environmental projects?
I would like to highlight two aspects (although I could spend the whole AMA session on this question alone).
1. Enrex actually caters for the need of consumers to be green/sustainable. This means that not only we provide the product or environmental instrument to offset your CO2 (or CO2 equivalent emissions), but we also assist in the process of calculating the footprint. One thing is to know your footprint if you work in the industry like me, but if you are specialized in something else — that could be a massive challenge.
2. We are building in such manner, that we could be scalable and integrated to any business operations, any project, website, service, etc. API integration and automation is the future, and there is nothing more efficient than other business being able to implement our technology with ease. Just to give an example (this is just an example, don’t get carried away with rumours here) — imagine Binance would provide you the option to buy ‘green spot bitcoin’. When you click buy 1 btc, Binance gives you 1 BTC, and at the same time the API request is triggered from their exchange to our platform to automatically calculate the CO2 footprint of that 1 BTC, source the environmental instrument, and consume it for your use. All in just one click.
What is your view and positioning regarding other environmental crypto projects?
Thats a good one. It is no secret that during 2021 there were some new projects stepping onto the scene. Environmental crypto projects (including Enrex) are popular. At the moment we position ourselves with a strong and unique value proposition, so whenever I get asked about ‘competition’, I honestly consider other crypto projects as supplementary or potential future partners.
The reason is that we are all working towards the same goals — better crypto adoption in an environmentally friendly way, at the same time, giving a strong boost to ecology markets. The more awareness and ease of use we can bring towards choosing climate-friendly options, the faster we can mitigate the raising issues of the climate change.
At Enrex, we already are in talks with multiples of environmental crypto startups, and if you think that we can find synergies together in the future, do not hesitate to hit us up.
How will the Enrex system make the purchasing of certificates easier than it is?
At the moment, participating in environmental markets is either directly contacting developers or OTC trading houses.
Developers usually are good in project building, and in order to be efficient at their expertise, they either wholesale their environmental instruments or simply use OTC trading houses to make that process easier. So, if you are a small scale consumer, or someone who does not have deep enough pockets or volume requests, the likelihood of purchasing from them is quite low.
Speaking of OTC trading houses, few problems arise:
1. Crypto is not an accepted form of payment. You can imagine how much friction this would create bringing the whole crypto market into being green.
How we solve this? Enrex accepts crypto as a form of payment.
2. Very extensive and long KYC processes. Regular traditional finance trading houses use extensive KYC processes for their compliance. First of all that requires a lot of administrative work and quite lots of official paperwork provided. Not only that, it can take weeks or sometimes even longer. The more distant your company or business is registered from markets such as North America or EU, the longer this can take.
How we solve this? KYC-free access to our offsetting application.
3. OTC trading houses have a lot of overhead costs such as operations, invoicing, compliance, risk, legal. Every transaction has to go through these departments. I love examples, so imagine that you operate a small business (or maybe even want to offset your personal CO2 emissions). Let’s say your order/invoice size is $20. For that trading house, they make a margin on that $20, not even the full amount. So you will either get charged ‘service fee of $1,000+’, or your request will be simply rejected. Why? Because you cannot expect a big company have invoicing, operations, compliance, risk, legal, etc go through all the time and effort to make a margin on a $20 invoice. Its simply waste of everyone’s time and money.
How does Enrex solve this? By creating an automated platform which can accommodate size as low as 1 tonne of CO2 or 1MWh of renewable energy.
You worked in traditional environmental instruments markets, what shortcomings did you see in the system?
Well, some of the reasons mentioned above definitely check the box already.
On top of that, the information regarding these instruments, how they work, how you can measure your footprint, is so scarce and difficult to find on the internet if you are not within the industry.
The processes are slow, the information is difficult to find (or sometimes even confusing/contradicting), and there is almost never clear and transparent pricing. Keep in mind, OTC is convenient for those who wish to keep information only to themselves to make the most money. When it comes to issues like climate change, we believe that our sustainable development goals should be priority, not profits for big established companies.
What’s the environmental impact that you believe Enrex can make?
Lets look at both sides of the puzzle. Demand and supply.
Demand.
We help the uncatered market segments to get what they want and need. We provide information and assistance on their requests (for example, how much CO2 offsetting do I need in order to make my crypto holdings/ nfts/ production processes to become carbon neutral).
Supply.
Once you build a gateway between such a giant industry as crypto and environmental instruments, the supply side benefits greatly. First of all, suppliers can have more means and ways to sell their commodities which gives a bit more power to the renewable energy and carbon-offset project developers. Secondly, the more demand you bring, the more capital flows to the supply side of the environmental industry. This means that more and more entrepreneus will start investing into environmental projects, helping to alleviate the fight against the climate change. At the moment, a lot of renewable projects have to rely on government subsidies and grants. Now imagine if it becomes more profitable to be building green projects. That would make development of such projects go up exponentially, as well as take away the burden of the taxpayers’ money when the market can thrive on it own. In other words — and I’ll be a bit cheesy here — we will empower the developers of climate friendly projects.
Partnerships are an important factor for every project. Can you tell us what companies are in your partner network?
Oh, this is a very very long list (we announce partners every few days on our twitter & telegram, and our website gets updated, although that can be done a bit more frequently, just difficult to keep up).
As I am coming primarily from environmental markets, I want to emphasize the environmental part. We have official partnerships with Greenlight Energy, one of the biggest renewables suppliers of the North American region. They have clients, such portfolio as PepsiCo, Microsoft, Starbucks. Another great partner is StarCB Group, that is responsible for over 400,000,000 tonnes of CO2 abatement, with their offices in Asia, US, Uk, and Switzerland.
Two of our advisors are coming from other top tier environmental suppliers — Vertis Environmental Finance and ACT Financial Solutions.
We have number of other great deal of environmental suppliers and projects coming along the way that are yet to be announced, both from crypto and traditional space.
I understand that Enrex is mainly focused on making cryptocurrency greener. Therefore the token of its ecosystem will allow us to invest in CO2 allowances and renewable energy certificates. How will the team sustain this potential project and make sure its longevity as well?
Excellent question. Enrex is built like a proper business, with a revenue model. All of our services charge a small % fee. So this means that the offsetting application that is to launch in 2022 Q1, and environmental exchange expected to launch in 2022 Q4, are generating revenues to sustain the project, as well as evolve it.
Enrex will look to scale through different trajectories — adding more environmental instruments, more regions and going more granular in certain places (for instance going country specific instead of EU region, or state specific instead of USA).
Lets not forget the part where demand for environmental instruments will only go up, due to voluntary and regulatory reasons. Most of the world has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. So these markets are definitely here to stay with ever growing demand. That’s an industry where you can focus on longevity, and not just a quick ‘trend’.
Enrex lets us buy, sell and use government mandated renewable energy certificates and CO2 allowances directly by means of crypto technology. So, do you have any permission coming from government to let us buy, sell and use government mandated renewable energy certificates?
Yes. The local governments typically regulate and oversee the issuance of environmental instruments. As we are not creating them, but providing an access as secondary marketplace, we do not fall under heavy restrictions or challenges.
When we talk about Association of Issuing Bodies (EU for renewable energy), IREC-Standard (renewable for nonEU and nonUS), MRETs (renewable energy for USA and Canada), we have full access.
If we talk about Verra (Verified Carbon Standard) and Gold Standard (tier1 labels and standards for carbon offsets globally) — we have access.
When we speak of EU ETS system for carbon allowances, access is also there.
To be fully transparent the only more challenging place is Chinese ETS (Chinese carbon allowance system). They started only in early 2021 and everything is still quite in experimental phase, as I like to put it. So out of everything, that might be the only place being a bit more tough to crack for the time being.
In this current market situation, do you have any strategy or anti-inflation system to make your token price stable and resistant to pumps?
Of course we implement traditional blockchain practices such as a staking mechanism that will be ready after the launch. On top of that, part of the fees collected from our platforms will be split into three parts:
- For upkeep and development of Enrex projects;
- Staking and additional incentives
- For token burning.
Not only that, the demand for Enrex token grows with demand for environmental instruments, so even when there is a bearish market in crypto, the environmental market demand is upward sloping due to increasing corporate and national sustainability targets up to 2050. While this cannot promise to be fully resistant to crypto market swings, it definitely provides strength and insurance.
The presence of non-crypto users is critical for mainstream adoption. What are your plans for attracting non-crypto users to your project? Is there any forthcoming collaboration that will include non-crypto users and real-world applications? Or ENREX will make other strategic moves to hold more people?
Yes, absolutely. Our go to market strategy is the following.
The demand is going to be tackled in three stages:
1. Crypto companies/projects that currently have no access to environmental markets (the ‘uncatered’ market, that needs assistance in learning about sustainability, educating on the tools, and providing the tools)
2. Corporates with ESG practices who want to step into crypto — as they follow high ESG standards, any type of crypto exposure will have to be done in an environmentally friendly way, these guys are already familiar with ESG practices, so less education on that, but need assistance in understanding how their crypto exposure can be environmentally friendly
3. Regular companies — once Enrex has scaled enough in size and reputation, it can also participate in competing for the regular clientele (regular meaning they dont fall into #1 and #2 brackets)
Imagine the endless possibilities if companies could integrate Enrex into their systems. Like always, I love examples:
Your car emits 1 tonne of CO2 equivalent and this is registered in your database and connected to Enrex? Boom, the API request sent to offset 1 tonne of CO2. This can be done to company cars, taxi providers, public transport sector, etc. And this is only touching the concept of vehicles. Now imagine if we can penetrate regular traditional markets such as agriculture, hospitality, production, etc.
Corona is rampant and has an impact on the crypto market, how do you get investors to buy this token? Is there a plan to list CEX after listing DEX?
Yes, Corona is rampant, political issues within the Ukraine/Russia region, FED hiking interest rates to battle inflation, energy prices crisis within EU. These are all real world problems and external factors that affect the whole world, both crypto and non-crypto.
How do we tackle it? Well, we focus on building to say the least, not losing the goal and focus given there are things in the world we have no control of. Like mentioned in the previous question, staking and burning mechanism are also methods to control supply pressure. And of course, additional confidence on having the demand from the environmental industry, as decisions to be green (CO2 offsetting and renewable energy usage) are not sensitive to external market factors. If companies dedicate themselves to follow environmental practices, they usually almost never cut costs on their environmental department (it would send a horrible signal to the market and shareholders).
Regarding listing: in March we plan to list in Serum and/or Raydium — Solana decentralized exchanges.
In July/August we are planning to list on centralized exchanges. Currently we are working on a strategy regarding timing and due diligence process with multiple centralized exchanges. Would provide names, but I do not like to spread rumours or overpromise until a signature is finalized.
We love this words from them :
Also, don’t forget to join and follow their social media for more info :
Website: https://www.enrex.io/
Telegram community: https://t.me/enrex_community
Telegram news-only: https://t.me/enrex_io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/enrex_crypto
Discord: https://discord.gg/enrex
Medium: https://medium.com/@enrex
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enrex.io/
These are the only verified official links!
