AMA Summary – 29th June, 2018

What a week for the industry! This week, Kevin goes over the controversial Facebook Ad reversal, updates on the CoinMetro UX/UI, fights FUD with brass knuckles, and reveals a cool moment of his gaming history.

VIDEO ARCHIVE OF THE AMA (YOUTUBE, FACEBOOK)

IN THE NEWS

#1. IBM’s Head of Blockchain says banking facing its “Uber moment”

• In Kevin’s opinion, eMoney licenses in the EU were the first step in challenging established banking.
• Underpinning challenger banks, there’s still SEPA, Swiss System, old infrastructures.
• From a crypto exchange standpoint, when you need fiat, you need banks.
• It’ll take a long time before true disruption takes place.

#2. Facebook reverses its crypto ad ban

• It was inevitable.
• Facebook is already in enough hot water, they didn’t want to completely ignite themselves, and they banned ICOs and crypto advertising while waiting for regulation.
• Now they’ve opened the door for regulated entities.
• It’s a pro for CoinMetro, as we’re regulation-forward.
• Cons mean other regulated exchanges will also be whitelisted, which causes established competitors to raise pricing in the market.
• Everybody goes after the same segment right now: the trader segment.
• There are very few traders in the market.
• Almost no one is going after newbies.
• The lifecycle model of transforming newbies into experienced traders using CoinMetro as their initial platform is a HUGE advantage for us, and being able to advertise on FB to these new users is going to be very important.

#3. Binance Opens Its First Crypto-Fiat Exchange in Uganda

• Good for Binance!
• Africa is a great market, where there is an emerging middle class. Where there’s an emerging middle class, there are risk takers, and “traders”.
• Good news overall.

#4. No Big Jumps in BTC price anymore because of futures trading

• More liquidity does not always equal higher prices.
• It’s fake liquidity- not underpinned by the underlying asset.
• Expanding liquidity tends to lead to stabilization.
• No more mooning.

#5. Germany’s SolarisBank to Serve Blockchain and Crypto Companies

• CoinMetro approached Solaris in May, and they didn’t get back to us.
• A lot of institutions are now “crypto friendly” because they need to be.
• Great story on Latvia Banks (~47 min mark)
• A lot of the smaller banks, just need the capital for whatever reason. And when they don’t need the capital anymore, they close accounts.

COINMETRO UPDATES

• Kevin was a DOOM fan on Mac Desktops.
• An e-mail was sent out with different renditions on the GUI.
• The team is going to be working very hard for the next few days to catch up.
• The development team is becoming more cohesive every day and implementing more with the addition of the new COO.
• Kevin had a great call with an institutional liquidity provider from the FX space that’s now providing beta testing deliverable liquidity beta testing in the crypto space, and custodial service testing. They can provide depth, tight spreads, fast execution (in milliseconds).
• CM is still talking with banks, and on-boarding for some are still in the work.
• EUR is completed.
• USD is just about completed.
• Possible onboarding for some other currencies.
• Kevin is flying to Amsterdam and is meeting with ING Bank, ABN Amro.
• Both of those banks don’t publicly deal with crypto, but they are interested in what CM has to say.

REDDIT QUESTIONS

What’s Evan’s role?

• He’s one of the original shareholders- a majority shareholder.
• He’s a pilot by trade.

Will we be able to test the trading engine soon?

• The FX background that the team has worked on works very well.
• FXPig hasn’t created GUIs, and the team is working with a talented designer and explaining the trade tech in order to create something unique.
• Funny Mexican Bar Story (1:02 mark)
• Just because something has been done before, and everyone does it, doesn’t mean it’s the best way to approach a problem.

Advanced Version of the Platform for Friends & Family- are there any pictures?

• Kevin will look into it and share with community.

Where the funds raised in the pre- ICO phase immediately converted into fiat?

• No, they were not.
• The token sale was done from Hong Kong.

Is CoinMetro looking into using digital identification solutions?

• Yes, starting with Estonia.

If you had to choose, would you rather have your user base consist of A) the 100 biggest traders, volume-wise, or B) 10 million very small traders? (30 min mark)

• In the real world, every single exchange is headhunting A.
• No one is looking for the 10 million guys
• Some of those will become high volume traders, and they have the chance of becoming a cheerleader for your platform.
• There’s not a lot of A) Traders.
• When you bring in newbies, and your platform helps them become experienced traders, that’s great marketing.

FACEBOOK/YOUTUBE AMA

Energy problems with Crypto

• How much energy is required to mine gold? Silver? Lithium for batteries, etc…
• Bitcoin is not a currency. It’s a store-of-value, some time of asset.
• Over time, as prices stabilize, the institutional miners won’t have a reason to mine, power consumption will go down.
• As the new blockchains evolve, you’re moving into different consensus protocols.
• Eventually we’ll get to a protocol that can become a currency.

CoinMetro Academy

• The Chief Content guy was on vacation, he’s coming on next week along with a content team member and an SEO team member.
• The first videos should be available in August.

What’s the status of the prepaid card?

• The team is working with two suppliers currently, leaning towards one. Finishing up KYC and other details.

Any decision made on the potential flash sales?

• No decision yet.

Are OTC trading services a possibility in the future?

• There’s a big buzz around OTC, but there really isn’t much difference between OTC and an exchange, other than it’s a dark pool.
• The OTC market is probably going to be pushed into a dark pool environment, in which CM will consider it.

What are the issues around Agile/Waterfall development?

• The team is working on solidifying a workflow that is hybrid at the moment, and working towards a “DevOps” development mode, where releases can be more consistent.

Why the name CoinMetro?

• Kevin came up with the name, he has an unorthodox way of branding (see: FXPig).
• Why the name? Coin = crypto currency space. Metro = something that signified speed, reliability, predictability.
• Kevin’s not a fan of the phrase “altcoin”.

Articles on the blog that can be attracting FUD.

• During the token sale the crypto community is very important, since there are a lot of traders present during this time and it’s important to create positive hype.
• Once the token sale is over, we have to refocus on the core users that will be using CoinMetro which includes a broader audience than just the members present on the crypto space.
• FUDers gonna FUD.
• We can’t make the mistake of making a very small segment of the population happy, as opposed to making sure that the product is high quality and released responsible.

Is the TAM/ETCF on schedule?

• TAM is built off the trading interface and ETCF is built off the exchange interface.
• They are not affected by delays right now.

CM vs Binance: Strengths and Weaknesses

• Binance Strengths: They started first, market size, they have reach at the moment, they list a lot of tokens
• Binance Weaknesses: CM can see the mistakes they have made, mostly on the regulatory and banking side.
• The fact that CoinMetro is building a strong regulatory foundation means that it will be one of the only survivors once the regulation apocalypse comes around.
• CM is building a multi-faceted platform that is going to attract numerous different market segments (e.g. newbies, people curious about tokens, people looking for TAM and ETCF solutions, fiat solutions)
• Don’t think that Binance launched fiat in Uganda because it’s the best option for fiat onboarding. The real reason, is that they can’t get client fund fiat accounts anywhere else, yet. And they may not be able to.
• Playing catchup with a regulator is almost impossible.

Weekly FUD Addressed.

• Delays are part of the process
• Little failures provide Big Successes
• CM has done more on the regulatory compliance side than most any other exchange, and we’re 6 months old.
• When you pull the wash trades out of the equation, the income of these exchanges is pitiful.

Where will new money volume come from, in your opinion?

• Equating a bear market with slow volume isn’t always the case.
• We’re not in a bear market, to be honest.

Where will we get new users?

• If we’re focusing on the top traders, it’ll be difficult.
• CM is focusing on the larger broader audience, using growth hacking, and other marketing to educate and onboard onto the platform.

If you contributed to the Token Sale you get the lifetime platform discount. If you hold XCM, you’ll be a part of the AirDrop family. 

What’s the minimum fiat you can deposit?

• It depends on the channel you’re using. SEPA, for example, could be as little as 1 euro.
• There will be some guidelines provided so people can understand what fees are going to be encountered.

Any partnerships in the pipeline?

• Sure, things like Dow Jones analysis, a lot of partnerships are in the verbal communication phase.
• CM wants to partner with like-minded companies to get great results.

No PayPal integration. Skrill, more likely. 

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Well, that’s it for this week’s AMA with CoinMetro Founder Kevin Murcko! Please join us next week on CoinMetro’s Facebook and YouTube Channels at 2PM GMT for another round and make sure you submit your questions to the CoinMetro Subreddit!

As always, we’re available to answer any questions you may have on our Telegram Group 24/7.