Former Goldman Sachs Executive Director Joins Crypto Startup as CEO

Priyanka Lilaramani, former Goldman Sachs Executive Director, has recently joined HOLD, a Maltese crypto startup, as a new CEO, HOLD announced on its Medium blog on May 2.

HOLD, which is based in Malta and operates a technology center in Porto, Portugal, is building a platform that creates a financial marketplace where crypto investors can get instant cash against cryptocurrency collateral.

Instead, they will simply hold cryptocurrencies as collateral, advancing up to 65 percent of the value of their crypto holdings.

Platform fees and rate spreadsBorrowers are required to keep HOLD tokens in a dedicated wallet for as long as they are requesting cash advances, with a minimum of 6 months.

Borrowers are charged an pro-rated interest rate of 8 percent p.a., plus a platform fee of 3 percent that goes to HOLD. The loans can be renewed subject to platform fees and availability.

The Mastercard and Visa cards offer 1 percent cashback in the form of HOLD tokens.

The company says lenders on the platform earn between 4.5 percent and 7.5 percent per annum by providing fiat currencies in the system, with the spread going to HOLD.Technology platform to match lenders and borrowersTypically, lenders will bring fiat currency into the system, and not sell crypto holdings.

A so-called Trading Oracle, together with a proprietary algorithm, drives the HOLD platform.

Pre-sale of tokens set for May 4According to the company's Medium blog, HOLD has raised more than $6.1 mln from the private sale of its tokens, based on the ERC20, and has scheduled a pre-sale from May 4 to May 31.For its initial coin offering, HOLD has set a hard cap of $11.3 mln, with the soft cap of $3.5 mln already achieved from the private sale.

HOLD plans to cap supply of its tokens at 1.3 bln, with one HOLD token worth 0.00004 ETH. HOLD will also have a token buyback program to increase the overall liquidity, and a quarterly token burn to decrease supply.