Hi Parachuters! Here’s part IV of VII as we catch up - your week at Parachute + partners (24 Jan - 30 Jan'20):
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In this week’s Parena(s), Cap hosted mini-Parenas (smallest, 2nd smallest, 3rd smallest) this week along with a main Cloodfest which Jeff won to take home 25k $PAR. We also had a special 2nd quick subsequent Parena between Nathan and Foo to determine the 3rd and 4th positions. Alejandro will be hosting a CoD flash game in gun game mode next week in the Parachute War Zone. This week Doc Vic hosted an NBA and Soccer raffle. Bose's History Trivia in TTR was super fun and had 2k $PAR in prizes per question. Gamer Boy’s math trivia had TTR fans reaching for a calculator. Haha. Foo hosted another intense trivia in TTR as well. Afful held another one too for 1k $PAR prize per question with a 10k $PAR prize pot. Cap joined a Y Combinator startup school session to network with other entrepreneurs and gain insights on product growth. Congratulations to Aims1 for winning the #parttrenjraffle (shared in the last update) and becoming the proud owner of two rare collectibles. Gian hosted a rapid round of name-a-tennis-player for $PAR prizes to mark the Australian Open underway. TTR launched a GIF contest this week with a 40k $PAR prize pool. Sweet! Chris announced the restart of the Parachute Super Bowl Squares with a prize pot of 1M $PAR. Whoa! For this week's Two-for-Tuesday we had folks posting songs "featuring bands with amazing guitarists". Great theme GC! For #wholesomewed Jason got Parachuters to talk about pets they wished they had. In the latest #FPL update shared by LordHades, the top 3 spots are still occupied by LH, Alexis and Novel Cloud. Click here for the full update.
Some neat feedback on ParJar from the Y Combinator startup school session
Cap: \"a sneak peak at a one pager we're cooking up\"
The aXpire team was in India this week for a workshop geared towards the release of Bilr. 20k $AXPR burn for the week happened like clockwork. 2gether’s consumer spending report (which was released last week) was covered by Coin Rivet this week. Check out 2gether’s 2019 journey, here. Spanish speakers, you can listen to Founder Salvador Casquero’s thoughts on digital business which he shared with AEFI Fintech Association here. FunOntheRide’s new tutorial video explains how the 2gether card works. This week’s #XIOSocial discussions revolved around high-value-no-profit companies and Citizen’s thoughts on “inverted lending platform”. Read about how to earn to earn crypto and about the SMS industry from Birdchain’s blog. Still waiting to check out the 3 new communities on Uptrennd? Click here to have a peep. If you didn’t know this already, you can now create polls on your posts on Uptrennd. Cool! Click here to read about more updates. Hydro crew sat down for an AMA with the Uptrennd community and gave away 100k $HYDRO tokens for the best questions. Jeff’s interview of Zero Collateral DeFi came out this week. You can read about it here. Congrats to the winners of the Uptrennd Meme Contest. Those were hilarious! For a sneak peek into Uptrennd 2.0’s designs, click here. Steven Aitchison's (CYT Crypto) latest video features the platform. Have a look! The District0x community voted to have industry news in the next DApp Digest stream. For the latest District Weekly, click here. Hydro made it to Crypto Weekly’s list of 250 crypto companies to watch in 2020. The Hydro team wrote about Financial Health Check and Emergency Savings Fund tools to get you prepared for a rainy day. Their article on challenges during digital onboarding processes at banks should be an eye opener for legacy organisations. Epic work Artefe Crypto Art! How will Digital Identity Management play out in the Hydro Pay app? Click here to find out. Silent Notary’s AMA with Quora Inner Circle was last week. Its transcript was released this week. This week they appeared for an AMA with The Block Circle. The Ubikiri app was released this week to the App Stores. Winner of Round 1 of Traders Battle was announced. And just like previous weeks, they posted daily summaries of dev work progress (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).
Uptrennd 2.0 early previews look great!
Sentivate’s $SNTVT token is now supported on the Enjin wallet and does not need to be added as a custom token. Ahead of ETHDenver, where OST’s Pepo app is the official community app, a guide was published. The latest update allows login with a multitude of IDs. CEO Jason Goldberg was interviewed by Jason Nelson (Crypto Insights Journal) where he talked about community building on the blockchain. Check out this blog post by State of the DApps which discusses unique use-cases of Pepo. SelfKey’s $KEY token is now tradable and playable on Play Royal. To celebrate the occasion, competitions were launched with prize pools worth USD 6k in $KEY tokens. The token was also listed on Hotbit and InstaSwap this week. Click here and here for sneak peeks into the SelfKey mobile app under development. Constellation CEO Ben Jorgensen spoke at the Crypto 2020 Summit this week. Community member Constellation LV is currently working on a Ledger app for the project. Click here for a preview. A Russian language section was added to the website. CTO Wyatt Meldman-Floch demonstrated how double spend attacks can be prevented. In Yazom’s January update, founder Sanjé Witter shared that the open beta was on course for release in a couple of months. Pynk’s Rose AI continues to learn and self-improve through advanced algos and inputs from Super Predictors. Read more about it here. Unsure what crowdfunding and seed rounds mean? Pynk will be raising through this mechanism soon. In preparation for it, they released an article to explain what it is and how to pre-register for it. Plus, an article on compounding explains why it is so powerful. A new update for the Wibson app was released this week. The latest version of their protocol paper covers secure data exchange and batch payments. Harmony’s $ONE token swap was covered by Coindesk and BeInCrypto. BitMax launched a BitTreasure event where users earn interest on $ONE deposits. Harmony hosted a dev community meetup in SF in collaboration with Polkadot, Taxa Network and Nervos Network to discuss on Web3. GET Protocol crew appeared for an AMA with Cryptoverse this week. GUTS Tickets got featured on Finnish tech blog Tivi. Crypto Jen (Jenny from the Blockchain) joined Global Crypto Alliance as an advisor this week. $CALL is now supported on Eidoo wallet. The transcript of last week’s COTI AMA with tehMoonwalkeR can be seen here. COTI released incentive plans to reward its TestNet node operators. TxBit exchange announced its support for DoYouTip’s $DYT token swap. ParJar holders will also have their tokens swapped automatically.
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And with that, it’s a wrap for this week at Parachute and partners. See you again soon. Cheers!

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Thailand Ministry Of Finance To Launch Blockchain-Based Visitor VAT Refund ServiceAccording to the Bangkok Post, the Thai Ministry of Finance plans to introduce a blockchain-based value-added tax (VAT) for foreign tourists from the end of November. Thai Financial Minister Uttama Savanayana said that blockchain-based technology will speed up the refund process for visitors because once the store enters information into the system, the purchase details will be shared with the tax department and customs department based on the blockchain.
German And South African Regulators Issue Fraud Warnings On Karatbars InternationalIn Germany, according to a recent press release by BaFin, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority of Germany, a cease and desist order has been issued against Karatbit. The order is to stop the company from its unauthorized electronic money business in Germany.As for South Africa, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority issued its own press release warning the public to not deal with Karatbars International, as it is not authorized in terms of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, to render any financial advice and intermediary services. The press release continues that the authority was informed that the company has been offering investments to customers through WhatsApp, a messaging platform.
China’s Army Considering A Blockchain Rewards System, ReportChina’s military could implement a blockchain rewards system to manage personnel data and incentivize its workforce, the Global Times reported on Nov. 18. Citing a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Daily report, the Global Times underscores that the blockchain system would likely not involve financial incentives, but would be used as an innovation strategy for the military’s management.
Yahoo And LINE Announce Basic Agreement On Business Integration; Both Of Them Have Crypto ExchangesYahoo parent company Z Holdings (ZHD) and LINE formally announced that they had a basic agreement on business integration. On Nov 13, it was reported that the companies were approaching integration in the media reports. If Yahoo, which has the cryptocurrency exchange TAOTAO, and LINE, which also operates the cryptocurrency exchange BITMAX, will be integrated, it will have a major impact on the cryptocurrency industry.
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BTC — BTC fell briefly yesterday, rebounding after falling to $8368 at the lowest level and falling after hitting $8620 at the highest level.In terms of capital flow, the net inflow in 24 hours was 3 billion yuan, a significant increase over the previous day.On the 4-hour K-line, the slope of the downward trend rate is slowing down, the trading volume continues to shrink, and the volatility has also dropped to a new low in recent years.At this stage, the disk support and pressure are weak, only part of the energy is needed, and it is easy to pull up. It is not difficult to break through the pressure of 8600 and 8800 dollars, and 9000 dollars is the strong pressure level.But it doesn’t make much sense to pull it up. The market information hasn’t been restored.The overall trend is roughly between $8400 and $8600.In terms of operation, the spot continues to hold, while the futures are not recommended for operation.
Review previous articles: https://medium.com/@to.liuwen

Encrypted project calendar（November 18, 2019）

Maker (MKR): 18 November 2019 MCD Launch “BIG changes to terminology are coming with the launch of MCD on Nov. 18th Say hello to Vaults, Dai, and Sai.”Vexanium (VEX): 18 November 2019 Nodes Blockchain Summit Vexanium will collaborate with Nodes Community to hold a blockchain conference called the Nodes Blockchain Summit.OKB (OKB): 18 November 2019 Utrecht Workshop “EVENT: We’re going back to basics with #101 workshops on #CryptoTrading in Utrecht & AmsterdamSantiment Network Token (SAN): 18 November 2019 Reddit AMA “…@Santimentfeed will be conducting its first Reddit AMA on the@EthfinanceRsubreddit on Monday, November 18, 2019 from 12pm to 3pm EST”.Decentralized Currency Assets (DCA): 18 November 2019 Added to Echoestrader “Decentralize Currency Assets(DCA) support’s the first crypto algorithm exchange goes live on november 18th 2019.”Aeternity (AE): and 5 others 18 November 2019 [TWITTERPOST] Shift Money 2019 conference from Nov 18–19 in Croatia.Maker (MKR): 18 November 2019 MCD Launch “BIG changes to terminology are coming with the launch of MCD on Nov. 18th Say hello to Vaults, Dai, and Sai.”Pundi X (NPXS): 18 November 2019 Binance Italian AMA “On November 18 at 3:00 pm CET, @binance Italian group will host AMA series with @peko0413 !”Crypto.com Coin (CRO): 18 November 2019 Exchange Closed Beta “Closed Beta starts the week of 18 Nov.”

Encrypted project calendar（November 19, 2019）

Lisk (LSK): 19 November 2019 Lisk.js “We are excited to announce liskjs2019 will take place on November 19th. This all day blockchain event will include…”Aion (AION): 19 November 2019 Hard Fork “Leading up to the hard fork on November 19th-20th, 2019 the Unity — Aion Kernel will be upgraded by node operators.”Enigma (ENG): 19 November 2019 Open Community Call The first Enigma Open Community Call is Tuesday, Nov 19th, 11AM ET! important updates on our protocol, the Genesis Game, and our road ahead.Lisk (LSK): 19 November 2019 Berlin Meetup “Ahead of LiskJS2019, our partners Berlin Valley are hosting a startup industry networking event, #DigitalTalents, tomorrow. “BitMax Token (BTMX): 19 November 2019 BitMax Delisting BitMax removes BTMXP/BTC, ETH/USDC, ETH/PAX, BAT/ETH, ZEC/ETH, DASH/ETH, LAMB/ETH, ZIL/ETH, COVA/ETH, ETC/ETH, FET/ETH, LAMBS/ETH, XTZ/ETH.

Encrypted project calendar（November 20, 2019）

OKB (OKB): 20 November 2019 OKEx Cryptour Odessa Ukr “Join us in Odessa as we journey through Ukraine for our OKEx Cryptour!DAPS Token (DAPS): 20 November 2019 Partnership with SWFT “Everyone will have $DAPS mobile wallets, atomic swaps and much more starting on the 20th of November!”Aragon (ANT): 20 November 2019 Draft Proposal Deadline “Draft proposals for Aragon Network Vote #5 are due in one week, on November 20 at 16:00 UTC…”IOTA (MIOTA): 20 November 2019 Smart City Expo Wilfried Pimenta, our Director of Business Development, will be among the speakers at the AI & Blockchain Summit in the Smart City Expo Worl…Bitcoin Fast (BTCF): 20 November 2019 BTCF Snapshot Snapshot taken of BTCF holders at 8:00 am (GMT-6).Credits (CS): 20 November 2019 AMA AMA with Credits team at 15:00 UTC.

Encrypted project calendar（November 21, 2019）

Cardano (ADA): and 2 others 21 November 2019 Meetup Netherlands (AMS) “This meetup is all about how to decentralize a blockchain, the problems and differences between Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake…”Cappasity (CAPP): 21 November 2019 Virtuality Paris 2019 “Cappasity to demonstrate its solution for the interactive shopping experience at Virtuality Paris 2019.”Horizen (ZEN): 21 November 2019 Weekly Insider Team updates at 3:30 PM UTC/ 11:30 AM EDT: Engineering, Node network, Product/UX, Helpdesk, Legal, BD, Marketing, CEO Closing thoughts, AMA.OKB (OKB): 21 November 2019 OKEx Talks — Johannesburg “Join us the largest city of South Africa — Johannesburg where we will host our OKEx Talks on the 21st Nov.”IOST (IOST): 22 November 2019 Singapore Workshop Join the Institute of Blockchain for their 2nd IOST technical workshop in Singapore on 22 Nov 2019. The workshop includes IOST’s key tech.OKB (OKB): 22 November 2019 St. Petersberg Talks “Join us in St. Petersberg on 22 Nov as we answer your questions on Crypto Security. “NEM (XEM): 21 November 2019 SME Thought Leadership “SME Thought Leadership Series Forum #2” in Selangor, Malaysia from 8:30 AM — 2:30 PM.Stellar (XLM): 21 November 2019 NYC Meetup “Stellar Blockchain Meetup ft. FIC Network and Sam Conner’s Meridian Recap” in NYC from 6–8 PM.Waves (WAVES): 21 November 2019 Edinburgh Workshop “Next Thursday, we’re running a practical workshop on building DeFi products & designing Smart Contracts in your city!”

Encrypted project calendar（November 22, 2019）

IOST (IOST): 22 November 2019 Singapore Workshop Join the Institute of Blockchain for their 2nd IOST technical workshop in Singapore on 22 Nov 2019. The workshop includes IOST’s key techOKB (OKB): 22 November 2019 St. Petersberg Talks “Join us in St. Petersberg on 22 Nov as we answer your questions on Crypto Security. “Zenon (ZNN): 22 November 2019 Awareness Fund Payout “Distribution of the fund takes place every Friday until Pillars Lock-in Phase is completed.”

Encrypted project calendar（November 23, 2019）

Californium (CF) and 1 other: 23 November 2019 Greece Meetup “On November 23, the Greek #Cryptocurrency Community Meetup will take place in Greece!”

Encrypted project calendar（November 25, 2019）

0x (ZRX): 25 November 2019 0x V3 Proposal Live “The 0x v3 proposal was approved and will go live on Ethereum mainnet starting November 25th!”Dynamic Trading Rights (DTR): 25 November 2019 Chain Migration “On November 25 at 23:00 CET, TokensNet will make a migration of the $ELI token from Ethereum blockchain to Bitcoin Cash blockchain…”

Encrypted project calendar（November 27, 2019）

OKB (OKB): 27 November 2019 OKEx Cryptour Vinnytsia “Join us in Vinnytsia as we journey through Ukraine for our OKEx Cryptour!”Fetch.ai (FET): 27 November 2019 London Meetup “Join us on 27 November @primalbasehq to hear an exciting progress report as we prepare for the launch of our #mainnet”

Encrypted project calendar（November 28, 2019）

Horizen (ZEN): 28 November 2019 Weekly Insider Team updates at 3:30 PM UTC/ 11:30 AM EDT: Engineering, Node network, Product/UX, Helpdesk, Legal, BD, Marketing, CEO Closing thoughts, AMA.

Encrypted project calendar（November 29, 2019）

Zenon (ZNN): 29 November 2019 Awareness Fund Payout “Distribution of the fund takes place every Friday until Pillars Lock-in Phase is completed.”

Encrypted project calendar（November 30, 2019）

Ethos (ETHOS): 30 November 2019 (or earlier) Rebranding “In November, we unveil the broker token, a dynamic utility token to power our commission-free crypto trading and broker platform, Voyager.”Digitex Futures (DGTX): 30 November 2019 Public Testnet Launch “…We can expect to see the world’s first zero-commission futures trading platform live on the Ethereum public testnet from 30th November.”Monero (XMR): 30 November 2019 Protocol Upgrade “Preliminary information thread regarding the scheduled protocol upgrade of November 30.”Chiliz (CHZ): 30 November 2019 (or earlier) Fiat to CHZ Exchanges “We will add another two fiat to $CHZ exchanges in November…”Skrumble Network (SKM): 30 November 2019 (or earlier) P2P & Group Calling “P2P & Group Video Calling,” during November 2019.Aergo (AERGO): 30 November 2019 (or earlier) Mainnet 2.0 Upgrade Mainnet 2.0 Protocol update by end of November.Akropolis (AKRO): 30 November 2019 (or earlier) Beta Release “All functionality has been deployed to mainnet.”Nash Exchange (NEX): 30 November 2019 (or earlier) Mobile Strategy Phase 2 “Phase 2 of our mobile strategy will be live soon with our wallet and portfolio app hitting stores in November!”Akropolis (AKRO): 30 November 2019 (or earlier) Beta Release “All functionality has been deployed to mainnet.”Pakcoin (PAK): 30 November 2019 Staking Mobile App Android app for staklet is going to be launched on November 30th.

Encrypted project calendar（December 1, 2019）

Auxilium (AUX): 01 December 2019 AUX Interest Distribution Monthly interest distribution by Auxilium Interest Distribution Platform for coinholders. Also supports charity.I/O Coin (IOC): 01 December 2019 Pos Reward Halving IOC block reward halving is happening on December 1st 2019.

Telegram： https://t.me/Lay126
Twitter：https://twitter.com/mianhuai8
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Reddi：https://www.reddit.com/useliuidaxmn
LinkedIn：https://www.linkedin.com/in/liu-wei-294a12176/

George Cao :Let’s welcome lambda team . Xiaoyang and Lucy
Lambda: Hello friends from BitMax ~~ I am Lucy Wang, Co-founder and CMO of Lambda. I am very happy to e-meet with you here and thx for George's invitation. I on behalf of Lambda wish all of you a merry Christmas and prosperous new year in 2019
George Cao: Great. I am a bit surprised to see a big volume day yesterday Christmas. Seems our users didn’t take a break even on holidays :)
Lambda: I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce myself first, I have over 14 years of progressive career development with global leading enterprise software / service organizations as well as VC-backed start-up ventures, including HP, Oracle, and SAP. Before Lambda I was CMO/GM at two enterprise SaaS start ups in China backed by top VCs.
And my partner Mr. He Xiaoyang, who is the founder of Lambda, he is a well-known expert in infrastructure and open source software in China. Prior to Lambda, he was the co-founder of OneAPM, a fast-growing infrastructure software focusing on ITOM (IT operation management) in China. OneAPM is known as the “New Relic or AppDynamics of China” and the company has received strong VC backing from Matrix Partners, Chengwei Capital, and Qiming Venture. Prior to his entrepreneur experiences, Mr. HE worked at BEA as a R&D software engineer. In addition, Mr. HE is also a blogger with strong following in China and some of his articles have been published by major media such as Forbes China, 36Kr, Sina, etc.
Lambda idea was born at the end of year 2017 and the product development started from the beginning of 2018. Now let me talk about Lambda idea and what we do
Lambda, is the leading decentralized infrastructure project providing secure, reliable, and infinitely scalable decentralized storage network that enables data storage, data integrity check, security verification, and marketplace for storage-related services on the Lambda Chain Consensus Network.
In recent years, there have been frequent data leakage problems in major Internet platforms at home and abroad, and even business giants such as Facebook and Marriott have not been spared. Returning the value of data to data owners is an inevitable trend in line with human pursuit of freedom. The block-chain technology with P2P features provides an opportunity for this, and this area will be highly valued by the industry in the next few years. Lambda is the only provider of block-chain storage infrastructure projects in China. It is sometimes referred as “File-coin of China”or “File-coin 2.0”.our vision is to return the value of data to the data owner, with this vision in mind, our mission is to promote the decentralization of the Internet, with the goal of creating a storage infrastructure for the next generation of block-chain.
After the Lambda project launch in early 2018, it has received strong support by well-known strategic and financial investors including Bitmain, Viking Capital, FBG Capital, Bluehills, Zhen Fund, FunCity Capital, Ceyuan Digital Fund, BlockVC, INBlockChain, DATA Foundation, Bitcoin World, Reflextion Capital, etc. To date, Lambda has received investment funding in excess of $10M.
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n all the existing decentralized storage projects that are aiming to give a solution to this problem worldwide, Lambda is the first ever to announce its LPDP ( Lambda Provable Data Possession )
George Cao: I see we share several investors in common, So 2019 q1-q2 will be a big milestone for lambda
Lambda: Provable Data Possession (PDP) and Proofs of Retrievability (POR) are critical to efficient decentralized data storage and its implementation, which is the essential difference between centralized network projects and real decentralized storage. Prior to Inter-planetary
File System (IPFS), Lambda launched its minimum viable product (MVP) of core functions in the third quarter of 2018, and has been continuously upgrading and optimizing this in block-chains in a multi-role environment.
File-coin is our main competitor, here is a chart shows the progress comparison FYI
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For those who have interest to know more about Lambda's technical innovations, they can be find in our keep updating FAQ document posted on Medium, and I copied her FYI
1.Innovatively designed the Validator role which provides verification service for storage proof and the Validator replaces storage miner as the full-time storage proof result verifier, this greatly improves the performance of the storage and retrieval system.
2.In response to the limitations of the PDP algorithm, Lambda innovatively created a consensus network on the block-chain and used the validators role to replace the "TPA" in the PDP algorithm.
3.Innovatively modified the PDP algorithm from synchronous to asynchronous communication, which greatly reduces the communication traffic for Challenge in the system. Use of chain data as a random seed for storage miners to issue Challenge themselves addresses the randomness of TPA challenges.
4.Innovatively upgraded the PDP algorithm from periodic verification to a verification set generated by the miners to submit the verification result at one time, and fully realize the Proof-Of-Space-Time verification.
on top of all the technical, Lambda creates a consensus network where data can be stored, storage space can be rented on the basis of a marketplace built on block-chain.
In the Marketplace, the transaction process is: storage miners pledge hard disk sectors to the consensus network, and place orders and sell their own storage space in the Marketplace; storage users initiate purchase requests, complete the matching of storage requests through the Marketplace, and store data in the space of the storage miners.
Different from other block-chain applications, Lambda is a storage mining project, we have miners mine on Lambda network. Earn LAMB tokens by contributing on the network, and users who have data storing requirements pay Lamb tokens to purchase services accordingly.
The price of Lamb token not only rely on the exchanges but also supported by our miners who are doing works on the network.
There are four roles in the Lambda mining network: storage miners (providers of storage space), verification miners (ensuring the integrity and security of data and packaging transactions), retrieval miners (providing download bandwidth), and users (storage buyers). 1024 verification miners promoted from storage miners constitute the Lambda-chain consensus network. So you will see three types of miners serve our users from all over the world.
The key milestones we are looking at is the launch of test-net, where miners can start mining and earn testing Lamb tokens, the date will be around end of Jan. 2019 and main network will go live in Q2, 2019, most likely in Apr.
Regarding our partnership, In the academic field, we have established a strategic partnership with Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), which is well known in China for its engineering and computer science research programs, to conduct research into centralized storage.
In the commercial field, Lambda has established a strategic collaboration with IOST, a well-known public blockchain project, and Perlin, a super computing platform, and started to conduct pilot projects for decentralized application (DAPP) companies such as DATA and BCV. Lambda also has close ties to many leading Internet data centers (IDCs) in China. They join the Lambda network as miners and take advantage of their surplus server capacity to engage in the Lambda network ecology.
Q: Will the rest of the code be open sourced? If so when ?
Lambda: we have released the codes of core function module, the test net codes will be released gradually in Jan. pls stay tuned with our official github
Q: What can Lamb tokens be used for?
Lambda: Lambs are tokens in the Lambda ecosystem, which are mainly used in the following scenarios:
A. Users of services in the Lambda ecosystem have to pay with Lambda tokens.
B. Providers of storage services in the system have to pledge a certain number of tokens.
C. Verification nodes in the system have to pledge a certain number of tokens.
D. Verification nodes can obtain a certain number of tokens as accounting rewards.
E. Storage nodes get a certain number of tokens based on their storage capacity and their service level agreements (SLAs).
F. Other roles in the Lambda ecosystem can also obtain a certain number of tokens based on their contributions.
Q: What more incentives does miner gets to mine or rent storage on Lambda?
Lambda: every miner stars from storage miner on Lambda network, they get paid by providing storage space, when their business getting bigger, system will select the top 1024 storage miners and promote them to validator, who will get block generation rewards from system.
Q: how are the 1024 miners selected? Doesn't this become more centralised?
Lambda: we did a survey to the Chinese miners, they mainly fall into two groups, either are waiting FileCoin to go live with purchased mining machine idle at home or they are doing hard drive or graphic cards mining, which has a high requirement to the hardware standard. To mine on Lambda, you need a mining machine ( computer ) that has big storage space ( because the bigger the higher probability you'll be promoted to be a validator ) and the connection to the internet
Q: How much is initial supply?
Lambda: Lambda did two rounds of fund raising, private investors have a lock up terms of 2+4+4 meaning the first 20% of tokens will only be released 2 months listing on exchange. so on the day one listing till 2 months there will be only around 0.5% initial circulation, and after 2 months, 5% in total. in addition to that, as we are recruiting miners to join our network, actually ppl have been in a situation where they can't wait to mine on our testnet. with the mining mechanism we have, miners need to buy Lamb token to get their mining work started, because a certain amount of pledge need to be made
Q: What partnership will lambda and bitmax have in the future?
Lambda: We value the way BitMax doing things and care about projects, we feel like we found the right exchange to be listed, in particular an initial listing. we will work with BitMax and do some joint campaigns to boost the community
George: We have great chemistry with lambda team.
Q: And are you still primary list in there, I heard the list was delay? Is it related to Huobi?
Lambda: you are right, it is related to Huobi, but one thing you can be assured of is that our initial listing on BitMax wont change, but most likely a joint listing with Huobi.
Q: what about the time of primary list?
Lambda: we will primarily list very soon, we are targeting end of this week, now we are in the middle of some technical integration with Huobi
George: We can assure everyone that our team will do our best to protect our investors and serve our listing projects. The promise does not change whether or not if we co-list with huobi.
Q: We get reward to mine ? Any incentive? For testnet
Lambda: Yes, you have two ways obtain Lamb tokens, buy from exchange and earn more from mining, but firstly you have to buy Lamb on BitMax haha. Are you asking the reward from testnet by mining on it? yes, you will get test Lamb token, and they can be redeemed to Lamb token with a ratio that will be specified shortly. on Lambda official website www.lambda.im, we have whitepaper, besides that we also have economic whitepaper to explain how the lambda economic system runs, on Dec. 28 we will launch our yellow paper where we will demonstrate the detailed technical realization and all the parameter setting for mining on Lambda
Q: What are the implications if a miners rig goes offline or they decide to stop?
Lambda: If miners rig goes off, they will not get the reward from the corresponding generated block, if they do cheating there will be punishment from the system, and if they decide to quit, the pledge will be returned
Q: Lambda planning to have own FS?
Lambda: Yes, FS and consensus network is separate. validators and marketplace are on the consensus network, while Files are in the File System.
Q: Is Lambda GDPR friendly?
Lambda: yes, we are
Q: Hi can u explain what’s the requirements of decentralized data . Do You think big companies will like to use lambda services .... or it’s for medium level enterprises as big companies will go for their in house system with their reliable nodes ...
Lambda: this is a good question, from I seeing it, ppl call out the protection of privacy, it is a trend and it takes steps. Lambda has two big groups of prospects users, one is DAPPs, another is the general industries such as big data, AI, IoT, Games, Financial, etc, as long as they need massive data storage demand, Lambda has the opportunity, data storage is expensive, especially when we are talking about big data, a lot of companies will value the cost in this area very much. currently we have lighthouse customer like DATA, BCV, VVshare, in the very near future, a game that is developed by Lambda team will also go live on Lambda network. from the BD perspective, Lambda will create a satellite network ( you can take it as channel network ) to bring us customers, we have a few reaching out to us already
Q: Why suddenly launched on Huobi
George Cao: I believe lambda team has its own consideration. Projects esp in bear market are facing pressures from different parties. Investors users exchanges. Not everything is under projects control. What we can do as an exchange is to stand by our partners and fully support them down the road
Lambda: thx for the answer
Q: I think you have made a great choice working with bitmax. Bitmax have really helped push new
coins and their site in general with good PR, marketing and reward/airdrop promotions
Lambda: strongly agree with you
Q: GDPR has taken over the EU and the UK so that is very important
Lambda: you are right, so we see to be GDPR friendly, which is one of our differentiator from FileCoin
Q: Being GDPR friendly , European market is a go for lambda
Lambda: I have this plan to develop European market by having a Raspberry program, it is still in planning.
George Cao: Let’s take a last question and move to lambda community:) And as usual we will pick 3 best questions. We will send out 1000 800 and 500 btmx. @lambda do you want to pick 3 questions ?
Q: Recent partnerships are interesting , can you tell us about coming q1 2019 both in terms of technical and marketing developments ?
Lambda: from Marketing side, we are focusing on Chinese miners community and potential European market ( like I said still in construction ) Korean market is another, and US market to go along our compliance path, Lambda has been strictly abide by the regulations. from technical side, the most important task we are targeting is the main network launch as planned
George Cao: Thanks everyone for your time. It’s a great ama as usual. We do have the best community. We will pick 3 winners and we will announce here after we finish ama in lambda community
Lambda: thank you all for your time to participate the AMA, I had a great time with you, see you friends and have a nice day.
George Cao: Hello everyone, Merry Christmas:)
Lambda: Hello Lambdos. Today we have George, the founder of BitMax to join us for the AMA. Let's give him a warm welcome to do a introduction of BitMax
George Cao: I am George Cao, founder of bitmax. I am happy to take the opportunity to talk to everyone here. Thanks to the lambda team. Let me start with a brief introduction about us.
Bitmax.io (btmx.io) is an exchange founded by a group of Wall Street veterans. Unlike most projects, we are kinda of old :) core team are in their 30ish - 50ish. The 10 founding member have combined of 150 years of Wall st experience. I have 10+ yrs of high frequency trading experience therefore I know the trading system well. That’s why our match engine can handle 400k tps per second vs huobi 1000 tps. We want to build an exchange that is transparent, robust, and efficient. While our system is the best in class, we offer the lowest trading fees. We believe the current high commission will not sustain and we will see consolidating of the exchanges with better depth and liquidity and lower commission. We are happy to partner with lambda, one of the best projects in 2018. We are committed to serve the project and the community. Alright, I am ready to take questions. Anything you can ask, as tough as you want :)
Q: Haha nice platform.
George Cao: Thanks. We are young as a platform but we are working to deliver the best
Q: I see reverse mining is new , I used many other mining exchange but all have normal mining . How does reverse mining works?
George Cao: Reverse mining is an innovative approach that helps the exchange and the project in several ways. 1) the concept of reverse mining is by providing liquidity to the exchange, you get a rebate and deduct out tokens from your account of the same valued. You can think of a otc sell our. 2) the benefit is it removes lots of sell pressure from the secondary market. And provides a strong support for the token price. 3) it introduces lots of liquidity to the exchange and benefits all traders
Q: The BTMX used in reverse mining are locked forever?
George Cao: Yes so the total number of tokens are always reducing your
Q: I've really been enjoying using the bitmax exchange so far especially with the low fees and data usage rewards. Does the exchange plan to bring in a shorting function in the near future?
George Cao: Yes we will have margin and futures trading
Q: It was supposed to December right ?
George Cao: We postponed our margin to Jan. The reason is we want to be more careful on protecting margin call protections.
Q: Margin trading and futures is important for BTMX price to drive up
George Cao: Totally agree
Q: Does BitMax have any activities on New Year's Day?
George: We do have multiple promotional events. Including but not limited to airdrops. Please visit our website and stay tuned
Q: I saw the whitepaper of bitmax, can you talk more about your dividends the formula is really hard for me ?
George Cao: Sure 80% of our commission goes to our fee pool. 1/180 of the total pool will be distributed daily. As long as you are a token holder, the current rate we pay is over 100% annually
Q: Oh I see, so the dividends will be smooth, great idea.
George Cao: Yes unlike other mining exchanges have huge volatility on div we smooth our curve
Q: I've also heard there is a mobile app in the works, is this likely to be released in the near future?
George Cao: Almost done. Beta version is in testing
Q: What about the north American, will it be available in the future?
George Cao: We more cleared our legal path for fiat trading in us. Q1 2019 we will launch in the us
Q: Great news I think this will bring a big volume.
George Cao: Yes agree. Our team is excited as well
Q: With promotional Airdrops that require a certain amount of the BTMX token to be held such as The lamb one that has taken place on the exchange this week. Are tokens that are locked for data usage or in cards taken into account when balance screenshots are taken?
George Cao: Yes we will take that into account
Q: When will be the private sale tokens be released ?
George Cao: As soon as we mined 90m we will start to release
Q: So let me get this right .. you give us FREE BTC and ltc and even Lambda EVERYDAY if we hold BTMX and agree to share our data
George Cao: Free usdt btc eth
Q: Wow. In a bear market, Free btc is the best thing ever
George Cao: We share revenue with our users, 90% is usdt. Not sure if you like it:)
Q: also consider adding coins like ADA and few from top 30. People need more coins
George Cao: We are adding stellar and zcash soon
Q: I heard they are insured Unless we give password to someone hehe
George Cao: Yes we are using custodian service
Q: George are our funds SAFU with you? Exchange insurance? I would say it is With the industry giants backing this exchange
George Cao: Sequoia matrix bitmain fbg dhvc are our equity investors
Q: What’s to stop People dumping BTMX token after free btc Or stop capital investor dumping on retailer
George Cao: They get it every day. Why would they dump? All equity investors can not sell on secondary market. They can only to reverse mining
Q: Will margin allow reverse mining instead of normal mining?
George Cao: Not initially
Q: People do irrational things when btc moves Or whales dumping, I heard there was a lock up token or something. To stop this
George Cao: We required lock our tokens to get rewards. You can request to unlock at anytime but it takes 24 hours to process
Q: Binance is developing DEX any plans for BitMax ?
George Cao: Not anytime soon we have a looong to do:)
Q: It's good you have dex in mind , with improved scalability in future maybe bitmax can build good dex
George Cao: Agree
Q: Retail investors are important , George knows it haha
George Cao: We care most of retails
Q: It would help if they also burned or locked tokens up
George Cao: Yes we permanently locked
Q: Seems you have everything thought of.. but how about moving to Malta?
George Cao: We priority US. Once us is clear pretty much everywhere is clear
Q: Doesn’t any exchange cover US right now?
George Cao: Coinbase but they have 0 international coverage and 0 client service
Q: What sort of systems are in place for abnormal/suspicious activity on the exchange?
George Cao: We prohibit self trading. For unusual trading behavior we ban the account and as for explain in the first violation. For continued violations we permanently ban the account
Q: can we get a glimpse of mobile application ?
George Cao: There is a beta version you can use but we are keep improving
Q: What are the precautions taken to prevent wash trading ?
George Cao: We have pre trade and post trade checksums. E.g we don’t just scan one account. We check or related account
Q: Will market orders and stop-loss orders be available in the future?
George Cao: Yes we are working on it
Q: what do you think of lambda project and community
George Cao: Lambda is definitely one of the best projects this year. We have been working with lambda for months and have lots of respect ion for the team. Community is also great very well organized. I didn’t talk much but I joined lambda tele group for a while. Great interaction
Q: So the trading starts at 8 pm ETC?
George Cao: It’s postponed. Please stay tuned for announcements
Lambda: We will make announcement giving out time and new date.
Q: when please? It's also more professional to be able to give dates and respect them
Lambda Cao: we are working hard and aiming the date of Dec. 29, pls stay tuned, thank you
George: Unfortunately bitmax and lambda don’t have 100% control of the date and time. Huobi is holding the ball
Lambda: The listing dates have been postponed and we don't want to give out a random date. I request you to have patience and wait for official announcement
Lambda: we will try everything to protect retails interest
Q: Can’t let houbi just arrive late to the party?
Lambda: in the long run we may need Huobi to help us better protect us all
George Cao: We trust lambda team can make the best decision for all investors
Q: Have you been busy with listing recently? Anything else？
George Cao: We have been working 24 hours a day including Chris eve :) Listing and app and margin and lots of new improvements
Q: Why would we need huobi with bitmax on our side.
George Cao: Trust me we are as upset. However as an exchange our mission is to serve projects and investors. Please join us in fully supporting any decision lambda team made. We have 100% confidence in lambda
Q: Are you familiar with the REKTbot and SYSTEM OVERLOAD problems at bitmex
George Cao: Yes but still bitmex is the best place to trade future compare with okex
Q: Slap that Hayes fool when bitmax start margin and futures..
George Cao: Haha i don’t want to declare war with them. Let’s be a bit patient :)
Q: Could bitmax handle That volume and not system overload
George Cao: We are 100% confident
George Cao: Alright i have to run for another meeting. It’s been a great ama. Thanks everyone. For any trading related questions please contact our client support. We promise to get in touch in 5 mins 7/24. Thank you all!
Lambda: thank you for participation, have a nice day!

Ariel Ling, co-founder and COO of BitMax, has shared her thoughts on the current state of digital assets and what to expect in the next years, what retail investor should take into account when buying any cryptocurrencie and the key factors that drive the value of the token/coin.
Ariel Ling, BitMax COO
Why, when and how have you started your crypto journey?
I started my crypto journey at the beginning of 2018 when my long-time friend, the co-founder and CEO of BitMax.io, Dr. George Cao “pulled” me out of the traditional Wall Street and asked me to join him in launching this exciting venture. Three main drivers are 1) to learn more about blockchain technology and its transformational applications in different industries; 2) to leverage in-depth traditional finance expertise to improve overall crypto trading and exchange market structure for better efficiency and transparency; 3) to have a chance to work with a talented and driven team who share similar vision, passion and conviction to build a top global digital asset trading platform as well as a wonderful organization from good to great!
If your friend will ask you: should I consider cryptocurrencies as investment opportunity? What will be your answer? Will you recommend any specific digital asset?
Coming from traditional finance perspective, I would explain my thoughts process from three angles — 1) types of crypto or digital assets as the foundation for understanding; 2) whether they, are more for short-term trading or mid-term investment 2) what are elements for investment valuation and decision-making so our friends can assess and make decision for themselves.
First, in general there are three types of digital assets:

• Major currency / coin-type like Bitcoin, ETH, XRP, Litecoin, etc. and stable coins;
• Security-type tokens representing some equity or debt rights of underlying projects;
• Utility tokens for usage on specific blockchain platform or network.

Each type represents different type of opportunity and risk.
Second: is digital asset good for trading or investment? due to the nascent nature and very short history of market development with most of retail investors’ participation and lack of proper regulatory framework globally, there are quite some market manipulation, speculation and fraud activities in the current market, causing significant volatility and investors loss across all types within very short period of time. This made it very hard for any investors to assess the real valuation and momentum drivers behind those large swings. So at this point, I would think with its high volatility and risk, digital asset in general is more of very short-term trading product than investment vehicle. From liquidity perspective, major currency/coin-type will have more market depth across exchanges, hence more suitable for short-term trading-focused strategies.
Third, from traditional investment perspective, it is critical to assess digital asset investing from valuation and fundamental perspectives, such as business model, future growth, economic return vs. person’s risk tolerance and investment objectives. For major coins, especially Bitcoin itself with its longest history among all the digital assets, have started to provide certain payment function similar to fiat currencies in certain countries. Hence, there are more interesting dynamics to the Bitcoin investing based on one’s view of Bitcoin usage over mid-term horizon and the relative valuation vs its production (mining cost) especially with the price down to 3,500–3,650 USD. For security-type or utility tokens, the performance over short-to-medium term really comes down to combination of intrinsic value of underlying blockchain projects and token economics. Similar to Internet in 1990s, blockchain technology projects are still at the early stage of development and looking for meaningful and applicable use cases to bring real economic benefit from the economics and business model perspective, so it becomes very difficult to apply traditional finance valuation and assess the real intrinsic value of those projects. Recent market crash has brought many of those tokens down to near zero value. So the investment in those tokens are extremely high risk and everyone should be really careful and prudent in the evaluation of any specific projects for the decision-making and risk protection.
What is the story behind BitMax? Who are the foundefounders? When it was founded?
Q1 2018, Dr. George Cao and I founded Global Digital Mercantile (GDM), global operator of digital asset platforms, including BitMax.io based on Singapore for overseas markets and North America’s trading platform aiming for the first half of 2019. BitMax.io started public beta testing mid July, 2018, and was officially launched later mid August. On November 18th , we launched our mining mechanism, the industry very first transaction-mining & reverse-mining mechanism, which has made us the industry leading third-generation cryptocurrency exchange — after first generation of traditional exchanges like Binance, Gemini, Coinbase, etc. and 2nd generation of transaction-mining ones like FCoin, Bitthumb, etc.
Just a quick introduction of my partner. Dr. Cao studied Computer Science in the University of Science and Technology of China, and earned his PhD degree from the University of Chicago. Dr. Cao was the Founder and the Chief Investment Officer of Delpha Capital Management, LLC., New York, specializing in trading equity, ETFs and commodity future products in all major exchanges across the globe. He is also the founder and managing partner of Whitestone Investment Group, a New York based venture fund that invests in a large variety of startup companies that are in the high tech, fintech, big data and medical area. Before founding Delpha Capital, Mr. Cao worked at the Equity Division of Barclays Capital in both the New York and London offices. During that period, he oversaw equity electronic trading in the U.S., European and Asian markets. Prior to Barclays, he researched and traded U.S. equity as a Portfolio Manager at Knight Capital Group.
For me, I have built more than 18-year extensive experience in strategic planning, business development, financial risk management and regulatory implementation across major trading asset classes (Equity, FX, and Fixed Income) at several top global banks. Previous to jumping into digital asset trading, I ran USD liquidity and investment product for top financial institutions and corporate clients at tier-one global investment bank. Before that, I ran US Broker Dealer as COO and head of Business Development for Germany 2nd largest bank. Earlier from 2007 to 2012, I was global equity trading COO across Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital, building out trading franchise and market making businesses globally. I have four degrees — graduated top of class from Nankai University with two Bachelor degrees in Finance and English Literature and got my MBA from NYU and Master of Mass Communication from University of Georgia.
Where is Bitmax located? Are you a distributed team or do you have an office to work together? How many people work for Bitmax?
Our global team of 50 members are based off two main location — New York with 20 members, including all the founding members, and Beijing with 30 members.
Would you be so kind to introduce briefly the core team members?
Both George and I are very proud of our 10-member founding team. Similar to us, they are all from Wall Street top firms like Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, and top high-frequency hedge funds with deep experience in the fields of financial engineering research and development of large-scale quant trading infrastructure. Our educational background span across multiple prestigious institutions including Columbia University, University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, and New York University in the United States, as well as Peking University and Tsinghua University in China. So one special thing about BitMax.io is that very few exchanges in the crypto trading space are built by solid team like ours with strong traditional finance mindset and trading background.
You’ve started BitMax during market downtrend in pretty competitive environment. What is your value proposition? Why traders should switch to BitMax?
I think BitMax.io is actually very special in this market, and our team is very proud of what we have built in the short period of six months. There are at least three reasons I think traders should chooseBitMax.io:

• It’s our real-word professional trading experience and expertise;
• It’s is our platform, resilient, high volume quantitative-trading platform;
• It’s is our top-quality customer-centric strategy.

First of all, as I mentioned in the last question, architected by a group of Wall Street veterans, BitMax.io builds upon the core value of blockchain, transparency and reliability, and delivers high-quality client services and trading experience through its innovative trading platform.
Second, our quant-driven tech platform. Our development members were all from high frequency and quantitative systematic trading shops. They definitely make sure the platform was resilient and it can actually handle billions of volume during the design and build. The platform resilience and scalability were fully being tested when we launched the transaction mining and reverse-mining. The first day, we actually had, within the first 24 hours, the trading volume of 1.6 billion in notional; and our system didn’t flinch, didn’t slow down, and didn’t shut down. This is very rare in any of today’s exchanges where you can frequently see the slowdown, the crash, and very slow user responses, especially with transaction mining exchanges.
Third, what we are extremely proud of and all the users can see, is our 24/7 customer services built upon the core Wall Street client-centric concept. Besides our customer support team who never sleep, George actually stands behind the platform almost 24/7 answering questions from the customers, seeking solutions for their issues, and providing the most responsive customer service for the entire crypto trading space.
BitMax CEO, George Cao, is often seen in official Telegram group answering different questions.
We constantly remind our team: customer first. When we design a product, when we launch a system, and when we look at user needs, we all look from customers’ perspective, from how we can protect the users. When we look at primary listing, we only select the high-quality projects because we want our users to have the best investment and trading experience on BitMax.io.
Are you satisfied with the current results of BitMax? Is transaction mining model giving expected volume? What is the % of traders using this model?
We are very pleased with current business development and delivery results from client acquisition and trading perspectives.
On the business development side, we completed the global setup for both 50-member team organization and comprehensive legal entity structure from Asia to North Americas in 2018, which laid down foundation and paved way for 2019 business expansion especially with US.
Since our platform launch in mid Aug, we successfully started Industry FIRST transaction mining and reverse-mining exchange and built out the most active global communities and users within four months in the bear market, with registered users more than 95k; average daily active traders more than quadrupled since the start of transaction mining; average daily trading volume of $465mm through the month of January and February in 2019. Those are extremely promising under this tough market condition.
From the composition of trading volumes, there are two parts — transaction mining which grows exponentially; second is organic, the regular trading which has experienced healthy increase as well because of all the listing activities and all the incentives we have. The regular trading takes about 5% of total trading volume, which is very good for an exchange which was launched in August and running right into the bear market.
What are the key factors that drive the value of the token/coin?
From traditional finance /investment view token economics is really a balance act between business / economic model and exchange market force, driven by three factors: intrinsic value and sustainability, supply and demand, and liquidity and depth.
First, from a traditional finance perspective, we need to look at the intrinsic value, the economic valuation behind a project. How does this project make money? Do they really have fundamentals? Do they really have a viable business model? Do they really have a solid user base for future growth? For example, our exchange business model is very simple. We are exchange; People trade on our platform. The more they trade, the more transaction fee the exchange collect — the revenue source. The exchange will last when people keep trading on the platform and the transaction revenue generated covers the operating cost of running an exchange.
Second, it is the supply and demand of token on the market — who will buy and for what purpose; who will sell and under what scenarios. For major currency coins like Bitcoin, people might buy and sell for potential investment or use in actual payment processing. For other types of token, it is more driven by short-term trading pattern and profit taking. So it is extremely important to set up certain token mechanism to support the equilibrium of supply and demand like how Central Banks manage the supply of currency in circulation through monetary policies.
Third, when the market force comes in, it comes down to the liquidity and depth. Exchange is about liquidity and market depth. That means there has to be enough of trading volumes at each pricing level for each token. For BitMax.io, we have very sophisticated market making model that is similar to Designated Market Maker model of New York Stock Exchange. We focus on providing liquidity and maintaining a fair and orderly market for those token listings who agree to engage our market making services.
Every exchange is looking for good projects in order to become a premiere market for this new asset. Can you name some projects that impressed you recently (even if you are not discussing possible listing with them)?
BitMax.io has strict listing requirements in order to identify high-quality projects for our users. Very proud that we have listed five industry star projects in the last several weeks, with more in the pipeline. All of them have the following attributes that made them successful — viable and profitable business model, growing user bases, strong community support, and comprehensive funding sources.
One of the shining examples is European project named LTO Network listed mid Jan. Its price has been steadily rising since then, as more and more people get to know their business model and more project support comes into the market place to buy the tokens — It uses blockchain technology to streamline a lot of legal processing for one of EU governments, which is very easy to understand its economic value from a revenue perspective. This is simply what people need to see eventually, clean and clear from business economic model perspective.
Let’s imagine a crypto market in 5 or 10 years. Can you make any prediction what the market will look like? What customers will expect from exchange in 5–10 years?
Based off my long-time experience in traditional trading, especially how equity market evolved last twenty years, I would imagine maturing market structure and entrance of institutional investors are key mandatory and healthy development of digital asset market.
First, As the market develops and expands globally, traditional institution participation is a must, in order to upgrade and strengthen the overall market structure and maturity, making it more transparent and resilient, and most importantly enabling the real broad-base adoption of digital assets. Most institutional investors, such as mutual fund, pension fund and other financial institutions, hold the majority of world investment assets, not individual retail investors. Only when those big guys join the market, will there be real revolutionary improvement and expansion of the digital asset just like any other financial markets.
Second, I would expect the market to become more structured with major building blocks for transparent trade life cycle processing and separate risk analytics supporting services. Current crypto trading market is very fragmented with exchanges taking on different roles of trading, wallet management, custodian, etc. Also the lack of clear and consistence regulation on market structure has led to many aspects of market inefficiency — inconsistent liquidity and depth, wide spread, high transaction cost, high volatility, speculation, etc. This definitely hampers the broader adoption of digital assets from institutional investors.
Forward looking, multi-tier structure under some level of regulatory framework with clear guidance is required for future maturing market. Similar to security market, there should be at least three layers of different and independent roles: the role of broker dealer to handle the client relationship with good KYC/ AML processes, retail clients, other financial institutions, blockchain players and to take client order as agent or dealer; the role of exchange to focus on listing and trading — liquidity provision and order matching; the role of clearing house to provide clearing and settlement and custodian on custody of assets with proper control and independence. It is very clean and clear with good check and balance in place.
What are the key challenges for 2019?
During our 2018 business planning, we clearly view 2019 to continue being full of challenges with market uncertainty from both asset price and valuation as well as regulatory development globally. In prep for that and further growth of our platform, we have laid out the following four main strategic objectives and they are all well underway:

• To launch North America trading platform for high networth and institutional clients. With North America being heavily regulated market, there are two aspects of our plan — First is to leverage a trust structure to facilitate the major coin trading with fiat, and the second is broker-dealer license application with potential for securitized tokens pending regulatory guidance in place.
• To enhance BitMax.io platform and reach global top-tier exchange. We will continue listening to our users and working hard to enhance user interface and experience by upgrading website vs. other competitors for better client retention.We will continue leading product innovation among the competitors with margin trading (successfully launched in mid Feb) and then derivative to attract new clients.
• Relent focus on implementation and expansion of current business lines — listing, Market Making, marketing advisory services to grow current revenue base; and further seek new revenue opportunity through North America platform while maintaining cost discipline.
• we are always on the lookout in terms of exchange alignments, acquisition target, and any business partnership from different aspects of the value chain.

When do you expect a market recovery or next bull run? What are the factors that will influence the start of the market recovery?
With current market crash or correction, there are two possibilities from trading perspective — recovery depending on whether this is a V down or U curve. The U curve occurs when the market collapses, it takes a longer time for market to find the bottom and struggle to rise up. The V down is like a quick collapse — dropping down very fast and reaching the bottom, and then, with some catalyst event, either catalyst from market structure, or catalyst from the market expansion itself, suddenly it gives a boost and bounces right back up.
For market recovery, besides all the investment and economics elements I’ve discussed above, I believe one critical factor is the regulatory development especially clear guidance from key regulatory bodies of those major financial markets such as US, UK, EU, etc. on those key building blocks I mentioned in the maturing market structure. Once those in place, more traditional institutional investors will be ready to get in and hence boost the liquidity and valuation of the digital assets. That is the new beginning of digital assets being accepted as part of Main Street investment globally.
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