Maximilian Bruckner on an Intro into DeFi

[00:00:00] Umar: Welcome to the Accountant Quits, brought to you by Request Finance, an all-in-one platform for crypto organizations and freelancers to easily manage and track the invoices, salaries, and expenses in a compliant way. On this podcast, we discuss how blockchain will impact the accounting profession and how accountants should prepare themselves for the future of work.

[00:00:23] My name’s Umar your host. And even if some might refer to me as the accountant gone rogue, my job is to provide you with the blockchain knowledge you need, that will be relevant for the accounting industry as a whole.

[00:00:37] Welcome to Episode 27. Blockchain has democratized access to financial services, by removing the middleman and fuelled a new movement with decentralized finance, better known as DeFi.

[00:00:49] Defi enables anyone in the world to have access to financial services from the comfort of their home and uses smart contracts that replaces the intermediary, such as the bank. You, the user can unlock all financial services that traditional finance offers such as lending, borrowing, trading, investing, and so forth.

[00:01:11] But no intermediary means two things. The onus is now on you to manage your assets diligently. And you have to recognize that you’re now on the new learning journey and we’ll have to get accustomed to a new DeFi jargon, like what does a Dex mean, what is staking, is non-custodial important?

[00:01:32] This episode has been long coming, and to give you an entry into DeFi, I have the pleasure to have Maximilian Bruckner, the Head of Marketing and Sales at 21e6 Capital. Maximillian advises professional investors on having exposure to crypto with low downside risk.

[00:01:49] In this episode, you will learn what is DeFi and what are its key use cases, How can you get started in DeFi today without breaking the bank, what are some of the risks to have in mind, what is the difference between staking , liquidity mining, yield farming, and much more.

[00:02:07] Maximilian welcome to the show, man. It’s a pleasure to have you here.

[00:02:12] Maximilian: Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

[00:02:14] Umar: To start, could you share a bit of your personal background and how you first started in blockchain and what’s your role currently at 21e6 .

[00:02:24] Maximilian: Yeah, sure. Growing up by, well, certainly call it, had the privilege of moving around quite a bit with my family. So I’m originally from Germany, but, we’ve spent considerable time when I was a child in Spain and South Africa, and in Canada, before moving back to Germany.

[00:02:39] I guess from a young age, it was always a bit of a topic for me. Like how do you actually move money around between these countries, right? How do you get money into South Africa? How do you get it out of South Africa to you get it into Canada and so on.

[00:02:50] And then when I moved back to Germany to study at Frankfurt School, I quite quickly well came into contact with blockchain, to the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center and professor Dr. Phillip Sandner, who was there at Frankfurt school, and a lot of friends having worked with him. And that was really the first time I heard about it I would say, apart from maybe the occasional headline news about Bitcoin breaking a thousand dollars at the time. I mean, I kind of knew about, but didn’t really care for, but then when I got really into an environment where it was a constant topic at this university, it really sparked my interest.

[00:03:25] And especially then the allure of like being able to move funds worldwide without really worrying about the middleman or paying fees. And so on was quite interesting. And well, I would say, I think mid 2020, still fairly recently, I took the plunge into the cold water and applied for a position at the International Token Standardization Association.

[00:03:47] I was there as Executive Director for about a year and a half working together with Professor Sandner on creating a unified classification framework for token. So for cryptocurrencies, as well as the standard identifier. So as part of that research, as part of this classification research, we probably must’ve read like a 100-150 white papers on different tokens together with my colleagues there.

[00:04:10] And that’s also when I got in touch with DeFi then inevitably, right. And kind of figuring out how that ecosystem works. And now since January I’m at 21e6 capital, like you said, working on kind of advising professional investors and institutional investors on how to get into crypto, how to take the first steps and in particular, how to minimize their downside risk and the volatility that they experience, because that’s one of the biggest showstoppers for a lot of professionals, and institutions, especially in Germany that are thinking of entering the space.

[00:04:43] Umar: Perfect. Why don’t we start by starting with just DeFi. I recently read a really powerful tweet from someone who’s been, who had to leave Ukraine following the ongoing current conflict.

[00:04:57] And I’m going to read this tweet to the listeners, which said, My Ukrainian credit cards don’t work anymore. I’m safe physically in Kazakhstan, but all my savings are gone. Crypto is the only money I still have. And today I can say without exaggeration that Bitcoin, Ethereum and NFTs are going to save my life while I can’t come back home. This tweet was from, I’m not sure how to pronounce his name, but his Twitter handle is @usleepwalker , I was confused to read that.

[00:05:28] I thought this was really powerful for anyone who maybe has not yet invested or really looked into Bitcoin and Ethereum at how, given that now Ukraine, like it’s impossible for you to withdraw your funds from the bank but having Bitcoin or Ethereum means you can still access your funds.

[00:05:48] Now going to DeFi, so everyone listening has a basic idea how traditional finance works. Defi or short for decentralized finance allows you to borrow, save, invest, and trade, but in a decentralized manner, meaning there’s no middleman, there’s no bank, there’s no KYC for you to get access to these financial services. You only need access to the internet. I want to ask you how DeFi democratizes access to financial services and how easy is it for someone to start.

[00:06:24] Maximilian: Good question. Yeah. So decentralized finance, democratizes the access in the sense that all you need is like basically your phone and an internet connection or your laptop and internet connection. Right? So the idea is that it helps to bank the unbanked. And interestingly enough, also unbank the bank, so freedom from middleman.

[00:06:43] One of the things that I mentioned first, right, moving money across borders, keeping the access to money that you might have and not being reliant on a government, on a bank for keeping your funds safe is kind of the key, the key differentiator here.

[00:06:59] And I think, I mean, that’s a big part of blockchain itself where decentralized finance comes in is that it allows you to take out loans, borrow right, have savings accounts all on the blockchain, all governed by smart contracts. So by code, meaning that you don’t, there’s no third party that you have to trust. It’s all written in the code, really everything that can happen. So that’s, I would say how it democratizes its financial services access for everyone.

[00:07:25] Easy to take loans, to borrow, to lend and so on. How easy is it for someone to start? I think decentralized finance in particular has a bit of a problem when it comes to user experience and user interface. Quite often, they are a bit confusing. They’re not as straightforward as, as we would like them to be.

[00:07:43] I’m sure there’s a change coming and it’s something that needs to be worked on. So it’s not, I guess not the easiest thing in the world before moving on to send decentralized finance, things like that. I would recommend people to start with just moving around maybe a little bit of ether or whatever it is between a wallet or two wallets that they might have, because that’s something that you will be doing a lot in defi is.

[00:08:06] Maximilian: Well transactions, right, between your wallet and smart contracts and so on. And you need to make sure that you know how to do those because in DeFi, if you do it wrong, if you click incorrectly and your funds are gone, right? So that is part of the risk that comes with it.

[00:08:20] Umar: Yeah, it’s part of the beauty and of the risk. There’s no customer support for you that you can call like with the bank, if you’ve wrongly sent your funds to like wallet address or you send it to a wrong blockchain network. So the funds might be lost. So it does have its fair level of risk. And I encourage everyone to start slowly and not go crazy in the beginning.

[00:08:43] What I want to ask you is, well, moving on to what I think is one of the greatest innovations in finance in the recent years is Uniswap. So people are familiar to centralized exchanges. Without getting too technical on uniswap, could you compare it with like a traditional exchange where people are familiar to and how would that work? Because now there’s like, there’s no people actually working in that exchange.

[00:09:14] Maximilian: Sure, so I think it’s, what’s important to understand is how does an centralized exchange actually work? Like how does the price discovery work there?

[00:09:21] And in the centralized exchange, the exchange keeps track of an order book where all the buy and all the sell orders come in, right? All the bids and all the asking prices. And that’s how the price is determined. You kind of, when you say, I want to buy a Bitcoin for price X, the exchange kind of just moves down the lists, right.

[00:09:38] And always the most recent bids and the most recent ask are the relevant prices where you need third party, like this exchange to keep track of that. A decentralized exchange doesn’t use order books. That decentralized exchange uses liquidity pools, which work kind of by taking like two assets that you want to trade and having them in this pool at a set ratio.

[00:10:01] And let’s say you have ETH to Bitcoin. And if I come in and I say, hey, I kind of want to, I only want to get Ethereum and I’ll give you Bitcoin then the balance of this pool is changed, right? I’m putting in Bitcoin to get ether, meaning that now in this pool, there’s more Bitcoin then than there in ether and that’s then by an algorithm, how the price is determined and how the demand and supply is there determined by the ratio of assets in that pool.

[00:10:29] Umar: Now a lot of people, maybe they’ve tried to invest in crypto, but with crypto you can always make your investments like working in your favor, there’s numerous ways. Like you can do that. So let’s say if someone has just started investing in crypto and they went on a centralized exchange, like Binance Coinbase to buy their crypto now on the centralized exchange, like of course you can, there are options for you to stake your assets, but there’s this famous like expression in crypto that not your keys, not your coins. So meaning that if your funds, like if you store it, if you keep it on a centralized exchange, you always run the risk of losing it to hacks. So that’s why it’s always like advisable for people to transfer their funds off the exchange, to like a wallet.

[00:11:26] It can be an online wallet, it can be an offline cold wallet like Trezor or Ledger. Now, what I want to ask you is how can people start to generate passive income from their crypto or what are the easy ways for people to start with? For example, they can stake their coins or they can provide liquidity to a DeFi protocol. Could you maybe start by explaining what’s the actual difference between staking and providing liquidity?

[00:11:55] Maximilian: Yeah, so when you look at staking, staking is usually, well, really only possible on blockchains that use proof of stake as their consensus mechanisms. So Bitcoin, for example, uses proof of work. That’s where Bitcoin mining comes in. Proof of stake, uses staking. So you say, for example, if you hold a certain amount of that cryptocurrency, that’s using this proof of stake mechanism, you would say, okay, I kind of give, not really give, but I provide my cryptos, my amount of this currency to the network to help secure the network. And then as a reward for doing this, you may receive staking rewards in form of this particular token, right? Like when you, mine, Bitcoin, you receive, support the network in that way you receive Bitcoin as a return.

[00:12:44] So on a proof of stake blockchain, like whatever, the Solana�s proof of stake, you would receive SOL in return for staking, but those are usually, especially when you’re in small amounts. It’s not that large, the reward you get. The more you stake, the higher the chance of receiving this reward.

[00:13:02] When you provide liquidity, you are providing liquidity for an exchange pair on a decentralized exchange. So I mentioned earlier the concept of liquidity pools, right? Someone has to provide the liquidity in those pools that is being used for those trades. And that’s what you can do. And these always work in pairs. So if I want to provide liquidity to a pool, let’s use the example from earlier Bitcoin/Ether pool, I will have to provide the same amount of bitcoin as I provide ether to that pool and in return for essentially depositing, my Bitcoin and Ethereum there, and hence I’m allowing it to be traded. I get liquidity LP tokens, which are kind of my receipt for getting my initial back out of the pool.

[00:13:54] But also I now receive a percentage of the transaction fees generated by the decentralized exchange for transactions in that pool. And maybe another important concept. And for decentralized exchanges here is that on a decentralized exchange by creating these liquidity pools, you can create any trading pairs, right. On centralized exchanges, that authority, that exchange determines what you can swap for what, but on a Uniswap the automated market-maker or any other decentralized exchange, there can be trading pairs for anything. Because of this concept of liquidity pools, as long as you have liquidity forward, you can have a trading pair.

[00:14:30] Umar: I want to ask you a follow up question. So when people look at liquidity pools, some of the rate of returns like might vary quite a bit. What should people like be paying attention to before investing and what are some of the key concentrations for them to have in mind when looking for example, at the liquidity pool, which is like 50% stable coins and 50% Ether as opposed to maybe 50% Bitcoin or 50% ether.

[00:14:57] Maximilian: So. I think there are two things to consider. So first we need to figure out, okay, what actually determines how much return you get, right? How much percentage you get for providing, how much passive income you get. And that depends on one, the volume of transactions, of course, because the more transactions there are through that pool, the more fees are generated, but also how much of the liquidity in the pool you actually provide. Right? What percentage of the pool is due to you that determines what percentage of the transaction fees you then can receive? So that’s one consideration, right? So as the liquidity in a pool grows, your yield will decrease.

[00:15:34] So there’s a big thing in decentralized finance, where people are trying to move around quite fast or find new opportunities quickly because the yield, they generally decrease quickly as more people join this liquidity pool.

[00:15:49] The other thing to consider, especially in stable coin pools is the concept of impermanent loss. So, you will receive back kind of, you don’t receive back in kind the tokens that you deposited, right? So, if I have pool of ether and USDT a stable coin, And the price of ether rises, while I have my tokens in there, when I then go to redeem my tokens from this liquidity pool, I will actually receive more USDT and less Ether.

[00:16:19] So essentially I’ve made a loss well, depending on, of course, depending on how much yield I was able to generate off of it while I had my liquidity in there. But this is what’s called impermanent loss, right. Because if I would’ve just held my ether and see it appreciate in value and then sell it, I probably would’ve made more than if I put it in that liquidity pool and then received less in return. And the reason for that, because this liquidity pool needs to be balanced and a certain preset balance. So it can’t give me back the same amount of ether as I put in. Right. Because ether went up in value.

[00:16:52] So there’s more demand for it, instead I’ll just get more of the stablecoins back. Maybe one more thing to add in general, it is always advised to invest in liquidity pools where you are bullish on, let’s say both of the assets in there, right? Because then you can avoid impermanent loss.

[00:17:12] All right. You you’ve touched on the important concept of impermanent loss there. I’ll just go back as well with the risk on staking. So let’s say if I do have some Ethereum and I want to, I want to stake it, so I need to choose a delegator for me to stake my assets. What are some of the, for a beginner to start, some of the key considerations for them to have in mind?

[00:17:37] Maximilian: So, to be honest, I’m not 100% sure where ethereum is at right now on their journey to become proof of stake. Just because I’ve been a little more active on like some alternative layer 1 recently, but in general, the idea is that the more you like the more you stake, so the more capital you have that you stake, the higher your chance of getting those rewards for it. And so a delegator is basically just a pool of people who are saying, okay, we’re going to put all of our staking together and then we’ll split the rewards accordingly. Right? So you say, well, the more we have in our pool, the higher, the chance of the pool, getting, getting those rewards for staking as one combined delegator then, and then we’ll split that amongst us, depending on how much you’ve staked in that delegator.

[00:18:24] As far as the risks go, and again, I’m not 100% informed on this topic, but I think one of the biggest risks, and this is a risk in DeFi as well in general. So in liquidity provision as well is a smart contract risk, right? There could be an exploit in the smart contracts of those delegators, something could go wrong.

[00:18:43] There could be a hack, and that’s kind of like a constant risk you have when operating in Web3 is that protocol could be hacked. You could lose your funds that way. There could be some form of exploit that developers are unaware of.

[00:18:58] To add one more thing, something that I actually just came to mind when staking. You can also lock your coins, right? So you say, I will, I commit to staking my crypto for 12 months for a year, for four years. Even usually it goes up to that, then that means you can’t redeem these coins for that period that you’ve locked them in for. So if the price of that cryptocurrency tumbles, you’re kind of, you have a problem because you can’t get out.

[00:19:24] Your crypto is locked in right for staking. So you’re not going to be able to sell it off and kind of minimize your losses. So that’s the risk to consider.

[00:19:33] Umar: Yeah correct. Unless you�re with some strong Layer 1 and you actually don’t really mind.

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[00:21:35] Moving on to, so we spoke about staking, we spoke about liquidity mining. There’s another concept in DeFi, which is fairly popular called yield farming. And that yield farming offers like some of the craziest returns in crypto Now yield farming is I would say maybe, I don’t know if it’s advisable for people who just got into crypto, but could you briefly touch on what yield farming is?

[00:21:59] And again, some of the risks that people need to be aware of?

[00:22:04] Maximilian: Yeah. So basically when you are yield farming, you are locking your assets into certain protocols that will then automatically generate a certain passive income on those crypto assets and they do it through, for example, providing liquidity mining in some places, right.

[00:22:22] And generally the idea is that they automatically move around your assets to wherever there is the highest yield, granted that the trends, like the upside and yields you receive with the upside in APY is actually in a certain ratio to, I believe the transaction cost. So they want to make sure that it actually makes sense as opposed to just moving stuff around constantly and paying a lot of transaction fees, but not actually profiting.

[00:22:50] So the reward is basically the annualized percentage yield that you get, depending on where you’re staking your coins. And then, then the idea is that. The coins will always kind of automatically in some sense, be moved to where there is a high yield. You can also of course, do a lot of this manually, and you can also see different yield farms will provide different yields, different returns.

[00:23:12] So that’s also something that you need to figure out. And it’s a very, very fast moving universe. So something that might be very attractive today, in two weeks time might only generate 1% and people have moved on and there’s something else. There’s something interesting, and again, the big risk here, of course, is the smart contract risks.

[00:23:32] A lot of yield farming protocols are, are often kind of victims of some form of hack. Of course, I think to not paint too bleak a picture, these hacks don’t happen constantly. And it’s not like at all times you should be scared that your funds are going to be lost because there’s going to be a hack. It’s just something you need to consider.

[00:23:52] Umar: Yeah. And from your early days, let’s say yield farming and maybe some of the mistakes that you made, like for someone who’s just starting today and wants to like play around, is there an easy way for people to start? Of course, I’d advise them to maybe start on the cheaper blockchain networks like Fantom or Solana or the Binance smart chain.

[00:24:15] Of course they can also use Layer 2s like now with polygon, but what are some of the easy ways for people to start?

[00:24:24] Maximilian: Yeah. So like you said, I think the first thing is if you’re comfortable with, I would recommend not immediately using Ethereum because of the high transaction fees. And especially when you’re using just a little bit of money and not don’t have like a big capital moving around, then those really hurt.

[00:24:40] Cause it can be like hundreds of dollars on one transaction, right. So that only makes sense if you’re moving tens of thousands really. So start on Fantom, I like Fantom a lot. That it has quite a big DeFi ecosystem, quite a booming DeFi ecosystem, or Avalanche is also interesting in my opinion, Luna has also growing, Terra.

[00:24:59] And I think probably the easiest thing. If you want to, one thing you can do, if you want to be quite safe is deposit in stable coin liquidity pairs on Curve. Because there’s no impairment loss there, right. Because both of these coins will always have the value of one. Another thing you can do is use Yearn Finance, which I think is now also available on Fantom, which is quite interesting because it’s kind of like, it’s been one of the protocols that’s been around for a very long time.

[00:25:30] So in some sense you would think that it would be a bit safer. So you can use that and it’s quite easy to use those vaults. It has quite a good user interface already, or what’s really simple is just set up a savings account. So if you go with Terra, right, there’s the Anchor Protocol, which is essentially like kind of a bank right you can earn, or you can borrow stable coins from there in UST.

[00:25:55] Maximilian: That’s the stable coin from Terra, or you deposit your UST, which is then used kind of to like, it would be in a normal bank, right? If you have a savings account, but the difference is here, you actually make 20% interest on your deposit. So that’s something that’s quite simple to do. You just check in your dollars and watch as you make 20% year over year.

[00:26:18] Again, there’s a risk there, right? On the one hand, we don’t know how sustainable it’s going to be. So it might be that maybe in a month, you’re not going to be making 20% there, but it’s held quite well so far for, at least for the last half a year or so I would say. I think that’s an easy way to start trying out Anchor.

[00:26:37] Umar: That’s excellent. I must say that you explain DeFi, like very clearly. I hope the listeners share the same feeling, but you make it, you really make it sound simple when you explain. I want to move on, like maybe to something a little bit more fun now and speak about some of the use cases in blockchain that you recently learned about and that you found fascinating.

[00:27:01] It can be DeFi, it can be in anything, can be NFTs. Have you recently learned something that you find fascinating?

[00:27:12] Maximilian: Yeah things are happening at an amazing pace. And it is hard to keep track. I mean, even for me working in the crypto space, right, you still have your day to day operations that you focus on that don’t really have to do with being in touch with crypto Twitter, and what’s going on in DeFi.

[00:27:27] Something that was very interesting and cool that I think was a big hype last year was abracadabra.money. And that protocol. I think, well, it’s quite, multi-chain actually, I think it’s on Ethereum, there�s a bridge from Avalanche, Fantom as well.

[00:27:41] But what was interesting about that is that it allowed you to take out loans right, in stable coins and that you would deposit in turn. So kind of your, the security you would give could be interest bearing tokens, right. Then I think that’s again another, I guess, complicated idea, but you can, when you receive liquidity tokens from some, like, I think Uniswap v3 allows it.

[00:28:08] And I think on your end as well, you can have it. Those are like, this is your receipt to receive the yield that we spoke about earlier, right? You deposit liquidity or you deposit in a yield farm. And then that LP tokens is what earns that yield for you. So you, what you can do on abracadabra is you can borrow. So you deposit that and borrow a stable coin against it. And effectively, if your yield on that token that you deposited to borrow against is higher than the interest you have to pay for your loan, then your loan, like the interest is repaying itself. You don’t have to worry about it. So that’s quite interesting because there’s basically no interest on your loan because the asset that you deposited is paying it off by itself through the yield that generates.

[00:28:51] So that’s something that was quite interesting to me. And then like you could use, and then there’s some crazy strategies that you can do with it, right? Like you borrow against an interest bearing asset, have used the money that you got from that to deposit again, into that yield farm. And you can kind of begin doing these loops.

[00:29:08] Of course, that, I mean, that’s basically leverage. So you should be careful with that, then you can quickly get liquidated and get burned, but that was quite an interesting. For me also, I think I’m starting to find DAOs more and more interesting. And the idea of Olympus DAO, which I think is a lot to get into right now.

[00:29:31] But if somebody is interested in researching it, that’s quite interesting Olympus DAO, quite a crazy kind of, I guess you could call it economic experiment and game theory experiment about a stable or like a free floating currency that could that, well, it’s supposed to be sustainable, but the idea is that it does not rely on backing by dollar or something. It’s backed solely by other decentralized currencies. That’s quite interesting as well, but yeah, something I would recommend you to do your own research on.

[00:30:06] Umar: Sure. Yeah. I did see Olympus DAO, but not so much about abracadabra and this is something maybe I’m noting it down and I’m going to be checking it out this weekend probably.

[00:30:19] I’m looking at the time and this has been going quite fast and before we wrap up two more questions, there’s a question that I usually ask to my guests when they come to the show. And as the last question is, do you have a favorite quote or a maximum that you live with?

[00:30:35] Maximilian: Yeah I have quote. That, to be honest, I don’t quite know why, but for some reason that just resonates with me. And I read it, this is going to sound a bit stupid, but I read it on a scented candle that I bought. That’s how I found out about the quote. But the quote is actually by Blaise Pascal, who was a mathematician.

[00:30:57] And the quote is nothing gives rest, but the sincere search for truth. That’s a good one. I don’t know what it is about it, but it kind of like, it resonates with me.

[00:31:09] Umar: Yeah I like .Next Maximilian so we�re coming to a close on the podcast today. Before we go, so people who maybe are still new to DeFi and to summarize everything, what you said today, what would be the advice that you’d have for people? The title of the episode today was an Intro to DeFi. If you had like an advice to give to people to, to start their DeFi journey. In a few words, what would that be?

[00:31:40] Maximilian: Just start, like I’m serious. Cause that’s the hardest, like take the first step, just start read some articles.

[00:31:48] There’s so much information and good information online about how to get started in decentralized finance. A lot of good articles can be found on medium.com. There’s lots of good blogs there. So get started. It’s very easy to do some research to learn and you’ll very quickly find that, it’s going to feel overwhelming at first. And there’s kind of the expression of going down the rabbit hole. Cause it just, it never ends. Like you can go deeper and deeper and deeper into it. So just begin by reading up, start with some of the things that have been around for longer, like, you know, Uniswap, that kind of stuff.

[00:32:24] Compound Maker, Aave and yeah, and I mean, if you’ve, if you haven’t done anything so far, and you�re completely new, start with setting up a Metamask, That’s what I would recommend. And that’s simple. You can Google the tutorial. It’s a simple Chrome extension to start with, start by setting up a wallet, buying something on a centralized exchange and sending it to your own wallet.

[00:32:47] Umar: Yeah, I completely agree. And this is something that I, as takeaway, I want people to, for today to have is. There’s already a few incumbent players now in DeFi. So the maker DAO, the uniswap the compound, the aave, if you have an understanding of how those protocols work and those DAOs work, and then on whichever network you move on to, it’s going to be like the same principles that apply.

[00:33:13] So if you understand how liquidity mining works, how the basics of yield farming, so then you can apply the same knowledge to different blockchain networks. So it’s the same thing. And then, I mean, like you said before, it’s a rapidly evolving space. We had this movement started like two years ago, not even in the summer of 2020, and today it seems like, I mean, if people have been have started in 2020, and today it’s only two years, but it feels like so much more time.

[00:33:45] Yeah. And you said, so people just have to start and that’s the best advice for anyone. Maximilian. Thanks a lot for coming today. I really enjoyed learning from you. And again, I think you explained everything very clearly. These are complex topics, but you’re able to make it simple for the listeners.

[00:34:03] Maximilian: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I think for me, the struggle is always worrying whether or not I’m actually explaining things correctly or not, not spreading any kind of misinformation. So I did my best and I hope that everyone can take something from it.

[00:34:18] Umar: Before we go, if people want to reach out to you on social media or at 21e6 Capital, how should they do so?

[00:34:26] Maximilian: I think the easiest way is just reach out to me on LinkedIn, Maximilian Bruckner. It’s just my name. It’ll probably be in the episode description my name, so that’s easiest way. Send me a connection request. Let me know that you came from this podcast and then we can have a chat.

[00:34:42] Umar: Perfect. Thanks a lot. I will include everything in the show notes. We’ll speak very soon.

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