John Karony, the CEO of SafeMoon gave an inspirational speech after winning the AIBC ‘Crypto Community of the Year’ 2021 Award in Malta. He touched on the topic on how and why SafeMoon was created and spoke in length about the coins future prospects.
Karony made the future seem to be promising making investors confident that the token is headed towards the right direction under his guidance. Read the full speech given by Karony below.
What is SafeMoon?
‘’We’re a nine-month-old blockchain innovation company, a tech company. We created the most talked about crypto-currency on the market right now. And have 2.8million holders, one of the fastest growing communities in the world. We won The Best Cryptocurrency Community [Award]. Shout out to the Safemoon Army here.’’
We have a valuation around three to four billion dollars and we did this all in nine months. I’m going to try to summarize nine months, which I actually equate to seven years in blockchain time worth of work in ten minutes.
Alright, so. I grew up overseas. If you guys google me, you can see that both my parents were CIA, retired. I graduated high school, moved out to Utah and started college. Quickly realized that wasn’t for me. I joined the military, continued my travels; you know, I grew up in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean.
Anyway, I continued my travels with the military, time in Korea, airborne school, and then towards the end of it, spent a little time in Afghanistan.
Took a lot of lessons learned from there. Then, when my time was over – when I learned everything I wanted to learn- did everything I wanted to do and it just felt right, I moved on.”
The Gambia Story
“But, we’re going to go back a little bit. 2018, The Gambia. So, I’ve been working with The Gambia since about 2018. Smaller infrastructure projects; started off with some fisheries stuff but I couldn’t really find an investor and it didn’t really work out but we continued forward.
For those of you who don’t know what The Gambia is, it’s a West African country surrounded by Senegal. It’s on the coast of West Africa [with] beautiful beaches, great vacation spot.
They’ve got a population of 2 million. They have more cellphones per person than most other countries that I know of. So, their want and need for technology is there. But I’ll go into “Why The Gambia” later on.”
What Fuelled SafeMoon?
“What is SafeMoon? Why did we do SafeMoon? So, a lot of my experiences, after I got out, I tried a few different things. I did import/export, government contracting, and then the biggest thing I got into was video game development.
What’s the Lesson I learned there? Well, it was the importance of being able to communicate your story, your narrative, with a community and the value that community has for your product. So [I] took that lesson and uh, 2021, March of this year, we launched SafeMoon!
As I’ve said before, we’re a blockchain innovation company, a tech company launched in March of 2021 with our first product being the SafeMoon token. Our next product that we launched was the SafeMoon Wallet. Over 700,000 users, top of the charts on both IOS and Google Play.
So, we’re a tech company first and foremost. We have a greater vision to bring the future to now and we continue to work on it. So, everyone who works in the blockchain space understand that one quarter is equated to one week in real world time.”
It’s A Rapidly Changing Environment
“So you have to learn to move fast. You know, this is a very rapidly changing environment and we’re definitely on the edge of next-gen technology. We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of blockchain. So, I covered a little bit of what SafeMoon is.
We have our token on the Binance Smart Chain and on the Ethereum chain. We have our wallet out. We’ll be releasing an exchange here in the near future as well as some other products. First and foremost we’re a blockchain innovation company.
The speech today is about the building of a blockchain innovation company in an industry that is not only a startup, but also being a startup in a startup industry. This is definitely like early 2000s, late 90s internet era. So, I’m going to summarize with lessons learned.”
The Importance of Team Building
“First off, you need to build your team. You know, you need to surround yourself with people who are like minded; and just like any winning team, you have to be willing to evolve. For the English football fans, I’m not picking a side here! Please don’t come after me, but we’re going to use Manchester as an example. Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester and then came back, you know? You have to learn when to move players around on your team so you can maximize your success.
Because it’s not just about the technology. It’s also about your greater visions. It’s about your north star.
So you need to be able to build a team, first and foremost that will evolve with you and be willing to evolve that team, even when it’s difficult.
This is especially important in a fast paced industry like crypto currency and blockchain.
So one of the big lessons learned while my time in the service was taking large, daunting, asymmetric problems and breaking them down into manageable milestones.”
Setting the Right Goals
“So, for me.. I like to break things down based on timelines. You have 30, 60, 90, 180, 365, 2 years 4 years, 5 years, 7 year goals.. and milestones that you have to reach.
The first one for me was, “How do you defeat the alt-coin death cycle?” It’s a term I coined. Basically, the alt-coin death cycle is the over utilization and reliance on hype. Hype is fleeting.
It doesn’t last for very long and you can clearly see that on the charts. So, it’s turning hype into something more sustainable and something that’s not really thought about or done on a mass scale in our industry, which is building trust.”
Building Trust in the ‘Trustless Industry’
“Building trust in an industry that likes to talk about trustless technology. You know, a large motor company says, “Hey. You don’t have to trust me but trust the technology.” Um.. Most people won’t buy it. This is especially important.
For the crypto Core, the Trustless makes sense. For the crypto Curious, they try to understand it but it doesn’t make sense and it’s especially important when you’re trying to attract mainstream audiences.
Safemoon is blessed with both with a wide dichotomy of people. Just on our discord alone, we have someone who’s a certified doctor, a medical physician to people who are college students. That’s just a small little tidbit.
When you’re dealing with such WIDE audience, the importance of communicating a solid narrative, a solid story and solid information out to people for all three audience: the crypto core, the crypto curious and the mainstream becomes all more important.
The big thing that ties all of those communities together; all those different audiences together is TRUST. Build trust in a trust less industry. I touched on this. I’ll go to the next slide.”
Perfection is a Journey, Not A Destination
“So, if you don’t take anything else from my speech today, Perfection is a Journey- Not a destination. It’s ok to make mistakes and it’s ok to make mistakes in an industry that is emerging. It is emerging tech.
This is unpaved terrain and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what blockchain can do for People. The prime example is, for me, I don’t give out timelines anymore. We had a very good lesson learned when it came to our wallet launch.
It’s no secret that we missed it by two weeks but the main takeaway there is, If you build something great, nobody’s gonna care. They’re gonna forget. If you release something that is Not great, they’ll never forgive you. They won’t forget and you won’t get a second chance. So, take the time you need to release a good product.”
What SafeMoon is NOT
“We’re not a meme coin. While meme coins have their place and I do appreciate meme coins like Dogecoin, for SafeMoon, we are a tech company. We are releasing a lot of products.
I touched a little bit about that during this speech. Our wallet, 700k users, top of the charts on both IOS and Google Play. We’re not a meme coin, but they have their place. If a community loves something and they support something, there you go. There you go. There’s your value. There’s your utility.
So you know, I’ve worked there since about 2018 on different infrastructure stuff. I’ve learned a lot of lessons along this journey.
This is more for the uh, the SafeMoon Army who’s watching right now. Please don’t crash this stream unless you already did. We are SafeMoon. We are Family.
For those here and SafeMoon Army here. Thank you! I’m John Karony, CEO of SafeMoon.’’