As tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) become more common in the financial world, OilXCoin is becoming a leader at the crossroads of blockchain and natural resources. At the heart of its mission is the desire to not only tokenise energy reserves but also to connect two worlds that often seem to be at odds: the traditional oil and gas industries and the new cryptocurrency economy.
Worldwide reach, local knowledge
OilXCoin co-founder Dave Rademacher talked to AltCoinDesk.com about how his experience working for companies around the world influenced how the company plans to grow and adapt in different markets.
Rademacher said, “The world is the market for crypto.” He stressed how important it was to see different markets and people in person in order to grow businesses successfully. “It helps a lot to know about the culture of the people you’re dealing with.” If you’ve been to those markets and had real, local interactions, you start to understand how people work and what drives them.
Rademacher said that the lessons he learnt about structure, process, and failure while building and scaling teams in big companies helped him navigate the relatively unstable crypto market with processes.
Creating an entry token to connect two worlds
OilXCoin’s first big problem was how to get its product to appeal to two very different groups of people: experienced crypto users and traditional oil and gas investors. He says that being an entry token is very important to how they work in the market.
The company did market research and went to industry conventions to learn more about this gap. They found that there was a real interest in blockchain exposure, but only if it was framed correctly.
Centralisation and decentralisation: Are they working together?
Rademacher also thought about how the centralised legacy industries, like oil and gas, and the decentralised nature of blockchain are at odds with each other on a deeper level. He doesn’t think the two are incompatible; instead, he sees blockchain as a force that makes access, transparency, and capital flow into asset classes that are usually hard to get into.
It (decentralisation) really just gives people access to financial investments that were, let’s say, almost impossible. There are other financial products out there, but this makes it a lot easier to do that.
Getting around the rules
But these new ideas come with problems with the law, especially for companies that issue security tokens like OilXCoin. Rademacher said that their model is based on a strong legal foundation, but the infrastructure for secondary markets is still being built. Rademacher also said that new people often don’t realise how hard it is to follow the rules and how the law works.
A one-of-a-kind hybrid model: reserves and production
The dual-structured token model of OilXCoin sets it apart even more. This model shows not only the value of oil and gas reserves but also the activity of production and sales in the upstream. Rademacher said that this is one of the things that makes the token a security and gives it the potential to grow over time. “It’s an interesting product that lets you get the best of both worlds: a commodity peg and a way to understand how a company makes money by extracting and selling that product.” He says.
The road ahead
Rademacher thinks the trend is irreversible because more institutions are interested in it and predictions say the RWA market will reach trillions by 2030.
Rademacher said, “We have the chance to open up so many opportunities for people around the world that weren’t there before. These old-fashioned, very often conservative institutions wouldn’t touch things like that with a 10-foot pole.”
OilXCoin is betting that a balanced approach based on traditional asset value and blockchain transparency will win the trust of both markets, even though there are still problems with infrastructure and public education.
