Mounir Benchemled | Facilitating Decentralized Finance | The Curious Learners Ep. 27

The Curious Learners

Hi everyone. My guest today is Mounir Benchemled. He is the founder of Paraswap, which is one of the leading DEX aggregators in crypto markets.
Mounir's entry into blockchain dates back to 2013 and he had a front seat to the development of crypto markets since then, first as a user and then builder of DeFi (and this is before it was called DeFi). He is in the camp of founders, who have been frustrated with existing products and decided to build something new.
Mounir and I had a deep dive discussion into the premise of Blockchain when it comes to money, why decentralized finance matters and of course everything about Paraswap. Here are some highlights from the show:
- What is your biggest regret as far as crypto markets? (I actually didn't ask this question on the show, but Mounir gave it away:)) --> Not buying Bitcoin in 2013, but instead focusing too much on the tech!
- Motivation to build Paraswap? --> Offering a great user experience to execute transactions in a truly decentralized way.
- Signal of product market fit? What made you say yes, this is working? --> First iteration didn't work due to targeting wrong user base. But then changed the focus to the then niche defi community. Moved from monitoring number of visits to volumes traded, which was the signal.
- Most satisfactory part of the journey so far? --> Building trust with people and seeing them transact millions of dollars via Paraswap software
- DeFi and TradFi working together? --> TradFi using DeFi for its back-end, leveraging the security of the Blockchain infrastructure, while bringing liquidity that is whitelisted and KYC'ed
- Regulation's place in DeFi? --> Countries should support the innovation brought by Blockchain and let projects build. Consensus in regulating crypto around the globe with an iterative approach would at the end achieve clarity and incentivize institutions to come into DeFi
- Paraswap in the next 3-5 years? --> Serving the whole digital and real world assets in a truly decentralized way and making trading as accessible as possible to all users. North Star: the whole team disappearing for three months and coming back to an operating platform!
- Most curious about? --> Learning more about history in the fraction of time during the day not spent on DeFi:)
Please enjoy my conversation with Mounir Benchemled.