Jake Hunsbusher has a strong acting background. Actually he has a strong acting, writing, directing and producing background which is standard form for young and upcoming artists. Producing is his least favourite role but is often incumbent for new playwrights. However, since he moved into crypto, he has very little time for theatre.
“The longest play I ever wrote was a dark story about human trafficking. It was via my mentor Dr. John Patrick Bray and it was commissioned by the Christian College, Gardner Webb University.”
Hunsbusher asks if I was aware Georgia is a major trafficking hub – I wasn’t, but I was aware from previous work I had done that trafficking is ubiquitous and hides under the radar in its seemingly ordinariness. I was also aware that trafficking can be far more lucrative than other illegal smuggling, like drugs for example, as humans can be trafficked many times.
This dark play contained humour but also ended up with the main protagonists in body bags. Hunsbusher describes it as a tough watch but he tried to avoid Hollywood tropes with lots of violence and blood.
“One of the most visceral scenes was when a female traffic character has her hair cut with scissors. In another we see the main trafficker’s journey from normal job to full on boogie man. It’s the normality and ordinariness that really underpins the horror.”
Hunsbusher’s acting skills also led him to producing audiobooks with new writers – a role that he really enjoyed – but again entering the world of crypto has not left him with much time to pursue those roles.
The crypto world opened up to Hunsbusher around 2018 when he began trading on RobinHood, but he didn’t feel the need to join a community, and trading was a solitary hobby. However, did I mention Hunsbusher is also an artist and would create time limited one-and-done sketches, often videoing the process as this developed. From sketching, to trading Bitcoin, to creating NFTs was a natural step. As it happens, Hunsbusher had discovered Hedera and the Hedera community.
“Previously I had just been trading and had not needed to talk to other people, but now I was creating in the space and that was very different.”
Hunsbusher converted these sketches into an NFT project he calls “CREETS” which is a derivative of creatures, the subject of his sketches, and at the same time he launched an in depth podcast called the Hedera HashCast but he found there weren’t enough people to interview in the ecosystem. His job as a teacher was replaced at the same time as he was offered a job as the marketing manager for Ledger Works and Hunsbusher attributes his Creets and experience in the Hedera ecosystem as the key to opening his world to crypto.
Hunsbusher’s CREETS NFT project was one of the first NFT projects on Hedera. He decided to support his Creets by making a growth token. As befits an artistic mind, he decided on creating an anti-mascot coin with a largely unlikable character called Gerbert the Grelf.
“To be honest, Grelf is this bald, ugly character with no redeeming features at all. He became the spokesperson for my Creets and to my astonishment he became more popular than the NFTs that he was supporting, well to be fair some people just loved him and others could not abide him – he is a very divisive character.”
As a meme token, Grelf flatlined at first as Hunsbusher could not get him listed on the main Hedera DEX, SaucerSwap. It was just an admin omission but once he was listed the meme coin experienced a breakout moment.
It has since crashed and then come back again. It currently is the number one meme coin on Hedera but Hunsbusher has no intention of rugging this strange little man – he is here for the long haul. Right now, the market cap is hovering around the $3million mark and Hunsbusher is supporting his creation.
Moving to Kinetic came about as the core team were looking for a grass roots expert. As a project, Kinetic will offer users a seamless platform for participating in DeFi complete with the potential to earn block rewards using their supplied digital assets. This collaboration will introduce lending and borrowing capabilities essential for deepening liquidity and fostering a robust DeFi ecosystem.
“We have not launched as of yet but we are out of stealth mode, which is super. My role will be to bridge the gap between fun and professional. I am also looking for another mascot but this time it’ll be a unifying mascot rather than a Grelf-like character.”
Hunsbusher is enjoying getting to know the Flare Community. He reckons they are very smart, very tech focused and quite serious.
“But there are also others who, while keen, are looking for educational support. This will be an important part of my role. Kinetic will be the first lending solution on Flare so that is very exciting too.”
The partnership will see Kinetic benefiting from the decentralized asset prices provided by Flare’s native price oracle, the Flare Time Series Oracle. This integration will allow Kinetic to acquire off-chain time series data such as cryptocurrency prices without relying on a centralized entity. It will ensure highly accurate, decentralized, and frequently updated price feeds for lending and borrowing activities, underpinning a more secure and responsive DeFi experience on the Flare network.
Kinetic will also integrate FAssets, which are being developed by Flare Labs, Flare’s sister company, enabling traditionally non-smart contract tokens like BTC, XRP, and DOGE to engage in DeFi activities. Once these assets are converted into FAssets on Flare, Kinetic’s platform will allow them to be used for earning yield within DeFi. This integration enriches Kinetic’s lending and borrowing landscape, significantly increasing the variety and liquidity of assets available, and marks a notable step in bridging traditional cryptocurrencies with advanced DeFi functionalities.
Kinetic will initially launch on Coston2, Flare’s testnet, to enable a dynamic and interactive environment for users to engage, provide feedback, and gain valuable insights.
The roadmap for Kinetic is to release their protocol on testnet sometime in Q2. Shortly after that, they plan to launch a number of genesis pools to bootstrap some liquidity and then, following that, the full protocol will launch on mainnet.
