Vestly Comes Back As Revamped Platform Aims To Bolster Crypto Engagement, Learning

The way people learn has changed. That's according to Alex Betancur, the CEO at Vestly, the fun and risk-free way of discovering crypto, stocks and NFTs while unlocking real Bitcoin BTC/USD rewards. Vestly’s combination of gamification, community, competition and rewards helps in bolstering financial literacy initiatives in crypto.

Fresh after taking control of Vestly’s development and bootstrapping, Benzinga chatted with Betancur to learn more about the firm’s soft launch, and how he’s looking to foster financial inclusion in crypto.

Check out the conversation, below, for more.

Q: Hi Alex, nice to meet you. Can you tell me more about your background and motivations behind Vestly?

A: I’ve spent the last 20 years or so building digital consumer models, all the way from e-commerce to gaming and consumer.

Basically, most of my career was spent trying to understand the world of middle-income, or what we like to call consumer Americans, and then expanded it out also into Europe.

I built a billion-dollar platform specifically around catalogs. Then, I moved on and did something with Publisher’s Clearing House, which is the oldest sort of sweepstakes company in the world, and there, I fell in love with Middle America and how they perceive rewards.

Later, I created Jump Ramp, which I sold to a large gaming company about two years ago.

After all this, I took a step back and did an inventory. I thought about what I was good at, and that was understanding Middle America. Then, I expanded that and thought about what’s got them most confused. The answer was crypto.

So, I thought about how I could create some form of gamification, reward, competition, and community around crypto.

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Vestly. How did that happen? Wasn’t that a brand that already existed?

We revamped Vestly. I came in and repositioned the company.

The best way to describe it is to say what NerdWallet Inc NRDS did to personal finance. I wanted to do the same thing for crypto.

Vestly is a discovery point for you to learn about and understand anything crypto. We’ve created about 150 interactive lessons around crypto and NFTs.

You’re also encouraged to participate in simulations where you’re able to choose cryptos, NFTs and meme stocks to trade throughout the week. At the end of the week, if you do well enough, you’re at the top of the leaderboard, and you unlock crypto.

That’s cool. Tell me about some of the most unique aspects of your platform.

My thesis is that for you to be good at crypto, you need information. News.

News is something that people like to see and today, if you read anything in crypto and NFT, it’s like going down a rabbit hole. So, we have a newsfeed.

Additionally, we have polls, surveys, trivia and a social network. Anybody who creates a portfolio on our platform has the ability to follow and be followed.

What’s the core difference between Vestly and competitors, if any?

My thesis is that the best way to onramp people into crypto and NFTs is actually to give them some reward.

So, we’ve plugged into the Bitcoin and Lightning Network and allow users to earn crypto.

Okay, that’s interesting. You’re paying me to learn. How is Vestly, today, different from what it was in the past?

The original team was hedge fund and not consumer guys that built a stock trading simulation game with a sweepstakes component.

Also, they need massive scale, which they didn’t have.

I raised some funds, recapitalized the company, and got my ideas in there. Since then, we’ve soft-launched on the iOS App Store to friends, family, and the existing user base.

Next steps? What are you planning to do up to a year from now?

Our hope is that we’ll probably launch in the next couple of weeks internationally. I raised a small amount of money to do this, and it’s only a couple of employees.

That said, I’ve got great people, and I’ve been able to exit successfully before and raise venture capital. I would say that the next six months are about bootstrapping my way through it, though.