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BackInteresting crypto market news, questions about the upcoming Bitcoin halvening, and some insight into CoinMetro’s 2020 vision.
Curious about what’s next for CoinMetro? Find out with CoinMetro’s Q1 Roadmap!
Check out our weekly “This Week in Crypto” summary or watch the full video.
Crypto Market News Highlights
1) Binance Balances and Orders Are Allegedly Not Being Processed Right
They had a technical issue. All tech related companies have tech-related issues from time to time. Even CoinMetro.
Point is that no matter how big your company is, how much money you have — this happens to everybody.
In more traditional markets, most systems are standardized, and most companies are using the same back office. Tech issues happen rarely, but If something does happen, it generally affects many companies at the same time.
2) Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Is Growing ‘Increasingly Centralized,’ Researchers Find
Lightning is basically centralized by its very virtue. You need to have credit in the Lightning Network in order to make Lightning payments. Someone has to manage the credit, thus it is centralized. The bigger it grows, the more centralized it becomes.
When it comes to Bitcoin, likely the most decentralized asset in crypto, it’s slow and needs something like Lightning to speed it up. For that speed, things need to be centralized.
3) Brazilian Crypto Exchanges Crushed Under the Weight of Tough Laws
Kevin thinks this is better said as “Brazilian Crypto Exchanges crushed under any type of law”. They went from having no oversight, to having some oversight. That knocks out any of the lowest hanging fruits, the guys that didn’t know what they were doing. If you are running a financial business and you didn’t expect the tax board or regulators to show up one day — it was inevitable. Like Darwin’s Law. Only the strong survive.
Would you like to read about more market news? Check out our Medium post!
Live Questions
Is CoinMetro on schedule in context of the Q1 Roadmap?
We sure are.
Any marketing positions locked in yet?
Not yet, still in process.
Find CoinMetro’s job listings here and on LinkedIn!
New TraMs (Trade Mirrors) in the making?
There are always new TraMs in the making. A bunch of private TraMs are trading, and some of them will go public. One is waiting to go public soon.
Check out CoinMetro’s TraM (Trade Mirror) system!
How much XCM volume would CoinMetro need to allow XCM investments into the TraMs?
Not a specific volume, but more about stability, and a stabilized book, instead of being so heavily weighted on one side.
CoinMetro’s trading volume has an impact on the XCM price. Find out more in this post about the full XCM utility!
When are those new currencies coming? Are you still waiting for new licenses before launching?
Right now we have to rely on third parties, because we do not have the license yet. The main third party contact we have, had to revamp their corresponding banking relationship. Kevin was told 2-3 weeks, a week ago.
Initially we will have EUR and GBP only, and their goal is to have another 1-5 currencies per week. That’s their goals.
When will CoinMarketCap get the right data stats for XCM?
We are working on revamping our wallet structure, and hopefully it will allow them to understand what we have been trying to tell them for a year.
Still in talks with angel investors? Any new funds coming in?
Haven’t been actually in touch with new angel investors yet, but we are still actively looking to engage angel investors, yes.
Read about CoinMetro’s successful funding round!
What licenses are you looking to acquire and what are the costs?
Every license has different types of “cost”. The cost/ filing cost you pay to the government for the license. Internal costs to put together documentation. Legal council, which can be quite high depending on complexity. And the minimum capital requirements is not necessarily a cost, but it is money that you need to have in your account, not to be used.
Payment Institution License — €125,000 minimum capital. In reality, you would need about a year’s worth of operating expenses. So, about €250,000-€300,000. Legal council can be €30,000-€60,000.
The MTF licensing, which is a part of Investment Firm license – €730,000 minimum capital. And with a year worth of operating expenses, roughly €1.1 million EUR in minimum capital. €45,000-€60,000 legal costs. Small licenses and registrations around the world generally cost somewhere between €1,000-€10,000.
Where can I go to find more information about XCM?
Here is a link to the whitepaper. Keep in mind that some things in our whitepaper have grown significantly.
CoinMetro’s live chat support is available around the clock, in multiple languages, with less than a minute response time. Always available to help you and answer any questions you might have! Just click the blue chat bubble found in the bottom corner of any CoinMetro page.
What do you think is the biggest challenge for CoinMetro? Attracting users?
Attracting users is not that much of a challenge. It costs money, and the proper infrastructure needs to be in place to operate on mass-scale.
The challenge is getting to a point where you have enough users to make sure that you are self-sustaining. So, getting into self-sustainability and profitability. That’s a challenge in any business.
What would happen if most CoinMetro users would use CoinMetro only for cashing out crypto? Would you eventually run out of fiat?
No, we are never on the buy side. If someone is cashing out fiat, somebody else with fiat on our platform will be buying. And that counterparty is never CoinMetro.
Will the CSD drive most of the marketing campaign for global domination?
Initially when we do PR, with the Montenegro government for example, it will be a 50/50 split.
Kevin thinks that the CSD has the ability to grow bigger, faster than CoinMetro. But CoinMetro has an equal amount of ability to become larger than the CSD, in terms of market cap. That’s for sure. But the CSD is B2B, mostly. And in many parts of the world, there is minimal or no competition.
Could you describe how CoinMetro should look at the end of 2020?
It’s always about onwards and upwards. Kevin envisions that we are in the sandbox, and we have been operating within the sandbox. We would have a clear vision for where we are going outside of the sandbox. With the Payment Institution License, we would be expanding our current footprint of products into more banking-like products with IBANs, third party payments, and all that good stuff.
At that point we would have been doing some marketing for a certain amount of time. We would likely have done another round of capital raise. More clients on board, more products on board. More CoinMetro awareness in the general public.
More PR in terms of Montenegro. Possibly some other sandbox-like venues that we will enter, hopefully before the end of the year.
What do you think about the eToro commercial with Alec Baldwin? They have the same thing as TraM (copytrader). Are they our direct competition?
eToro is pretty much the only game in town for copy trading in FX. Alec Baldwin is a pretty well known actor. But who are the guys that would want a passive income out of a matched crypto currency platform? Kevin would think that they are 18-35 year old males. Do they really identify so much with Alec Baldwin?
The concept of using someone famous gets you a lot of views, but does it really convert? That’s the question. eToro has paid a lot of money in advertising over the years, and they have done a lot of different types of advertising. This is only one of them.
Kevin doesn’t think CoinMetro would do anything like that, at least not in the beginning. The same commercial with anyone, can get similar amounts of views. Are they our direct competition? They are very expensive. Their copytrader works from account to account, meaning there can be slippage. This does not happen with CoinMetro’s TraM.
In some ways, they are our competitors. For the most part, they trade CFDs. We don’t. So, in many aspects, no, but on the front-face for a retail client, they are our competitor.
Is it hard to hire, being a startup?
Hiring is not hard. It’s hard to find the right people, as a startup or otherwise. With the right people, management becomes easy. It can make it more difficult when you are competing with bigger startups or bigger companies where they have “free catered lunches, Starbucks coffee, rock walls and arcades in their break rooms”. If you try to hire a tech guy from there who’s in his mid-20s and thinks it’s awesome, and in your office you have a coffee machine and a ping pong table with one racket.
You are also able to do things from a startup side that normal companies don’t do. You can offer equity, and you have less strict policies, so there is a bit more flexibility which can make it easier.
Hiring the right people is always difficult. Even for Google.
Reddit Questions
Can you give us some concrete examples of what kind of marketing will happen? Ads on websites? Ads in real life? “Influencers”? Thanks – 6MyBad
All of the above, plus some more. Exposure on specific websites, text ads, banner ads, Google adwords, Facebook ads, Instagram ads.
It will be fine-tuned once the team is in place. The one mistake we don’t want to make is to create a plan, and force-feed that plan to the new team.
We want the new marketing team to feel comfortable with the plan, which means they need to be a part of putting that plan together.
Can you add the Dutch payment method iDeal? Very easy to get it done. That’s the only thing most people use here. – NeoHodler
We would most likely need to do it via a third party provider. Connecting directly to iDeal through our own European bank account may not be possible, if the bank is not based in the Netherlands.
We will have a look at it for sure.
How is the self assessment framework progressing for new listings? Any idea when we can expect new listings? – InternationalMix
The LHV audit is coming on Tuesday, so we should find out shortly thereafter.
We heard last year that debit cards were imminent but now appears they are being pushed back to Q3/4, any reason for this? – InternationalMix
The provider we were going to use actually had a change of their corresponding banking relationships, and that is taking some time. We were told last week that they would have virtual IBANs within 2-3 weeks. That would be their first jump down the debit card route.
When do you expect joint marketing with the QNT team to kick off? – InternationalMix
Soon! We are going to get through this technical issue we have right now with SEPA, and then we will focus on the few things left on our to-do list for February.
Buy and Sell Quant (QNT) with EUR on CoinMetro!
“Kevin Explains Crypto” Term: Halving
Specifically to Bitcoin: every 210,000 blocks, the reward given to miners for solving a block, gets cut in half.
The block rewards halvening is done in order to control inflation. The first rewards were 50 Bitcoin per block. Now it is down to 25. At the next halvening, we will have it as 12,5 Bitcoin per block.
Listen to Last Week’s TWiC on the Go
Get the complete scoop by tuning in to our audio version of last week’s TWiC on SoundCloud. Happy listening!
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That’s a wrap for this week’s AMA with CoinMetro Founder Kevin Murcko! Please join us next week on CoinMetro’s Facebook and YouTube Channel at 1 PM (UTC) 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.
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