Revolutionizing the Automobile Industry w/ Scott Heninger

In this episode of Cryptonews Podcast, Matt Zahab interviews Scott Heninger, CEO of Carnomaly. They chat about the link between blockchain and the auto industry.

0:00 Intro 
1:00 Journey into crypto 
2:25 Carnomaly 
4:30 What is CarrChain? 
12:32 DeFi for car loans 
16:05 Revolutionizing how to buy, sell, and own vehicles 
21:41 Utility of $CARR token 
24:54 Autonomous vehicles
27:05 Hurdles to adoption 
29:19 Rapid fire questions 
31:25 Outro 

The episode premiered on June 11, 2021.

Full episode transcript:

Matt Zahab: 0:08

Ladies and gentlemen, today's guest is a crypto and automotive guru who spent 18 years in the retail automotive industry. Currently he's the CEO of Carnomaly, the world's leading automotive crypto company that's bridging the gap between the blockchain and the auto industry. I'm very pleased to welcome the crypto news podcast, Scott Heninger. Scott, welcome to the show.

Scott Heninger:

 0:32

Thanks, Matt. Thank you for having me.

Matt Zahab:

 0:33

Very excited to have you here today. You and your team has such a cool company. Such a massive industry, a trillion dollar industry alone in the USA being the automotive industry. And the crypto industry, as we all know, has limitless potential and is nowhere close to being finished. Crazy industries that you are tackling and I'd love to hear more about car normally. But before we do, could you please tell our guests a little bit about your past in the retail auto industry and how you got into crypto?

Scott Heninger:

 1:06

Well, I started out in the automotive industry right out of high school, started selling cars, used cars, new cars, I worked in the internet department and then slowly progressed my career into finance, sales manager, General sales manager, and then finally, into general manager running the day to day operations of the automotive dealership. Did that for 18 years, and many different manufacturers around the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. And then after that, you know, I started to kind of get into crypto, didn't really know what it was all about just you know, buying trading Bitcoin and Ethereum and just thought it was really cool and had a lot of potential and then eventually decided to take the leap and start a company and really, like we say, bridge that gap between the automotive industry and the crypto industry just because there is so much potential and this is so fresh everything with blockchain NFTs DeFi it's just all fresh and new. So really excited to get in on the ground level.

Matt Zahab:

 2:25

Now what made you start Carnomaly? Was it, again, we've all done the whole car purchasing process before. Not all of us but a big chunk of us has gone through that process and it is an absolute shit show. You have both ends of the spectrum trying to gauge you. God you name it, it's just not too clean. Was that one of the biggest reasons why you started Carnomaly?

Scott Heninger:

 2:50

Yes, that had a lot to do with it. Basically, I've always been innovative in the dealership coming up with new solutions, new ways to try and make the sales process easier, more streamlined. And then with crypto being so new and with the opportunities and growth in the crypto space with you know, blockchain and when we started this, DeFi wasn't really even a thing until you know, seems like about a year ago. So really saw the opportunity to take some ideas that I had go into the crypto blockchain space and really, that was basically the launchpad to be able to take these ideas to the next level and actually build them out and have an arena that allowed for these ideas to really become reality.

Matt Zahab:

 3:46

So when you first started Carnomaly and I guess before we get into that, why the name? Of course car makes sense. But why the nomal part?

Scott Heninger:

 3:53

Funny you ask about the name. So that was actually a almost a six month process coming up with the name. We bounced around so many different names, and just nothing had that wow factor. So it was trying to come up with something new, something fresh, something that didn't exist and that's what we also wanted for the solution for our product is we want Carnomaly to be something different. So it's a car company, it's automotive. But it's also an anomaly because it's different from anything else out there. So we joined the two words and came up with car anomaly.

Matt Zahab:

 4:30

Love that great name. I guess pretty straightforward when you think of it but it is a great name and folks for those of you at home, it is car and then nomaly, ca r n o m o l y for Carnomaly. Now your bread and butter is being one of the leading automotive crypto companies and really has the potential to be the future of the automotive industry which we spoke about is a trillion dollar industry in the United States alone. Now, Carnomaly has three... It's almost a three headed monster. You have three applications with one single mission being to innovate the car ownership experience with superior technology. Application number one is car chain, which is the digital car management that rewards you. Number two is car DeFi, which are DeFi auto loans. And numero tres is Carnomaly, which is the better car buying experience with cryptocurrency. I'd love if we could start with car chain being the digital car management that rewards you tell us a little bit about that.

Scott Heninger:

 5:34

So car chain will be, it's a pretty big part of the project and it has a lot of moving parts. One it is a basically a blockchain vehicle history report. So a user with our mobile app, we're working on a mobile app for Android and for Apple. And when our mobile app is released, a user will be able to scan their Vin barcode, every vehicle has a Vin barcode either on the door jamb of the driver side some of them are actually up on the dash. And each vehicle basically each owner will scan that barcode that will immediately upload that vehicle to the blockchain, if it's not already there. It will put it on our hyper ledger blockchain, it will basically also then create an NFT token which is going to be $CARR NFT token, that $CARR which is our car token. So that will create an ERC 721 NFT for that vehicle. All this will get recorded to the blockchain. And now the vehicle owner now is going to be able to interact with the vehicle history report process to earn reputation points. So think of this as a gamified vehicle history report. Right now with the current solutions out there, people really don't have that much input or interaction in their vehicles history reports that's done by a lot of third parties. So what we wanted to do is create a platform where the vehicle owner could actually have input on his vehicle history, his or her vehicle history report. So that's where we started to develop car chain. So what will happen is you scan that Vin, it creates this blockchain and NFT of your vehicle. And now you have a vehicle reputation score, how you earn points for that vehicle reputation score, is by doing things that you're already doing today. servicing your vehicle checking, skidding safety inspections. Depending on where you live, there's different you know, required inspections for your vehicle, getting those inspections done, you're going to be able to update random events, you're going to be able to update customisations you've put on your vehicles such as tires, oversized tires, wheels, if you may be on a Jeep, I like to use that as a good example. Because there's a lot of Jeep owners that do modifications on their vehicles, lifts on your your vehicle, you'll be able to upload where you got the work done what you had to your vehicle history report. So all of these items will go into a scoring system. So the more you do, and the more history you tell the the platform about your vehicle, the more points you earn. the more points you earn is going to basically raise the value of your vehicle in the eyes of a private buyer, if you're trying to sell your vehicle peer to peer, or it's going to raise the value to a dealer when you go to trade that vehicle in simply because you've taken the time to record and do the items and your vehicle now truly has a history that is interacted with you. Now a lot of people say how are we going to verify these interactions or verify that these inputs that our consumers put in is real? Well, we filed for a patent on this technology and one of the things that this will do is when you scan that vehicle barcode, because each car only has one barcode, it will start the mobile app to a recording process with your video camera. So let's say that I wanted to update the miles on my vehicle. I just went over the 25,000 mile mark and I wanted to update that on my vehicle history report. I would simply scan the VIN with my phone, it would start my camera and I would show the miles on my dashboard and then I would hit submit. It's now going to take that input submitted in for recording into the blockchain because now we have a validated verified mileage entry into the car chain blockchain.

Matt Zahab:

 10:04

And this is all done on the Ethereum blockchain?

Scott Heninger:

 10:07

All the recordings and the data will be done on a hyper ledger blockchain. It's very difficult to store a lot of data on the Ethereum platform. Therefore, we're using the hyper ledger blockchain for all of the data of the car chain blockchain.

Matt Zahab:

 10:26

So you and the team are literally revolutionising the auto industry. This seems like a perfect idea for a massive buy out, massive payday from a Ford a GM, a Fiat Chrysler, one of the big dogs in the space. Are any of them working on a platform or technology like Carnomaly?

Scott Heninger:

 10:49

I know that a lot of manufacturers are working on blockchain technology. But I believe a lot of it is with drivability, features and interaction with how the vehicle works with other vehicles or works with, you know, different aspects inside of the actual mechanics of the vehicle. I'm not sure if anyone is working on anything that has to do with vehicle reporting, like what we're doing. One of the other last features of the car chain app will also be the rewards portion of that. What the rewards portion will do is basically, you will simply upload a receipt of your maintenance on your vehicle. Once you become a Carnomaly member, you will upload that you got your tires done, that you've got new brakes put on your vehicle, these different maintenance items that you do, from time to time, oil change. You will upload that into the car rewards portion on the Carnomaly or the car chain app. And when you upload that, based on your membership, you will actually earn a reward in $CARR tokens for doing the normal maintenance that you're already doing on your vehicle. So now not only are you recording this input into the car chain blockchain, but you also are earning a reward in $CARR tokens for doing so. So that's one of the big features that we wanted to put in there was how does this benefit the consumer? Why should they use this? And one of those reasons is basically it allows you to earn $CARR tokens for doing the everyday maintenance that you're already doing.

Matt Zahab:

 12:32

I love that really gamifying the process that many people don't put too much effort into at the moment, besides the bare minimum. That is car chain, that is head one of the three headed monster of Carnomaly. The second one, which I am probably the most interested in, and I know many of our listeners are as well is car DeFi, which is DeFi for auto loans. DeFi decentralized finance. This is a complex part of the three headed monster and to my knowledge, this would almost take out the middlemen, and there are many middlemen when buying or selling a vehicle. This would allow the user to do it fully in house, I'd love if you can tell me absolutely everything, a high level 360 view of car DeFi.

Scott Heninger:

 13:21

So when I originally heard of DeFi and DeFi in crypto and how people were, you know, doing different DeFi i loans. We started to talk about how can we implement a DeFi solution into Carnomaly's ecosystem. And at first, we were just kind of bounced around different ideas of what that would look like and then it kind of just hit that auto loans are not going away as they currently stand. People are always going to need auto loans. Dealers are always going to need lenders to provide those auto loans so they can sell more vehicles. And consumers are always going to need banks and lenders to provide these loans. So how did we create a DeFu solution and basically bring this into the Carnomaly ecosystem. So the idea was, let's not reinvent the wheel, let's use the same underwriting techniques that are currently used by many, many lenders, such as the ability to pay back the loan, the ability to make the payment, the findability, where's the consumer located, and let's take that and let's go out and create the DeFi lending pools and really bridge those two together. So now, the loans are now created in these pools by anybody in the world that owns a cryptocurrency. So you might have a million dollar loan pool that's going to get loaned out to 25 different vehicle borrowers. But now that that million dollar loan pool could be funded from 30, or 40, pool investors from 30 or 40 different countries, that's where the DeFi portion comes in is, the money that will be lent is going to be coming from all over the world. And now what will happen is, we will now do the underwriting, we will write those loans, we will put people in vehicles, we have really cool solutions on how people can get better rates, how people can stake different cryptocurrencies to get a better rate on their loan, which they currently can't do in the conventional automotive lending space. And now, as the borrowers pay back those loans, the lenders, the investors, the crypto investors are making returns on their money with a backed asset of a vehicle.

Matt Zahab:

 16:05

That's very, very interesting. Now, before we get into $CARR token, the future of Carnomaly, would you be able to manage your current vehicle through the car chain, sell or buy a new vehicle via car DeFi and potentially buy or finance that vehicle through $CARR token? Is that what the future of Carnomaly it looks like?

Scott Heninger:

 16:31

Yes, as the ecosystem grows, our goal is to have the ecosystem where you can basically use Carnomaly.com, which will be an online platform, to find the vehicle, find the dealer, find the deal that you're looking for, then go into or not go into the dealer, actually using different applications to have a vehicle or test drive delivered to you doing virtual test drives. Then once you find that vehicle, getting a loan through car DeFi, having that loan funded to the dealer, and then making your payments with a combination of your debit card, your bank account, Bitcoin, $CARR token, you can make your payments with multiple different ways, and then track and record that vehicle's ownership history on car chain. And then when you're ready to sell that car, trade that car, you have all that information that it's very easy for a dealer to evaluate your trade when you have so much information that is at your fingertips that they can gain access to to evaluate your trade. So essentially, we want to make this a one stop shop for helping consumers track, buy, finance their vehicle.

Matt Zahab:

 17:57

Now candidly, this sounds incredible for someone like me. I'm 26 years old next time I need a whip, I would love to use Carnomaly. But for someone, I won't use my grandma because she probably won't be buying another car no offense grams, but for someone like my parents who maybe aren't too blockchain literate who know about it, but are not, immersed in it every single day. What would be the value prop to them? In regards to buying, you know, buying and selling a car through Carnomaly?

Scott Heninger:

 18:31

Well, the cool thing is, when we designed this and came up with these ideas, we thought about how do we make it where the solutions can stand on their own outside of crypto, but then how do we make it where the cryptocurrency can interact with those as well as blockchain and DeFi. So essentially, your parents, your grandmother, or whoever could use the Carnomaly site to search for a vehicle, find a dealer find a great deal, and they don't have to know anything about cryptocurrency or Bitcoin or blockchain. Then they can actually go into the dealership, apply for a loan or on the car DeFi app apply for a loan, they can get a really great interest rate, they have really good credit. We can take them through the underwriting process, however, their credit is, they might get a really good rate, finance their vehicle with car DeFi, and they could just make their monthly payments with their bank account or their debit card just like they would to any other lending institution. So essentially, they don't have to really know anything about crypto or blockchain or DeFi to do those things. Then they can track their vehicles history, they can interact with the vehicle history through car chain, they can earn rewards, and they can do all these things, really essentially without even having to even really know how blockchain works or how DeFi works. So they can get the benefits without having the knowledge of blockchain or DeFi NFT tokens, different things like that.

Matt Zahab:

 20:11

Totally makes sense. Definitely better to go with that. If you don't have access to crypto, allowing people to also use fiat makes things a lot easier and could really allow you to move mountains. I just want to take a quick break to thank our sponsors at CoinPoker. You've heard me talk about the team at CoinPoker many times before. These guys are the creme de la creme when it comes to blockchain x cryptocurrency x poker. I absolutely love them. They are the revolutionary blockchain technology based platform that was developed by an incredible team of poker lovers and sports bettors. CoinPoker uses USDT as the main end game currency and $CHP as in game fuel, $CHP the cryptocurrency token has also done very well during the recent crypto crash, they have stayed their ground and really kept incredible levels which is really cool for an altcoin. CoinPoker itself also features instant and secure transactions using USDT Ethereum, Bitcoin or $CHP tokens while users get huge promotions and get 1000s in fiat each week through giveaways. My favorite part about the app is probably the mobile aspect I can show up on my phone when I'm on the go play a couple hands of Texas or bet on sports. Again love these guys coin poker.com check them out that is coin poker.com. Now jumping back into the show with Scott and Carnomaly, the last part of the three headed behemoth is car normally itself the $CARR token that is ca r r and that is Carnomaly ERC 20 token. I would love if you could tell me more about that. You guys are now on six exchanges. Congrats, that is huge. I understand the purpose is to fund the rewards program and offer a chance to actually buy slash own a piece of the project. Fractionalized ownership is the name of the game now. And $CARR token is making that reality The floor is yours. Please tell me more about this.

Scott Heninger:

 22:21

When we started this project, of course, being in the crypto space and creating a token, you want to make sure that the token has utility functions inside of the ecosystem. We felt that there's a lot of tokens out there and a lot of projects where the token really doesn't have that many uses for the project. So we wanted to make sure that we over compensated for this. Therefore, the $CARR token has many utility functions inside of the ecosystem. One being the rewards platform where people can become a Carnomaly member or car chain member, they can serve as their vehicle, they can buy a vehicle and they can earn $CARR tokens for doing these items that they're already doing today. So that was one big, that was actually our first use for the token was the rewards platform. Secondly, we want to make the token essentially the vehicle go to token when you're buying a vehicle. The token is called $CARR. So what's the better way to buy a car than with $CARR? Right? How did you get your new car? Well, I used $CARR. So that's another function of the token. Another one is the DeFi loans and being able to fund DeFi loan pools with $CARR tokens, being able to make monthly car payments with $CARR tokens. And then also one of the other items we haven't gotten into is our partnership with the National motor vehicle title Information Systems, which is all 50 states in the United States. They are the Government Partnership for all vehicle title data, and now a consumer will be able to use $CARR token to pay for this reporting, to get their national motor vehicle title Information Systems report. So those are the functionalities in the utility functions for the $CARR token.

Matt Zahab:

 24:12

Scott on the car token itself. Why did you guys choose to go the Ethereum route and build on the ERC 20 token blockchain?

Scott Heninger:

 24:21

Well, we decided to go with the ERC 20 token a few years ago. And the reason for that is security. There's a reason that Ethereum is having success in growth in the market right now. And we believe that technology and the security behind their smart contracts is just paramount. And we wanted to make sure that we had something that was very secure and that would have a longevity and not be you know, subject to hacks and different threats that are out there in this industry.

Matt Zahab:

 24:54

I want to move forward and talk about the autonomous vehicle which a lot of people are very passionate about, and you've heard these stories, time and time again, you know, 10 years ago hack, even still, people see this feature of flying cars buzzing all over the place. But before that we have to get to autonomous vehicles. I know Tesla has really made some moves in that space, BMW is not too far long. There's a lot of companies that are really putting effort into that. How can blockchain help accelerate the autonomous vehicle movement?

Scott Heninger:

 25:28

Well, I believe when you're creating and developing a autonomous vehicle, you have to have super, super secure databases, API's information, for different communication with the vehicle with the satellites, vehicles, talking to other vehicles to the computer components in the vehicles and blockchain. Blockchain is a way for them to create this and eliminate hacking, eliminate basically threats on the software and the last thing you want, is your autonomous vehicles driving and somebody hacks into the software correct, and that would not be good. Therefore, I believe blockchain is the perfect solution for creating something like that.

Matt Zahab:

 26:12

How far away do you think we are from the fully sort of autonomous vehicle fleet?

Scott Heninger:

 26:17

Man, I don't know. That's a It's a crazy concept to think that one day vehicles, you'll hop in a car, and it'll just take you where you want to go right? And you don't even have to get behind the wheel. I mean, I know it's gonna happen someday. It's exciting as it is scary right? But, you know, I think that we'll see it. We'll see in the next few decades, I would think.

Matt Zahab:

 26:40

Are there any automotive brands that you're most bullish on?

Scott Heninger:

 26:44

I like all cars, I like all brands, I don't really have a favorite. There's a lot of really, really good car companies out there doing a lot of good things. So I mean, I think every manufacturer has their niche. And every manufacturer has their appeal to different buyers. So I'm just a car guy, I like I like all of them,

Matt Zahab:

 27:05

Like all of them, I love that. Keeping it clean. Going back to Carnomaly here, it seems like one of the tougher solutions to the 360 degree blockchain movement within the auto industry is to get all the key stakeholders and all of the members involved stemming from the vehicle manufacturers, to the dealerships, to the mechanics, to the end users, everyone involved. What do you think is the last Domino that needs to fall to really create that mass adoption?

Scott Heninger:

 27:38

Stability.

Matt Zahab:

 27:39

What do you mean by that?

Scott Heninger:

 27:40

Stability in the market? We just saw this big crypto crash over the last couple weeks and I think that's one of the things that is holding back mass adoption of this industry.

Matt Zahab:

 27:57

Okay, what about these, like old school mechanics or old school used car dealerships? I know, some still don't even have websites. It's crazy. It's 2021 and these guys don't have websites? How would you ever get them on board? Or would it have to be one of those use cases where it's either adopt or die kind of thing? Is there a way to get them on board?

Scott Heninger:

 28:15

Well, the solutions that we're going to be providing to dealers will benefit them irregardless of the crypto market in and of cryptocurrency. Like I said, when we first started this, we wanted to create, how do we make this Carnomaly be able to stand on its own with or without the token. But then how do we make the token interact and be valuable inside of the ecosystem and have use inside of the ecosystem. So the solutions that dealers will have, the benefit dealers will get from Carnomaly really will be able to stand alone outside of crypto. But when you add the cryptocurrency, to that it becomes even more valuable to the dealers. Now there's even more that they can gain. Now they're gaining, you know the digital future. They're gaining items that aren't out there today, a new way to track and report vehicles, a new way to get to get auto loans, a new way to find consumers a new way for consumers to pay for vehicles and finance them so there's a lot of benefits to the dealer either way.

Matt Zahab:

 29:19

Tell me about your dream whip. If Scott can have any car in the world, any car any year, what would it be?

Scott Heninger:

 29:27

Any car any year?

Matt Zahab:

 29:28

Any year, I mean, like you know old Vette old Stang old Porsche or Ferrari. What's your dream car?

Scott Heninger:

 29:34

Man I would probably go with a 911 Turbo S, one of the new ones.

Matt Zahab:

 29:40

One of the new ones. That's a Porsche for those that don't know.

Scott Heninger:

 29:44

911 Turbo S it's quick, it's fast, it sounds amazing and it can handle corners like nothing else out there.

Matt Zahab:

 29:55

I love it. Are you a fan of what Elon Musk is doing to the car industry?

Scott Heninger:

 29:59

Yeah, I mean, I think what he's doing is needed. He's definitely innovating the automotive industry. He's definitely being innovative with the tech. He's bringing a lot of tech into these vehicles. And I think that's really cool and I think a lot of manufacturers will will follow suit to that.

Matt Zahab:

 30:16

Couple rapid fire questions before we wrap up Scott and this has been awesome and so many really interesting and unique insights on how blockchain can really affect such a large industry that most people use every single day. But before we do wrap up, Bitcoin to 100K, when's it gonna happen? And yeah, when's that gonna happen?

Scott Heninger:

 30:37

When people stop dumping. I think it was headed that direction not too long ago, when it was hit 60 62 or something.

Matt Zahab:

 30:48

Yeah, that's a bit of a tough one. And again, gonna kind of steal this from Patrick O'Shaughnessy's invest like the best podcast, he finishes every pod with the following question, what is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Scott Heninger:

 31:03

That would be my wife. She married me 15 years ago, actually our anniversary, our 15 year anniversary is in three days, so that's probably the nicest thing that anyone's ever done that she was willing to marry me, put up with me for 15 years.

Matt Zahab:

 31:17

She married you. Congrats. That's the 15 year one. That's a big way. And you had some good brownie points there. I absolutely love that. Scott, this has been really awesome. Appreciate you jumping on had an absolute blast speaking with you and learned a lot. Such a crazy industry, two massive industries, the blockchain industry and the auto industry and your company Carnomaly is bridging the gap between the two. Big shout out to Scott if you'd like to find him on social you can find him on Twitter at Heninger_Scott. On Twitter you can find Carnomaly at Carnomaly, same as on telegram and of course you can go to Carnomaly.io. Scott thanks again for jumping on and we will definitely have you on in the near future. Folks, this was the crypto news podcast hope you had a blast listening I learned a crazy amount this episode and I hope you did too. As always we dropp on Monday Wednesday and Friday mornings we will keep doing that for ever until things change. Big shout out to our sponsor CoinPoker, absolutely love you guys. Actually had a great week on the platform as well, placed a couple cheeky playoff bets, absolutely love to see that. Appreciate you guys, the whole team at crypto news, appreciate you all. Ishan, always crushing it with the transcripts. Giedrius for onlin , Gedas, Isabelle, Richard, ever one involved. And of cour e, Justace my sound guy who is a solutely incredible. And Happ Birthday to Justace too. Folk this is the crypto news podc st, hope you had a blast li tening and we will see you shor ly. All the best.