Kryptos Founder Sukesh Kumar Tedla // Web3 Accountant Radio Ep7 Transcript
Sukesh Kumar Tedla is the founder of Kryptos, a premiere platform for seamless crypto management and tax solutions. In this conversation, we dive into:
1. Using a software for individual crypto tax reporting
2. Main group of customers
3. Kryptos for business
4. Why did Sukesh decide to enter the Web3 space？
5. What is the most important lesson learned in the Web3 space?
6. What is Sukesh looking forward to in the Web3 space?
And more!
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Connect with Sukesh & Kryptos👇
Linkedin: / sukeshtedla
Website: https://kryptos.io/
Email: [email protected]
Hi everyone, welcome to the Web3 Accountant Radio, the podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of the Web3 finance and compliance. I’m today’s host Diana and my partner is Wei Xiang. Hello Wei Xiang.
Hi Diana. Yeah and today we have a special guest called Sukesh Tedla and he will share his journey and experience in Web3. Sukesh Tedla is the CEO and founder of Kryptos, a pioneering platform that established a standardized financial data protocol for Web3, empowering both retail users and businesses.
He was a founding member and liquidity and exchange director of Telos, a layer one blockchain network that reached a peak valuation of over 300 million dollars. Additionally, Sukesh serves as the chairman of the Swedish Blockchain Association. His mission is to make Web3 finance seamless, accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
Hello Sukesh, nice to meet you. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity and super excited to be here. Thank you Sukesh.
Today we are very excited to have Sukesh with us. You know, many years of experience especially with a layer one blockchain and now trying to make Web3 finance seamless. So today he is here for us to discuss and share with us about individual crypto tax reporting which is on the rise with the increase in crypto usage and the increase in reporting requirements across all the different jurisdictions around the world.
So maybe we can start off with Sukesh. What do you think is the biggest reason why an individual that’s reporting crypto taxes would need to think of using your software versus because in the traditional world when I report my taxes itself, I do not need a software. The taxes would be okay but why is it that when I start touching crypto, I would have to use a software? Yeah, I think that’s a super great question.
And when it comes to crypto, right, so first of all there’s like a lot of misconceptions out there when it comes to crypto and taxes specifically because a lot of people in crypto and Web3 world think that they don’t have to pay taxes and crypto is like completely free of any regulations and everything, right? But that’s not true, unfortunately. Like in most of the jurisdictions out there, crypto is taxed and you have to pay taxes. And one of the biggest misconceptions that we come across usually is like people think they only have to pay taxes when they convert crypto to fiat, normal USD or Euro or other currencies, right? But that’s also not true.
In most of the countries, even if you do a crypto to crypto transfer or a swap or a trade, even then you have to pay capital gains transactions or capital gains taxes. So these kind of like misconceptions is the first thing like why Kryptos exist in the first place, right? And the second, one of the fundamental issues of the Web3 finance and the taxes and the need for Kryptos is that compared to traditional finance, crypto is a bit more complicated as you know, like there is no standardized data or like every exchange has their own transaction reports. Every blockchain has their own kind of like data formats and there is like hundreds and thousands of DeFi protocols and a lot of these new innovations happening in crypto.
And that’s one of the issues because the rapid growth of innovation also hampers like organizing financial data and like basic financial tasks. The other issue is like finding historical price information is not so easy as we think because yeah, you can say like you can go to coin market cap and maybe search for the price information, but you have to go and pinpoint on the chart and then you can identify the price. Oftentimes it’s not so easy for people to do it.
And a lot of people actually end up tracking in Excel sheets and use a bunch of different tools to do it today. So with Kryptos, one of the first things that we addressed as a platform was to make it super seamless and like provide a simplified user experience for users to aggregate all the data easily from like 10 or hundreds of platforms that they use. So today, crypto supports more than 5000 integrations with the DeFi protocols, blockchains, wallets, exchanges, and all you have to do is just kind of like simply follow the instructions.
It takes probably like a couple of minutes. You integrate your account. We do all the rest of the work.
We fetch the data. We organize the data. We parse the data.
We identify what type of transaction is it. We apply the necessary tax rules and regulations based on your jurisdiction. And then we also go ahead and actually find the price information.
We do P&L calculations. Then we actually generate the reports as well. So if you do it yourself, if you have a small portfolio, small number of transactions, maybe you can do it in a couple of hours.
But if your transactions are increasing, you don’t know how many exchanges you used, you have a wide variety of transactions, you’re interacting with a lot of meme coins and a lot of crazy stuff, then it becomes super challenging. And getting professional help by an accountant or CPA is always costly because it’s a professional time and you have to pay professional fees as well. But using a software reduces that time as well and helps you improve your efficiency and reduce your cost.
So that’s the main reason Kryptos exists. And we basically help users get the reports and taxes and regulations completely organized. It’s not just that.
It’s not just for filing taxes, but it’s actually, we help users to save on taxes as well. Because a lot of people in crypto actually lose money most of the times. And the market is quite volatile as well.
So which means there are so many opportunities where you can actually do tax loss harvesting and you can actually save on taxes as well illegally. So a lot of people doesn’t know that, that they can actually save money from taxes. So this is one of the cool things as well that we offer.
And yeah, it’s just like, if you want to grow your portfolio, if you want to be good at your finances, this is one of the fundamental thing that you have to do when you’re getting into crypto. Like, yeah, you have a good financial habits in a way. Okay.
So where is the main group of customers that you are seeing growth in? And the other one is, I’m not sure if this is possible to share on the channel itself, what kind of price point can an individual look at when they want to use Kryptos? Good question. So when it comes to users and the demographics today, so we see a lot of users coming, of course, from the Western markets. If we are just talking about the tax side of things, because a lot of users in like Europe and US, they’re quite familiar with like DIY solutions to use like a TurboTax or some other software side.
So we see a lot of demand from these countries for sure, where people want to do it and use software to do it by themselves. But when it comes to like general portfolio tracking and a lot of other tools, we see actually a lot more users coming from different parts of the world. It’s quite diverse than we expected.
So we are kind of like the only platform in the market who actually offer a free tax report if you have like less than 100 transactions. But Kryptos is free to use if you just want to track your portfolio, you want to check your DeFi positions, you want to check your NFTs. We also have a mobile app which helps users to keep track of all their assets.
So it’s mostly free to use if you want to just generate a tax report, depending on the country and the jurisdiction you’re in. The first plan starts from $39 and it can go up to like $249. And this is only one time annual fee every year that you have to pay.
It varies depending on the number of transactions you have. So if you’re just getting started, have less than 100 transactions, it’s free to use. And if you just want to use your portfolio tracking, it’s free to use.
And if you want to like generate a report, then you have to start paying it $39 to $249. Yeah, definitely. I think with the amount that you are quoting, it’s not even four digit.
And with where the market is volatile, many people would to avoid the compliance issue. It’s not about tax saving, but you do not want to receive notices from your tax authorities that you have been avoiding on taxes. Because the tax authorities have been getting the data from the exchange itself with the latest CARF rules or even the FATF rules itself, the travel rules itself.
So they do have all the data. And now with all the laws in anonymity, the individuals will look at this portion. So other than helping individuals file taxes, I also understand Kryptos do help businesses as well.
And they have approval flows in place and talking about how we can use one account with multiple members in the finance team together. Can we hear more about that? Yeah, absolutely. So we have a wide variety of products.
So we started as a single product company, but now we evolved into more like a tech platform, fintech platform, essentially like where you can create like different sorts of products and different, like we also enable others to build products similar to us as well with our APIs and our data structures and everything. So essentially right now for businesses, we have a product coming in a couple of weeks. So essentially using that product, you can onboard your team members.
You can, if you have like multiple entities in different jurisdictions, you can have different workspaces for different entities. You can create like separate portfolios. Say you have like a marketing budget or you have a developer budget, you have developer accounts.
You can even map those accounts into different portfolios. You can track each portfolio separately. And one of the coolest features that we are bringing to the market, like no one else has it in the market is like, you can track all your token listings, all your SAFT agreements.
If you’re investing in Web3 companies and Web3 projects and Web3 tokens, a lot of times these are private rounds that you’re investing in. So which means you are getting tokens throughout like a couple of years timeline. So you should be able to track them easily.
So today, a lot of people refer to like even big VCs in the space actually use like Excel sheets to track, which is kind of like mind blowing. So we are coming up with a tool where all you have to do is just enter your wallet address, public key, and that’s it. We go and fetch all the token unlock contracts.
We fetch all the information about your assets. We organize everything. We show everything to you in the dashboards and you can invite your team members.
You can give like different permissions and everything as well. And one of the things I can already say that unlike any other tools in the B2B space, especially in Web3 finance, we will offer a free version that everyone can use. Everyone can try out.
And once they start liking it and once they start to grow as a business, then they can grow with that together with us as a platform as well. Thank you. Thank you, Sukesh.
I think this is a very good information for a lot of young Web3 finance managers outside who we do not dispute anymore whether we need a crypto subledger. So if you want a first crypto subledger to start and then Kryptos offer a free version, I think that is a very good starting point where you can definitely try them out. So in terms of, let’s say, fetching of data for the business side, integrations towards the different exchanges or custodians, what are we looking at at the Kryptos software itself currently or even in the next few weeks or in the next few months? So today, as far as based on our analysis in the market, we offer the most number of integrations already.
We support 5000 integrations today, which covers more than 100 exchanges, 150 plus EVM and non-EVM blockchains, 500 plus wallets, 4300 plus DeFi protocols. Like if you’re using any of these platforms, we can fetch all of your data super easily and we can get everything organized for you in a couple of minutes, basically. So we also have close partnerships with different exchanges.
So one of the partnerships that we recently did was with Bitstamp, where we have a one-click integration, which means basically you just click, you enter your email ID, password on Bitstamp, and we go and fetch all the data from their systems into our system. So basically, if you are using Kryptos, you can get everything organized. And one of the motivations for us, even when we are getting started with this business product, is to enable every single Web3 company that’s building a product or a business in the Web3 space to have all the necessary financial tool set when they’re getting started.
So we want to be a part of their journey. So today, we believe a lot of people in Web3 are not even aware of these tools that’s there to help them. So we want to guide them and offer this tool from day one to get started for free, and then they can grow together with us as they scale their business and operations.
They don’t have to worry about one thing, which is finances, and we take care of that. Yeah. Thanks a lot for sharing so much about Kryptos itself.
I think this is definitely something that a lot of the listeners can look at. And you’re right. A lot of finance, they are actually doing it via Excel.
At least people within my community, they are doing it via Excel. So Kryptos is actually a software that we should actually look into it, especially when they give free. This is something that I know that in the market, 90% of the market players do not give free because they want to lock you in.
And then maybe they would say integration is a bit challenging and we need to customize certain software, certain portions before you can use. But that’s where I think Kryptos has provided a very good start. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s been one of our motto as well. At the end of the day, our goal towards customers in the Web3 space is like, we offer all the tools set for you.
We offer the best support that you can get. You get a quick response from us. Unlike other tools, you have a lot of bureaucracies, you have to go through agreements before you can even use the tool.
That doesn’t make any sense for us. So for us, it’s more about we align with ourselves with the Web3 kind of ideology. Everyone should have access to things and everyone should be able to have access to financial tools as well.
And that’s the reason we are taking this approach. Thank you. Thank you, Sukesh.
I think we would like to go into the free talk session because there is a lot of, because being a very experienced blockchain veteran, OG itself, there’s a lot of questions that I would like to ask during the free talk session. So Diana, over to you. Okay.
And in today’s free talk session, I have a lot of questions lined up that I’m particularly curious. And the first question is that why did you decide to enter the Web3 space? I think that’s an interesting question. Probably have to reflect back on my last eight years.
Well, I personally come from a tech background. I have a master’s in telecommunications. So I’m originally from India, but I ended up in Sweden doing my master’s.
And then I worked at Ericsson for a couple of years, working on their 4G research and 5G research and development there. So coming from that background kind of got me into just seeing somewhere like an ad about Bitcoin.com and you can grow your portfolio, you can increase your money and things like that. So that kind of like, okay, what is this new technology that they’re talking about? And I actually did my master’s thesis in decentralization and distributed data transfers and everything.
So that kind of got me intrigued in a way to learn more about the technology. And that’s kind of how I started my journey. Back when I started, there was probably like 10 blockchains that you can name, not even 10 probably, like Ethereum and a bunch of other EOS and other chains.
So I was one of the very first members in those communities because no one was there. And literally I was probably like, when I started learning about blockchain and talking about blockchain, there’s like literally a hundred people in Sweden or probably less than a hundred people in Sweden who actually know what that means. So we kind of like bootstrapped the whole ecosystem here.
And the whole technology for me, why I was so intrigued was because the freedom it offers in terms of finance to people all over the globe, right? It’s not just limited to a particular jurisdiction. It’s a global technology. It offers freedom of finance to everyone.
And the decentralization aspect also is super interesting as well. There’s like a ton of possibilities, which eliminates like the middlemen in the systems and increase the efficiencies as well. So these are the things kind of like motivated me to continue my journey in the blockchain space.
And after working in this for like one to two years, I kind of decided like, yeah, I wanted to do this full time. And yeah, I never looked back over the last eight years. Okay.
And I think from the technical side, because we seldom hear some person that he will start from a technical side to enter the Web3 space. So can you share one key experience or lesson that you have learned in your Web3 journey that you think maybe is very valuable for our listener? Absolutely. So if you’re just getting started in the Web3 space, so I think one of the interesting dynamics in Web3, right? So when we started, when I personally started spending time and working with different projects, like even tell us when we started co-founding it, the story is quite interesting because I never met the people that my co-founders or other members in person.
The only thing that we had interaction was virtually pretty much. And then I actually met them after three years of working with them with countless number of hours, millions of dollars in transactions value and everything. We never saw each other.
So the whole dynamics of team and everything is going to be like completely different in Web3 when it comes to traditional business world and everything. Right. So I think that’s going to be quite unique if you’re just getting started.
And the people that you meet in Web3 are also like quite different. The way you do business, the way you do deals or interactions and partnerships. It’s more about trust in Web3.
So the more open you are and the more helping you are to others and like creating, building your network, it creates more trust. And it’s important, like whenever you attend these Web3 events as well, it’s important like those are the places where you can actually interact with people, have a social conversation. And these kind of relations can actually make a ton of value, bring a ton of value to your business and to what you do, because this is the only time you actually get to meet that person.
And yeah, so these are kind of like interesting nuances when it comes to Web3, working in Web3 as well. So anyone that’s getting started, there’s like numerous opportunities out there in Web3. All you have to do, all you have, all you need is just interest to work hard and learn more and just be open to opportunities.
And yeah, once you get started… How did you came about to founding the Blockchain Association? So Blockchain Association in Sweden, I think like one of the primary reasons for that was when I’m getting started in blockchain space myself in Sweden, like I couldn’t find any resources or to speak with people or like a platform to interact with people and discuss like different things. And when I was looking in other jurisdictions like US and other countries, there’s like a lot of other activity and communities doing different events and stuff. But when it comes to in Sweden, like nothing was happening.
So we thought like, okay, we need to start something so that like we not only interact with people and have social networks, but also we can educate others and other businesses in the space because it’s a growing technology. We want to drive the innovation. And that’s kind of like the reason we started it as a non-profit organization.
And it’s still there. We contribute our free time and our resources to grow the community. At the end of the day, we want to help businesses and with any advice or with any introductions, anything that they need.
So that’s the whole purpose of the organization is just to help others and educate them and help them avoid scams and things like that as well. Okay. And I would like to know that.
So what are you looking forward to in the Web3 Finance or Compliance? Sorry, could you repeat the first part? What are you looking forward to in the future in the Web3 Finance or Compliance? I think I, to be honest, I never imagined that I would be working with all this financial data, accounting and taxes myself. I never imagined kind of like working almost like an accountant, right? Yeah. I think after working in this space for the last couple of years, I feel like there’s a huge opportunity in the market and huge gap as well when it comes to software technology and like seamless services and everything.
But fundamental reason for us is like if we want Web3 ecosystem to go from right now of $2 trillion market cap or whatever into hundreds of trillions of dollars, right? So that means you need to have basic financial tools ready to go. If you want to onboard a billion people into this ecosystem, you’ve got to have the fundamentals correct. And Web3 Finance is like a fundamental aspect, like whether you like it or not, you have to pay taxes, you have to be in compliance with the regulation.
If you’re running a business, you have to have good financial books and everything. So it’s an evergreen business, like what can you ask, right? So accountants and taxes is always an evergreen business to be in. And we want to be the leading player in the space.
And one of the things that we are going to enable now is like, if you are using Kryptos, you’re not just getting our products. You’re actually unlocking access to all types of different service providers. You don’t have to add your accounts again and again.
With one click, you can share your data with an insurance provider. With one click, you can share your data with your accounting firm. Or with one click, you can share data with a tax planner.
This is what we’re trying to enable. Easy data sharing, secure data sharing, and easy access to financial tools. I think you share a lot about how compliance and regulation increase would result in Web3 mass adoption.
And the other one is also like how different coins are jumping along the different chains, which results in interoperability, which is why you’re hoping that people will be able to send their data everywhere because everybody is asking for data nowadays, no matter which professions you are from. So, I mean, the other one that I would like to ask is, do you have any comments or advice for anybody who is entering the layer one blockchain space or who wants to build a new chain? We still see new chains coming up every day. Because, I mean, you are an expert in this area.
I mean, I’m quite sure you have something to share about this. Right now, well, in regards to the chains and stuff, I’m not sure, to be honest, because over the last couple of years, probably a couple of hundred or thousand new chains came out. So it’s just like increasing exponentially.
But most of the chains are dead these days, right? Like only three or four chains are actually doing a lot of transactions and more activity happening in the space. I think if you are going to launch a new chain, really have a unique value proposition of how you’re going to differentiate. Focus on, yeah, I mean, people in layer ones and layer twos, they run it as a charity or some sort of ever printing machine, right? So, which doesn’t work.
If you want to build a successful ecosystem and successful business, you need to have a good understanding of how do you monetize the chain as well? How do you make the tokenomics work? And that’s going to be super essential. So I think this is something that everyone needs to focus on, not just print the tokens for the hype and sell them and dump them on the market, but actually create a real use case and focus on real value add to the ecosystem. Yeah.
Thank you, Sukesh, for sharing these wise words. Actually, when I asked you about this question, the other one that, because you’re an expert in this area, which I would like to share is, you know, if anybody is on any of the newer chains out there and you need the data, do look for Sukesh. And if he has not integrated the chain yet, I’m quite sure he will look at how he can help you with it as long as there’s enough value in the chain itself.
Yeah, absolutely. Please reach out to us. We are always adding more and more chains and moving forward in Kryptos, like we’re going to be open sourcing our data standard.
Anyone, any developer can build integrations to Kryptos and can use it as well. So we’re going to create a whole financial ecosystem in Web3 and it’s going to be awesome. Very excited for that.
I was just sharing about Xero before this sharing and, you know, the power of Xero itself is not in Xero itself. The power in Xero is any other expense management, consolidation, developer, you can build and I’m integrated with Xero. So, you know, if you use Xero, you are using a lot more, a lot more ability.
If not, the development team is very small. Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re trying to achieve.
Like we want to open up. I mean, people will say, okay, how will you challenge the competitors and everything, right? Like, we don’t really care. If they want to use our APIs, use them.
It’s fine. As long as whoever is offering the best service wins the game. So that’s what we’re trying to do.
I have not met a single Web3 crypto sub-ledger that is doing this, but yeah, very happy to hear that. Yep, absolutely. So maybe we come to the end of this podcast and thank you so much for sharing your insight and experience with us today.
And to our listeners, thank you for tuning into the Web3 Accountant Radio. If you enjoyed this radio, please subscribe and leave a review for us. And at the end, do you have anything else to our listeners, Wei Xiang and Sukesh? If you do not have a crypto sub-ledger, please try crypto itself.
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And if you’re already using a sub-ledger or some other tools, just reach out to us.
We also offer migration functionalities as well. You can just download the report, upload it in Kryptos, and that’s it. We can take care of the rest of the things.
Okay. Thank you.