On a mission to make cryptocurrency less scary than traditional banks
“Blockchain is just a technology. AI is just a technology. Mass adoption is just a term. What people want is streamlined, free flowing, non-scary access to money.”
David Dobrovitsky was a musician from the age of three. Born in Russia, he emigrated to America when he was nine years old and continued his love of music training as a classical musician and violinist with the Eastman School of Music.
He notes, without boasting and just speaking factually, that he was something of a musical prodigy. Music was his entire life until recently where the arrival of children changed his career.
“I’ve always been interested in entrepreneurship and start-ups. With the arrival of my children, I realised this was something I wanted to do, and this career was moreover better suited to my new role as parent.”
Previously he needed to travel extensively competing and playing the violin. He was loaned a Stradivarius violin worth $5 million, a special violin from the famed violin maker’s golden period. Even the bow was worth $20,000 and both are now safely back in possession of his alma mater.
“It was a very intense period of my life and I was happy to move away. Just because you are good at something does not mean you should do that thing. Perhaps one day I hope to return to my first love, but maybe as a composer or even a song writer.”
Dobrovitsky moved into IT consulting. He discovered he had a natural curiosity for technology and an ability to generate sales. He quickly realised that success lay in owning his own company and with partners – he also realised early on that he wanted to create his own money, his own currency. This is reflected in his family lineage where his grandfather was a very successful entrepreneur even while living under the Soviet regime in Moscow.
So he began the first of four start-ups prior to settling on Glitter Finance and in hindsight he recognises that the first three began life as top heavy organisations.
“A start-up needs to be fleet of foot – having too many big players at the start can result in inertia. So I sat down with my wife and business partner to plan a fast moving project which ultimately became Glitter Finance.”
Other outcomes learned from his previous start-ups include an ability to analyse the market and to understand the niche and the need.
Element of magic
“And then there is always an element of magic. If you work in an office or are employed by someone, that is that, but when you set up your own start-up, then you are creating something out of thin air.
“And leave the heavy corporate elements out – a start-up is meant to disrupt and that needs people with disruptive minds working on the project.”
What is in common with the previous projects and Glitter Finance is that all four start-ups were in the DeFi space.
As soon as Dobrovitsky discovered DeFi he knew this was the future of finance.
“What I love about DeFi is that it is a democratisation of money. It’s crazy but the function of money previously hasn’t changed in hundreds of years whether people were using chocolate, spices or salt. There is a limited supply of money with some people having a lot and most having very little or none. But why can’t everyone have money, why can’t people magic money out of thin air?
“DeFi is that magic. It’s not about banking the unbanked but the freedom that comes with new money.”
Dobrovitsky argues that DeFi is much better than TradFi as there are fewer strings attached.
“For one, in DeFi you can do what you want with your money. There is not some benevolent entity watching you and how you spend your money. You can make your own decisions.”
Dobrovitsky quotes the crazy example in the US where a homeless person cannot open a bank account without an address.
“It’s a Catch 22 situation. Or consider the anti-money laundering rules where moving $3,000 from a Bitstamp account into a bank account triggers the receiving bank to quiz you on the source of the money. I want to ask them why they are asking me – do they have proof I have committed a crime? Why should a person in a suit question where I got the money and how I want to spend it?”
DeFi, according to Dobrovitsky, treats people like adults.
With Glitter Finance, the problem being solved in access to another ecosystem, Algorand. Dobrovitsky is very impressed by the Algorand platform and saw the need to fill a very specific niche of connecting Algorand to other blockchains.
Gamer rich ecosystem
Dobrovitsky could see the benefits of connecting Algorand with Solana, another non EVM compatible blockchain. He can see the cross-pollination impacts of connecting the gamer rich ecosystem of Solana with the more solid ecosystem of Algorand, in terms of increasing liquidity and reaching more people.
“This initial project is very niche and is a highly engineered product. In time, I would like to expand into a launchpad for blockchain projects. Actually, in time, my goal is to build a payment system for remittances where everything is easy – where money flows easily and people are connected easily.
“And things should not be so scary.”
Dobrovitsky is not impressed by the blockchain trilemma – often quoted from Vitalik Buterin as being the inability of having all three elements of decentralisation, scalability and security available in the one blockchain.
“Blockchain is just a technology. AI is just a technology. Mass adoption is just a term. What people want is streamlined, free flowing, non-scary access to money. Blockchain is meant to serve the people – without them having to be technical or understand the technology.”
Dobrovitsky also knows that being in a start-up can lead to painful moments, such as when the $GLI token launched earlier in March. A series of potentially catastrophic incidents saw the token go to near zero and had the community up in arms, even to the point where an influencer called the project a rug-pull.
“For starters the tech is there – anyone can test it right now and we welcome their feedback. The actual TGE hit a number of mishaps including the Market Maker missing the launch date but we have recovered – and not many projects could do this if it wasn’t a viable project.”
“We also feel our token $XGLI is heavily undervalued given our grand long-term plans to create the first fully functioning cross-chain Algorand-Solana-Luna-Polygon bridge and, as such, we will be buying back our tokens heavily and immediately. We have engaged a new market maker and discussed a specific strategy to enable this.
“We are also 100% focused on launching our first Solana-Algo bridge on the mainnet in the coming one to two months. It will be the first bridge of its kind. We also are working on other software solutions such as mass disbursement systems for Solana and an AI-based trading and AMM/DEX solution so plan to issue plenty of good news as soon as it is available.
Glitter Finance will be listing to both CEXs and DEXs of high quality in the near term once Dobrovitsky has stabilised the token on Bibox.
Making money out of thin air was never going to be an easy ride. But it’s a testament to the determination of Dobrovitsky that the token is now hovering around the 10 cent mark after its rollercoaster birth.