Why SLVR’s Mark Edwards Wants You to Learn Finance by Doing It

What if the best way to understand money was to actually trade it? That's the question at the heart of SLVR, the zero-commission rare coin marketplace founded by Mark Edwards — and the idea that earned him the People's Choice Award at Canopy's Global Demo Night on 25 March 2026.

Mark is a Banking and International Finance student at Bayes Business School, City University of London, and an Associate at TNG Capital Partners. He launched SLVR with a blunt conviction: school has failed an entire generation when it comes to financial literacy. "73% of people struggle with financial literacy,"  "and 80% of the $25 billion rare coin market is still offline." Mark believes SLVR is the answer to both problems at once.

The Problem With the Way We Teach Money

Mark didn't arrive at this idea from a textbook. He arrived at it from life. Growing up, he watched friends and peers leave education without any practical understanding of investing, saving, or building wealth. The financial system, he argues, is designed for people who already know how to use it.

SLVR's pitch video captures this perfectly — Mark is on the streets of central London, asking passers-by whether school did a good job of teaching them about money. The answers are unanimous: "Hell no." "Not really." "No." It's a simple bit of street research, but it lands hard because it's true for almost everyone watching.

"School didn't teach us money," the deck reads. "So we turned to something real."

Real Trades, Real Lessons, Zero Fees

SLVR is a marketplace where users buy, sell, and trade rare coins using SLVR tokens, each backed by one gram of silver bullion. Crucially, there are no buyer premiums and no seller commissions. That's a significant departure from traditional auction houses and coin platforms, which typically charge between 15–25% on each side of a transaction.

The fee-free model isn't just a pricing decision — it's a pedagogical one. When you're not losing money to platform fees every time you trade, you can afford to experiment. You can buy, observe how the market moves, sell, and learn from the experience without the fear of losing a meaningful chunk of your capital before you even begin.

"Real trades equal real lessons," Mark explains. "Zero fees means more learning, less losing."

The platform also introduces a tiered membership structure — Collector, Collector Pro, Dealer, and Wholesaler — based on the number of SLVR tokens held, allowing users to grow into more sophisticated roles as their confidence and knowledge builds.

A First Pitch in Silicon Valley — and What He Learned

Mark's journey as a founder began earlier than most. When he was just starting university, his father encouraged him to submit his early idea to a pitch event at a law firm in Silicon Valley. He got in — and then had to figure out what to do next.

"It was probably a room of around a hundred people," he recalls. "Angels, VCs, lawyers. And I had never actually pitched before." He was shaking before he went on. He lost his place. At one point he said "two hundred percent" when he meant "two hundred basis points" — and immediately corrected himself.

The room laughed. The ice broke. And something shifted. "From that moment I realised not everyone is judging and critiquing me. Everyone's just listening and thinking for themselves." From that point on, he says, pitching became about sharing an idea rather than defending one.

The Compounding Effect of Showing Up

One of the most memorable parts of Mark's interview isn't about SLVR at all — it's about the violin. His music teacher, frustrated by his lack of practice, gave him a new rule: don't play for twenty-five minutes. Just pick it up for one minute. Every day.

The result? "Once I managed to just pick it up and have it in my hands for a minute, I was like — I might as well just play. And I'd end up playing for thirty minutes."

It's a principle that maps directly onto his approach to entrepreneurship, and to the financial habits he hopes SLVR will build. Small, consistent actions compound. The founder who checks in on her idea for ten minutes a day doesn't just accumulate time — she accumulates momentum.

What He Told the Audience

When asked what advice he'd give to anyone stepping onto a Demo Night stage for the first time, Mark didn't reach for tactics or frameworks. He said: be yourself.

"If you put on a charade of 'I'm someone I'm not', and they invest in you later down the line — you can't hide that for seven years. You can't hide who you are for more than three months." Authenticity isn't just a virtue, in his view — it's a practical strategy. Investors who back the real you are the right investors. And the confidence that comes from showing up as yourself, he says, "branches out into all the parts of your life."

He closed with a nod to Simon Sinek's philosophy of giving without expectation of return. "Any person needs help, I always offer a helping hand. And if you expect something in return — that's not help, that's a transaction."

The Canopy community is fortunate to have founders like Mark in it. He's building something genuinely useful, and he's doing it with a generosity of spirit that makes the room want to root for him.

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn or find out more about SLVR at slvr.ag.

Ready to take the stage yourself? Come and join us at our next Demo Night — sign up at lu.ma/canopy.