Mission (Why we are doing what we are doing)

• Enable financial freedom, which we believe means having two things: freedom over finance — people should be able to own their money — and freedom from finance — people should be able to experience life without worrying about money.

Vision (What we are doing)

• Enable people to save in bitcoin and spend in dollars securely and simply.

Problem

• Currently, most people hold all their wealth in state-controlled assets. The state can seize anyone’s wealth anytime, and individuals don’t have a great way to place checks and balances placed on this system.
• Most people interface with finance through centralized banking, but ~2 billion people are still unbanked. The people who do have access to centralized finance are still exposed to significant risks such as potential loss of funds, capital controls, obscure contract execution, and invasion of privacy (learn more about the failures of centralized finance here).
• Properly storing the value of your money is so complicated that it gives the rich who have more time and money unfair advantages.
• Bitcoin enables self-sovereign savings. Digital dollars enable global, instant, and fast payments. You can think about bitcoin/digital dollars as programmable gold/cash that can move at the speed of light and self-custody as the means to use them securely. People want to save in bitcoin and spend in dollars within self-custody, but when they try do so, they’re faced with two problems: limited functionality and difficult interfaces. The most important financial functionality users want to experience is borrowing against bitcoin, but they can’t do that securely in self-custody, so they find themselves resorting to trusted solutions which are insecure ($100B+ customer funds lost in just recent years) and difficult to use.

Solution

• Lava unlocks self-custodial, bitcoin-secured loans, making it easy for people to people to save in bitcoin and spend in dollars securely and simply.

Implications

• Lava protects individuals from being burned in financial crises by building a more anti-fragile financial experience.
• Lava regulates the fiat system, incentivizing it to better serve the people, by giving individuals a way to opt-out.
• Lava empowers individuals against authoritarianism. Capital allocation is a tool to organize labor and resources. Authoritarian regimes try to take the power of capital allocation from the people and bring it to the authoritarian. If people have financial freedom, specifically ownership over their own money, they can more easily organize, protest, and leave authoritarian regimes.
• Lava makes finance not only more secure but also easier, faster, and global. We can give access to financial functionality to the ~2 billion people who are excluded from the current financial system.
• Lava frees individuals from confining financial products, because when people actually own their own money, if they don’t like their finance provider, they can change without permission. This forces companies to provide better products as they aren’t gating customers.
• Lava gives people back more time, because when people are able to more easily manage their finances (saving, investing, spending), then they have to worry less about finances. This gives them more time to enjoy the beauties of life. We make the world more abundant in time.
• Lava will power a savings-driven economy. When people aren’t constantly worried about their savings being devalued, they will be more likely to save. This will reduce excessive consumerism.
• Lava unlocks bitcoin’s potential as self-sovereign savings by enabling bitcoin users to borrow without getting rugged. Making it easier to save in bitcoin is crucial. Unlocking bitcoin as a better savings tool is crucial for bitcoin’s success. In fact, the main reason people used Ethereum is because they can borrow without using custodians but couldn’t with BTC - until Lava. Lava increases bitcoin’s TAM and accelerates its success.