Bob Ras, Co-Founder of Sologenic, on Tokenization of Real World Assets, 24/7 Trading, and The Future of Tokenization | Ep. 292
In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Bob Ras, Co-Founder of Sologenic, talks about tokenization of assets, how tokenization democratizes asset ownership, and building on XRP Ledger Networks.
About Bob Ras
Bob Ras is the Co-founder of Sologenic, a sophisticated ecosystem built on top of the XRP Ledger. It facilitates investing and trading between crypto and non-blockchain assets such as stocks, ETFs, and commodities from the top 30+ global stock exchanges. Alongside his work at Sologenic, Bob also co-founded Coreum, the 3rd generation, layer 1 smart blockchain built to serve as a core infrastructure of future Blockchain applications. Bob is a serial entrepreneur who has established several ventures within the manufacturing, tech, and blockchain industries. Bob has been a keynote speaker at many reputable Blockchain summits globally, including Malta AI & the Future Blockchain Summit in Dubai.
Bob Ras gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview, which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication, provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com.
Highlights Of The Interview
- Tokenization of stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.
- Coreum, the 3rd generation, layer 1 smart blockchain
- Building on XRP Ledger Networks
- How tokenization democratizes asset ownership
- Unveiling the Liquidity Crisis: How Tokenization Unlocks $30 Trillion in Global Assets
Full Transcript Of The Interview
Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. It’s your host, Matt Zahab. We are Buzzin as always, and I am super pumped to have the one and only Bob Ras on the show today, Co-Founder of Sologenic, a sophisticated ecosystem built on top of the XRP Ledger that facilitates investing and trading between crypto and non-blockchain assets such as stocks, ETFs, commodities, and more from the top 30 plus global stock exchanges. Alongside his work at Sologenic, Bob also Co-Founded Coreum, the third generation Layer 1 smart blockchain built to serve as a core infrastructure for future blockchain appliances. A true serial entrepreneur who has established several ventures within manufacturing, tech, and blockchain industries, Bob has been a keynote speaker at many reputable blockchain summits including Malta AI, the future blockchain summit in Dubai, and he’s coming in hot from the west coast of my own country, Canada. Bob, super pumped to have you on. Welcome to the show. How you doing, my friend?
Bob Ras
I’m doing well. Thanks for having me today, Matt.
Matt Zahab
Pumped to have you on here. You and the team have built something absolutely electric at Sologenic, a true behemoth, and I can’t wait to get into that. But before we do, you’ve done some incredible and crazy shit in your lifetime. You are a true builder. You set an idea to something. You make it happen. You make that magic pop. We absolutely love to see that. Give us a little bit of background on yourself. What you’ve done, maybe a little bit about your childhood. What about tech tickles your fancy so much. Some of the crazy and cool things you built, and then we’ll get into Sologenic, Coreum, and some of the fun crypto stuff.
Bob Ras
Thank you, Matt. Yeah, a little bit about my childhood. I was born in a family that my dad was one of the very first C++ engineer. I’m talking about probably 30, 35 years ago. He was one of the very first C++ engineer in the world. So I grew up with computer around me. I can remember the very first time that my dad brought a computer home. It was actually the sides of the room. So we had a room. It was just a computer room. So we had a room actually, and the computer was there. So the whole room, it was a massive computer. Fast forward, I actually got involved into manufacturing. It’s a little bit surprising, but I got into manufacturing around 2008. I was pretty young. So the way I’ve done that, probably many people are not really aware of that. So what I’ve done during those days actually hire a team of scientists. And they came up with a formula for me. I sent them to the lab. They came up with a formula. We patterned the formula. And then we took the formula to China. We start manufacturing that product. That’s how I really got into business. And again, I was pretty young. I was about 23, 24 years old during that time. And so after a few years, we’ve done very well. We used to export to over six to eight countries during those days, which was a success. So the factory that we used to work with, we used to use them as an outsourcing factory, they actually gave us an offer to purchase some of their shares. So we made a deal with them. So I actually acquired the majority ownership at the factory. So I started to work on that factory. I expanded the factory, the production line. And after a few years, I sold back the ownership to the original owners. And it was about 2016, 2017 and during that time, I was really involved into crypto. Crypto was pretty new. And that’s exactly how I got into technology. So around 2017, I completely changed my focus into technology. Elaborate about my background. I’m not a developer, but my major degree is marketing. So I’m very familiar with coding. During my college time, I actually passed two years program for computer science as well.
Matt Zahab
And just taking a step back to the product that you manufactured in China. What was that?
Bob Ras
It was actually, believe it or not, it was brake pads for cars. But I realized. Everyone’s saying, oh, wow, why brake pads? Because I was actually, I realized that there is a gap, right? Actually, the way that it happened, so I was driving my car and I had to keep changing my brake pad because it was making a lot of noises, right? And then I was thinking, OK, what if I come up with a formula? Because obviously, there are not a lot of researchers on this product. So what if we do some research and come up with a formula that’s quiet and it’s actually give you a better life span, right? So that’s exactly how that idea was born. And we’ve done like about a year and a half research and development. And then we came up with that formula. We were successful to create that formula.
Matt Zahab
I mean, that’s wild. It’s just of all things getting into breakpads. So you and the team at Sologenic are creating a platform that helps institutions, integrates, and manage tokenization across their whole business. Now, saying this out loud, you can hear how useful, and obviously it’s front of mind utility, but it’s so broad. What exactly, like give us some real world examples of this. Cause when I think of this, I’m like, holy shit, this is exactly what we’re looking for. And in the real life and present day, I’ve thought of the use case many times, we’re going to the store, I’m in Mexico right now, there’s 7/11 everywhere. I go to 7/11, I wanna buy an electrolyte, or I wanna buy a bottle of tequila, and I can pay with an Apple share, or I can pay with something tokenized instead of my Amex or Mexican pesos. So I absolutely love this. I love that you guys are making it happen, but give me some use cases, some examples of how you’re helping real world companies, get into the tokenization game of their stocks, bonds, real estate, et cetera.
Bob Ras
I think there are a lot of benefits when you come to the tokenization of real-world assets. Let’s just focus on securities. Let’s focus on stocks because that’s the focus of Sologenic. When you are tokenizing assets, there are a couple of benefits attached to that. Number one, I would say 24/7 trading, which is the most important one because you allow people to trade 24/7 versus a traditional market average, which is usually a limited time. Not only that, I think that’s one of the greatest benefits. The other one is when you are tokenizing assets, you allow fractional trading. That’s going to bring a massive liquidity. That’s going to unlock a massive liquidity that they’re sitting outside of traditional market right now because simply they don’t really have capital to get into the traditional financial market. For example, think about how many people are in the world that they would like to purchase, for example, a portfolio of Tesla, Amazon, etc. But they don’t really have that much money. They don’t have $10,000. They don’t have $20,000. They got like $1,000. So we are unlocking, we are bringing those liquidity into the market, traditional market. And if you want to look at it from a global scale, we are talking about a massive amount of liquidity. It’s a win-win situation. You are giving micro investors the opportunity to invest into the stock. At the same time, you are adding more liquidity to the markets, the traditional financial market. That’s the other one that I really like. The 10th one is actually the 24/7 set where it says the traditional way that usually when you are purchasing any stocks, let’s say on TD platform, for example, or RBC in Canada because you’re Canadian. The way that it works, you purchase other stocks, they show you on the UI that you are owning other stocks. But in reality, the settlement between the brokerage helps and the actual bank is going to take 24 to 48 hours, sometimes even 72 hours.
Matt Zahab
Two plus three instead of the classic, but yeah. So true.
Bob Ras
Versus the new one that if you’re settling on the blockchain, it’s going to happen in a second, two seconds, three seconds, right? More clear, more transparent, and everything is traceable, everything is traceable on the blockchain. And the fourth one is actually that’s what you brought up. So when you’re tokenizing assets, they become a crypto asset. So you can have the self custody of those assets. At the same time, you can actually spend those tokenized stocks. And we are actually introducing a prepaid crypto card, which the way that it’s going to work is you can actually put your asset as a collateral. And then every time that you are using your card, let’s say at 7/11, that you mentioned, or if you’re buying a tequila behind the scene, the system is going to liquidate a portion of your tokenized assets to offset your purchase amount. Yeah, a lot of this is what’s on top of my mind.
Matt Zahab
Now, and this is great. Another thing I’d love to get into just to sort of set the stage as we continue to go down the rabbit hole of Sologenic is Coreum, which is the third generation Layer 1 smart blockchain. Why did you and the team need to build, and again, it’s not easy building L1s. Building L2 is OK. You have a lot of preemptive, already built tech that you can build upon. Obviously, that’s why it’s called the Layer 2 and not Layer 1. Building Layer 1s, it’s a bit of nightmare fuel. It’s actually a lot of nightmare fuel, very difficult, incredibly difficult. And you and the team did that. Why did you guys build Coreum? And I’d love if you could explain its relationship to Sologenic and why the two work so well in tandem.
Bob Ras
Definitely. So first of all, I have to clarify that Coreum team and Sologenic team are two different teams completely separate teams. However, there are some overlaps, right? But the engineering team, which is the most important basically team at both companies, they’re completely separate. You know, the Sologenic engineering team and Coreum engineering team, they’re not the same at all. And some other team members as well. Why we created Coreum? That’s a great question. Actually, for two reasons. Reason number one, we wanted to create, you know, we actually look at the field of friend blockchain when we wanted to start to Sologenic back in 2021, right? And we decided to go with XRP Ledger because it was fast. It was, you know, it was more cost efficient. At the same time, it had some features like trust line, which allow us to stay in compliance with the regulatory framework, right? I can touch on that later on. However, XRP Ledger doesn’t have a smart contract, right? Which we believe that in order to launch, you know, in order to create a tokenized securities gateway and expand it down the road, you need a smart contract because this smart contract is going to unlock a lot of opportunities, right? Like lending, borrowing, settlement, a lot of things, right? So that was one of the reasons that we created Coreum. And we actually, we look at the market. Let me ask you a question, Matt. Have you ever seen any legit adoption of any cryptocurrency or blockchain globally? Just give me an example.
Matt Zahab
No, I really haven’t. I mean, yeah, we have some examples in El Salvador and other parts like that. But like me personally, besides sending crypto to contractors or clients or vendors or whatever the case may be across the world, it’s much more efficient than sending a PayPal or a Wise account or a wire transfer. Besides that, transfer of monetary value.
Bob Ras
Exactly, but what I’m referring to is I’m referring to that government level, right? I’m talking about financial institution, Zigo. And everyone is talking about it. You know, since the inception of Bitcoin, everybody was talking about global mass adoption, but I’ve done anything to make it happen. Absolutely, you know, why? Because everyone, you know, we want to go against the government. We want to go against the authority. I’m not supporting them, you know, who don’t call me wrong. I’m not supporting them. But what I’m saying that, if you want to read the real adoption by the financial institution, maybe even by the governments, right? You need to give them some level of control, right? So first of all, Coreum is a blockchain, which is, you know, functioning exactly the same way as the other blockchain, right? So your users data, users information, everything is secured, right? Everything is going to stay confidential, right? It’s not like when you’re interacting with Coreum, your information is going to be released to the third party. No. But what you have done with Coreum, there is an optional KYC and AML feature built on Coreum, which if you are a financial institution, and if you are building on Coreum, so first of all, as a default is always on like on Coreum chain, there’s no KYC or AML. But if you are building on Coreum, your product on Coreum, and you’re a financial institution, then you have the opportunity to turn it on. So what it means, imagine there are financial institutions, both of them are regulated, right? Obviously, they need to do KYC, they need to, you know, exchange some level of data together when it comes to the transfer. So it works the same way as a swift. So some data like beneficiary name, account holder name, address, data, whatever, are going to be encrypted with every transaction between these two financial institutions. And if financial institution A is sending funds to the B, both of them, they have the customer’s information, which is required by the authorities. So that helps them to stay in compliance with the AML regulated framework. Not only that, we actually integrated ISO 222 in Coreum. As a matter of fact, we’re going to be releasing a demo probably in two weeks. So it’s a newer standard, which has been introduced by ISO. And it’s actually, it’s a mandate for every financial institution, I think by 2024 or something like that to follow that, to adopt that, right? So Coreum is already in compliance with that. You know, we actually integrated that standard using a smart token. So end of the day, why we created Coreum, first of all, you know, it was because of Sologenic. We wanted to create, our own Layer 1, which focuses tokenization. And it’s a blockchain that is going to be used by financial institutions. So it’s an enterprise-grade blockchain, which has all the regulated framework as well.
Matt Zahab
I love that. Bob, you are absolutely buzzing right now. You are on a roll, but we need to take a quick break and give a huge shout out to our sponsor of the Show. And when we get back, we are going to keep buzzing on Sologenic, get into a little bit about XRP and the future of tokenization. But until then, huge shout out to PrimeXBT, longtime friends of cryptonews.com and longtime sponsors of the Cryptonews Podcast. PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or a vet. You can easily design and customize your layouts and widgets to best fit your trading style and take advantage of PrimeXBT’s highly reliable market data and performance. The promo code for this incredible offer is CRYPTONEWS50 and that will give you 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Again, the promo code is CRYPTONEWS50, all one word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. And now back to the show with Bob. Bob, let’s jump into ledger for a second. You guys chose to build on XRP. Obviously, we had the Ripple hearing earlier this year, which was massive. XRP Ledger networks, everyone knows that they are absolutely huge. Why did you guys choose to build on them? With the plethora of blockchains available, there must have been a couple of reasons why you chose to build with an on ledger. I’d love to get into that and learn more about this decision.
Bob Ras
Yes, I actually touch on that very briefly. When we were doing research, we were doing a lot of research on blockchain that we wanted to select to create Sologenic we actually had a couple of different options during that time. Ethereum obviously was one of them, but Ethereum is costly. It was pretty slow right now. They actually resolved those problems, right? But during that time, about 2021, 2020, yes. Ethereum was costly. Ethereum was very slow. However, it had smart contract, right? So which was great. But from the other side, XRP Ledger, it actually had some features that we actually needed during that time for example, trust line. And trust line allow us to stay in compliance with the regular day framework. The way that it works, if there’s a user that they are tokenizing assets on Sologenic platform, right? Obviously, they have to go through a KYC system, it’s KYC and onboarding a step. Once that they’re successfully passed that a step, you are going to whitelist their wallet address on the XRP Ledger. So technically, a trust line is going to be created between the customer wallet and the gateway, the issuing gateway. So this allow the user to be able to trade that tokenized assets on the dex as well. So we give you the freedom of trading, 24/7 trading of tokenized assets on the dex. However, if you are interested to trade those assets on the dex, you need to pass KYC on Sologenic and whitelist your wallet. So this feature is only exists on the XRP Ledge, which is a fantastic feature. Besides that, the XRP Ledger has been around. It’s one of the oldest chains in the crypto industry. And you can see that there are a lot of financial institutions that are already practicing on the ledger or actually using the ledger, right? And that’s actually going to prove that XRP Ledger, it’s a great chain for any financial product, such as Sologenc, that is aiming to go live.
Matt Zahab
Well said there. Another interesting point about Sologenic, when you check out the website, and the website’s beautiful by the way, but when you go check out the website on the lander, not the true lander, meaning when you get on and you don’t have to scroll, but on the first page when you scroll down, there is some literature on the CBDC tool, which I absolutely love. I still don’t know how I completely feel about CBDC’s, Bob. Again, if they were to launch, I’d want a team like you guys to launch it for governments, because I trust you guys, I hold a lot more than I trust the GOVs. But I’d love if you could walk me through the ins and outs of this tool, talk to me about, you know, I know there’s a lot of use cases that you can’t tell me about, because they’re coming to fruition and these are with governments and massive financial institutions. But I’d love if you could walk me through sort of your two cents on CBDC’s and the importance of the tool and what it does and how it can help governments launch through on CBDC.
Bob Ras
So basically the CBDC tokenization tool, it’s a set of tools that are going to be added to the existing CBDC sandbox environment, right? I’ll give you an example. So why did we launch this solution about a year, a year and a half ago? So we actually, we have been approached by Ripple to build a tokenization tool for the existing CBDC sandbox, right? And that shows that there is a, if Ripple is reaching out to us to build that, there’s a market for that, right? So that’s why we came up with that tool, the CBDC tool. And so this is a custom-built tokenization solution that is going to be added to any CBDC sandbox environment and allow financial institution or central banks to tokenize assets while they are transferring the assets and funds between financial institutions as well.
Matt Zahab
So interesting, how far away are we from seeing CBDCs actually get launched? And I mean, obviously China has one that’s sort of in beta mode right now, but like how far away are we Bob? Do you think this is actually going to happen? You think in 10 years like currency is going to be just a joke and the good old days of cold hard cash are going to be gone. Like what’s your two cents on that?
Bob Ras
Definitely, CBDC is going to happen for sure, but I have to be very clear. Governments, they’re not going to be using XRP Ledger. They’re not going to be using Coreum. They’re not going to be using Ethereum. They’re not going to be using any blockchain for CBDC. So, mainly CBDCs are being run at this moment on the private ledgers, right? Which, that makes sense. You know, if you central banks are launching their crypto assets, like a stable cool or any other crypto assets, they want to have the control. So, they’re not going to be launching on any third party. They’re going to be launching it on their own. A lot of people, they get really excited. So, oh, CBDC is going up on XRP Ledger. CBDC is going up on Ethereum and so on. And no, that’s not the reality. The reality is it’s going to be private ledger. So, I have to clarify that. But the good news is this is going to happen for sure, 100%. It’s really hard for me to think about the way that people are actually transferring funds at this moment, right? Think about it in 10 years. It’s really hard for me to believe that it’s going to stay the same, right? Like, it’s so outdated. You know, you should just go online, transfer your assets, your funds through Swift, from one country to another country. If you’re lucky, it’s going to be transferred in 24 hours. If you’re not lucky, it’s going to be transferred in 72 hours. And maybe you get a stop somewhere on the way. Who knows? And you have to go trace it through your bank. This is just insane, you know?
Matt Zahab
What about the transparency and the surveillance part though? You know, like what about the average Joe and Josephine who put the average Joe and Josephine probably don’t give a shit if the government sees every little move they make. And for me, this is honestly relatively hypocritical because I’m someone who uses credit card every single chance I get. Like if I have an opportunity to stack some points, I’m gonna stack some points. So I use my Amex or my Visa or Mastercard or whatever for absolutely every purchase unless I can’t use cash. So with that being said, it’s like, I don’t even know why I care about this because if the government really wanted to know every little move I make, they could and very well do. But what’s your opinion on the whole surveillance aspect?
Bob Ras
That’s very sad, but I don’t think crypto is going to resolve that because if you want to look at it from the government perspective, they never allow any technology to come and take the control out of their hands. This is sad. So for that reason, being said, even with CBDC, even with other products that they’re going to be building on the blockchain, still government, they’re going to have the full control. They want to make sure they can freeze your wallet at any point of time. They want to make sure any transfer that you are making, they are fully aware of that. They want to make sure that anytime if they decide to cancel a transfer, they are able to do that. I think this is the way that it’s going to be. And we should be a little bit realistic about it. There is no reason that the governments, they want to basically give up from the level of control that they have.
Matt Zahab
No, that’s totally true. Bob we are getting a little tight for time here. A couple more questions and then we’ll wrap up two more. And then we’re definitely gonna have to get you back on for round two, because we’ve barely scratched the surface here. You guys released some news not too long ago. More specifically, it was you with a great Twitter thread. Sologenic will be listing on some pretty big juicy exchanges soon. Obviously, you cannot let us know which ones, but is there anything you can tell us? Can you give us timelines? Anything of the like, anything that the Sologenic community and fans can look forward to regarding the listings on massive centralized exchanges, which is coming up pretty darn soon.
Bob Ras
Definitely. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to release the name, but I can just mention that we started a new round of reach out to the tier one and top tier two exchanges. Right? And we have been very successful with that. And a couple of great exchanges, they have been confirmed, right? Which unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to release the name. However, there are going to happen, you know, some in December, some in January and some in February. And I’m talking about both assets, and they’re going to list Solo and Coreum at the same time. So these are, unfortunately, I can’t disclose the name, but yes, these are great exchanges. I’m personally very excited because it’s going to allow us to have a better reach globally.
Matt Zahab
I love that. And last question here is the future of tokenization, a very broad one. But what does the future of tokenization look like in your eyes? I’d love if you could speak on this from sort of the consumer and institutional aspect. If you are a CFO or CEO of an institution, how do you look at tokenization moving forward? And I’d love if you could also answer this from the consumer side of things. How will this affect our lives moving forward as well?
Bob Ras
That’s actually a great question. The short answer is, I think, I believe, everything is going to be tokenized by 2030. And if I want to dive in a little bit more into details, from the company perspective, when you are tokenizing assets, it allows you to, let’s talk about the use again, real estate. The developer can actually raise funds through tokenization. So if you have a fantastic real estate project that you are trying to sell, you can actually use blockchain and tokenize that project and raise funds. From consumer perspective, it’s actually easier. You’re helping all these investors and users in order to participate into this tokenization project as well. And yeah, I think it’s going to make everything easier for both sides.
Matt Zahab
I love that. Bob, you absolutely crushed this. Really appreciate you coming on and can’t wait for round two. Until then, can you please let our listeners know where they can find you, Sologenic and Coreum online and on socials.
Bob Ras
You know, if anyone wants to talk with me, you can actually come on Twitter, not Twitter, x.com. My handle is @bobrasX. I actually had that X at the end forever. So I didn’t copy Elon.
Matt Zahab
It just worked like a charm.
Bob Ras
Actually, all my previous companies they had X, believe it or not, in the past. But yeah, @bobrasX, I’m available there. Tag me if you have any questions. I’m glad to answer.
Matt Zahab
Amazing. Bob, thank you so much for coming on, man. Truly a great episode. Definitely have some homework to do and can’t wait to have you on for round two.
Bob Ras
I appreciate it, and thank you very much.
Matt Zahab
Folks, what’s an episode with Bob Ras, Co-Founder of Sologenic. He was dropping knowledge bombs, left, right, and center. Anything on the tokenization of real-world assets, 24/7 trading. The future of tokenization, liquidity crisis, Ledger, XRP, you name it we covered it. Huge shoutout to Bob and the team for making this happen. To the listeners, if you guys enjoyed this one and I hope you did, please do subscribe. It would mean the world to the team and I. Speaking of the team, love you guys. Justas, my amazing sound editor. Thank you so much. And back to the listeners. Love you guys. Keep on growing those bags and keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy. Bye for now and we’ll talk soon.
