Episode 186 - Shift Markets: Launch Your Own Crypt

Welcome to Crypto Nights. Will we help you finally make sense of the trending world of cryptocurrencies? Everyone, it's my absolute pleasure today to have Ian McAfee of Ship Markets. And I'm so happy to have him on this podcast of Crypto Nights. Ian, welcome. Welcome to Crypto Nights. Thank you very much, Scott. That's great to be here. I'm very happy to have you. Why don't we kick

it off by having you introduce yourself? I'm always excited about talking to entrepreneurs and you'll be in a cool new entrepreneur. So why don't we kick it off by you introducing your class background? Sure. Thanks for that. So yeah, I started this company in 2009. I, you know, I had been in financial services prior to that. I was working in an FX trading firm in New

York here and me and my partners were kind of excited about what was happening in online trading as a whole. And in 2009, we just kind of left where we worked and started in my apartment and the Upper East Side here in New York and really just got working on what we thought would be the future of online trading. And the concept at the time was

pretty vague. We didn't hadn't started our own businesses before. So you can kind of go through those trials and tribulations and really figure out how things work. When you don't really have a lot to fall back on. And we ended up doing some consulting work to start things off. And that was mostly because we wouldn't have degenerate capital. We didn't really have much to start with.

Put a few thousand dollars each. Honestly, it wasn't, it wasn't very much. So we looked out for opportunities where we could use our knowledge and our time to really cap, you know, build awareness, build credibility and knowledge and just get it get a name for our business. And we had a few clients pretty early on. We focused on mobile technology. We worked with some different brokers

and pretty quickly made our way up to larger brokers and eventually exchanges and even world class market makers. So on the consulting side, we did work with NASDAQ. We worked with Citadel securities. And you know, we really, we had a lot of work to do with that. We learned a lot and grew the business quite a bit that way. Along the same, at the same time,

we started building out a product. And we, we knew that the kind of selling our time wasn't totally scalable. Really had so many hours in the week. And we wanted to build a product that we really, that we could grow the business with. And that was primarily packaging infrastructure for operating your own trading firm. We had that entailed a platform and services and support. And we

had an offering a lot of people to set up their own trading firm in the FX space. And regulations changed in the US pretty quickly. After we started our company, we started in 2009 in Dodd-Frank Pass in 2010. More or less kind of extremely difficult getting into the space in the United States. So in our home country, we were kind of forced not to do much

work. And that was an international marketing and sales. And we really built a good strategy for that. So a lot of our clients were coming from really all over the world, especially emerging markets. And the idea was FX. As crypto is, and at the time, FX was really exciting in the sense that you're opening the door to a lot of people that haven't traded online before.

something that couldn't be easily manipulated relative to a local equity market. People thought that was really exciting. So we built out kind of a turnkey service where people could set up their own operation in the FX space. Pretty quickly, we could give people up in a couple months. And once they were finished at a website, that a platform, and they could start taking customers. You know,

if you've kind of fast forward a little bit, we started looking at the cryptocurrency space. And it was a natural change for us. And the sense that it was still online trading. There was still a lot of need for the service that we provided. And we were able to do a lot of work. And actually, even more so, the industry is still, I'd say, in its

infancy. There's an ecosystem really being built out right now. And we see our role in that to be the same thing we did before is Enableers. Enableers and providing access to people who really wanted the parts to participate in the space more than just trading. People that are excited about the space. There's different ways you can go. Your ICOs and different types of service providers and

things that they could start. This one being, you could be an exchange. And what's cool about being an exchange that you're, it's really the gateway for the average person to get into the cryptocurrency industry. The first company they typically deal with is going to be, you know, the first time they bought a Bitcoin or bought some sort of cryptocurrency. And that usually ends up being one

of the exchanges that you see out there. There's a lot of countries that don't have exchanges and they're still a lot of interest on that. So that's really a little bit of my background in that show. And in terms of what the company, what have been doing at the company in a little bit before that. There's crappy coins out there. And really might be a bit

of an idea. And there is millions of dollars in 2017. I'm so glad I'm sure you are too that we're going to a crypto window where sanity is revealing. And I'm super excited to be talking to you because you started 2009 before Bitcoin was really a thing. It just literally got released in the same year in January by the white paper of Satoshi Nakamoto. So it's

very exciting for me to see that you started there and you were in the X-Pace. You are already disrupting that whole trading platforms in that space. And then income script or building crypto exchanges was more of an incremental change for you. It was not like a destruction to you. It's almost like I'm reminded of Dell versus IBM. The direct from Dell was already happening pre-internet days.

So internet came, it was incremental change. But for IBM, the retail conflict, the retail channel conflict with internet and ended up just dismantling it and passing it over to the normal. So it is my understanding kind of correct? Yeah. We were lucky in some ways. The luck came from the work that we put in in the FX days. We were fortunate that the industry grew and

it really suited to our backgrounds in that sense. But we were prepared in that we had done this before. And yes, there's certainly changes between FX and cryptocurrency. But there's a lot of similarities as well. People still want credibility. They still want to be a part of it. They still want stability in the platform. They still want to be able to make a trade and understand

what happens when they make a trade. They still want liquidity in the market. So there's a lot of things that are very, very similar. And yeah, I feel fortunate that we identified that opportunity. There's a lot of FX companies that decided not to do that. And I think a lot of them are kind of kicking themselves a little bit thinking, you know, how do I really

approach this market? And that it is something, it is an interesting question for a lot of financial firms. You know, there's a lot of the bigger institutions are still afraid of getting into the space for credibility reasons or other reasons. And they have a big business to risk at that stage. We were willing to do that. We were really excited about the industry. We thought that

this would be the future of finance and trading. And we just kind of made that leap. So yeah, we were very excited for the space for very much still. And really glad that we decided to do that. But are you continuing both the business and the effects trading platforms as well as the cryptocurrency trading platforms in hand? We do still, yeah, we still operate the FX

part of the business. It's at this point, it's something we're so comfortable doing. And we have the staff and Dan want to do that. It's a little bit hard to focus on. In fact, we're, you know, there's so much happening in the crypto space that there's not. We're really changing the product much if at all on the FX side. But that the industry is not really

changing much there either. So I would say that 90 plus percent of our effort and time is really dedicated towards improving our product and finding new clients for the cryptocurrency side. And is it better to say that you have to utilize in the crypto space for ship markets? Definitely. Our this year has been a big change for us for the upsets. We, you know, the FX

stuff was fine and good. But this it turned from that to something that is really exciting. And it's one of my, it's my favorite year of the last nine years we've been in business. It's this industry changes a lot of things for a lot of people. And the services that we provide, I think, you know, it's an exciting position to be in. You see these people

come to us and they have really good ideas. And there's a lot of really, there's a lot of innovation, a lot of hunger for knowledge. And it's, you know, it's, it is a revolution in a lot of ways in, in, in, in, can finance, especially retail finance. So happy to hear that. Now you told me that you started it. Department in New York and a few

thousand dollars. Did you guys ever end up raising VC funding? How do you guys finance operations? We've always managed to get through things and we hadn't raised any, we haven't raised any capital. So, yeah, it's, we just kind of grew, we probably could have grown faster. Have we done that? But I think we've never seen that. I can't look back and regret anything we've done. It's

been, been, you know, really good so far. And what are the numbers? I know you're a private company. We cannot be able to share everything I understand that. But what can you share with us in terms of size of your business, how many employees? Is it a dollar volumes or market clients? Can you tell us something about some of the successes that you have had so

far? Yeah, certainly. So we have about 50, 50 employees globally. We're headquartered in New York, most of the employees are here in New York. But we do, we being an international industry. We, we, we really want to focus on building out some of the other regions. I think the pessimetric that gives some color to the growth and what we're seeing is the number of exchanges we've

set up on the product isn't that old. It's less than a year old. We've already sold 75 exchanges. And we have, we're launching about one new one per week right now with the capacity that we have. And sometimes more than that. So that's probably the best metric to compare a lot of being less than a year old. The bigger clients that we have, the more institutional

sized clients, they tend to be a little bit slower to get compliance and marketing and all that stuff ready. So some of them are just starting right now. You know, they might have bought the product. Three or four months ago. And then some of the smaller clients are a little bit more nimble, but they also need some more time to get more, kind of put the

money back to the company and reinvest it to the marketing dollars. But we do have a very wide range of size clients, all being you, you know, people work from us. If they're, you know, a few people in a room and some place around the world up to a very large well known household name institution. And we're talking to all those sorts of people. And there's

different use cases for the technology bit that 75 exchange number hopefully gives a little bit of insight to what we're doing in the space. You also, Denny, me a couple of lucky clients who are in that blockchain space. Can you mention them for the sake of our audience? Yeah. So we did. We did. Generating these exchanges and building this network out has been doing more interest

than just people that are looking at becoming their own exchange. People, there's a lot of network effects that we're getting. And two, I think representative deals we've done in the space are two of the top 10 coins by market cap. I'm not sure what Ron is right now, but one's trying to one style of movement. I think the least stellar limits of five or six maybe

trunks 10 to 12 right now. But both were well known projects. And so those are two of the blockchain names that we're associated with. They really like what we're doing in the sense that we're. We're creating these exchanges in different pockets of the world. And in the state of the state, stellar lumens being kind of an international payment platform. They really like the platform. They really

like the platform. And they're really good at it. And we're kind of getting liquidity in lots of different markets. And what's really nice about our clients is there. So let's say there's an exchange and somewhere in South America, they accept local fiat. And that's rare for a lot of the high value exchange is most 11 don't take fiat at all or they're just starting to figure

out how to do fiat. And a lot of our exchanges are doing fiat and not just dollars but other currencies as well. And what's interesting about that is, you know, if you're a coin, you want to be globally, like with having globally, like with trading, having, liquidity in different fiat is really interesting. So those are some of the partnerships we've done. You know, and we've done

a little bit across over between FX and crypto, which is interesting. That's what Tron really liked that about our company. So those are some of the bigger deals and more well known announcements that we've made. What exactly is the relationship between songs, stellar lumens and ship markets? So are there your clients? Are they kind of organically introduced to a considerate way? We want to be an

exchange. We have installation. What is that relationship? Yeah. So each one is different. So I would call, in some ways, I call both of them up for client. In that their services were providing for them. And then payments rendered for various services. So, but we look at, depending on, we both see upside and benefit to working together in that, especially in the public space, there's been

cost over and interest in things once we've made the announcement. But I would say, yeah, I guess technically clients, and they want slightly different things. But yeah, I would say that they were clients and in some ways partnerships as well. So, I think I heard this before. A depression is really a lack of liquidity. You can't really, you can't, we don't have liquidity. People can't make

transactions. Or they get, they pay a lot more for those transactions. So liquidity is the ability to get something very quickly. And easily, and for a reasonable price. So, I think that's a good idea. And what we're adding more exchanges does is, for every exchange that we add, there's more users that are buying and selling cryptocurrency. And whatever they're exchanging with, whether it be a FD

or another crypto. And we have, we, every time we have a new exchange, we have more liquidity. And our technology in the background allows us to kind of mix and match and distribute liquidity between our changes and other people that want liquidity as well. So, access and liquidity is really, I think, what is really the most exciting thing in that it's really necessary for it to

happen for the industry to grow. So for the higher market caps, higher volumes, higher more access to people, more new participants, liquidity is really the answer for all those things. And because it gives more better pricing to people, transaction costs go down. Availability goes up. All the things that we've got, we've got a lot of money. Things that you need for a good market. And so,

when somebody gets an exchange from you, that is not an isolated exchange. Kind of joining a shift market's ecosystem, because they seem to be getting a network that affects benefit. Because you said, for example, you're exchanging liquidity across exchanges. Right. So can you elaborate? Isn't that the fact? Yeah, that's a good point. So we don't require that our exchanges, take liquidity from other exchanges. The reality

is they want to, and it's beneficial for them to do that. And I don't, there's no enough of any case we have where they don't want any of the other liquidity. Because what it does is if you're operating a exchange, you want more participants, it's good things. So what's less about that if you are starting an exchange, and you don't, and you're worried about getting users

to build the bid and offer book. And so, if you're trying to build a bid and you're worried about your platform, we can plug it in on day one and just give you the pricing you need to compete in the space. Which is, you know, if you were starting that five years ago, you had to do everything from scratch. Build your own technology and find your

own customers and build a order book. Here we can just give you all that when you start. I don't exchange from you and roll it out. What should I, how should I get ready to do that? What are the factors of readiness? Can you give me a checklist of things I should check off before I come to you? Yeah, that's a great question. So there's some

kind of hard things that you need. And there's just some general things that I think that you want to have. And when I say that, I mean, you know, starting exchanges is an endeavor, just like any other business you're going to want to commit. And you're going to have to have a lot more time and resources and focus on and growing the exchange. And you definitely...

By doing so, you'll be being plugged in in this dynamic industry. You'll be attuned to all the changes that are happening almost week over week. And once you're in it, you're kind of... And this kind of happened when we started our company. We didn't have everything worked out on day one. But once you're committed, you... You don't have much choice. You really just do adapt. And

the willingness to do that is, I guess, one of those general things I was describing were... If you're willing to do that and you really believe in the space, that is a really good foundation. All the other things are things you just need to get or do and more like box checking sort of stuff. Have enough capital to maintain yourself for whatever period of time. Have

a strategy. And there's a lot of strategies I would... I could talk about, but if you think about it, there's still a lot... All the facts of all the trends are pointing in that direction. I mean, millennials are really, really interested in cryptocurrency. So you have that in your favor. The newer generation of people are focusing more and more and more on digital assets and what

that works in their portfolio. So you have that. You have also... There's more people... I think that it's the internet still and still more mobile devices being connected online. Those are good trends as well. You have more coins coming out. Now, there's a lot of bad coins, of course. But there's also... There are also really good innovations and things that are becoming done... Like, over the

coming months and years. So you have innovation. You have money in the space. You have a lot of money in the space. And you have people... Really, really smart people doing really cool things. And ultimately that will lead to people being... Attracted to the industry. So when you're operating a machine, you want to figure out is... What needs do I want to occupy? Do I want

to... Do I want to focus on a certain culture or region or language? Do I want to focus on a certain type of coin or type of asset? Maybe it's security tokens. Maybe it's... If you're a cryptocurrency, maybe it's something else. So... You want to think about that a little bit. And there's opportunities... And then also the marketing strategy that goes along with that. And different

regions are different. So whether you... Some people prefer call center... Which I haven't really seen... Done much in the cryptocurrency space. Some people do event marketing... And do more kind of education based marketing... But they teach people something about the space... And you know, it's an entry point for how to get people in. Some people want to focus on the more advanced and... I'll go trading

market and build cool APIs or order types... Or like algorithmically oriented and want to do arbitrage. So there's a lot to think about there. But it's just a matter of kind of picking one of those. And usually what I would say to someone that's interested... I'd say what do you like, what are some of your selling points. What are your interests? Do you have a background

in education? Or do you have a background in marketing? Or do you have... Do you prefer to get people in front of the phone? I would kind of ask myself and spend some time really narrowing down what your focus will be. And then once you have that, then you can really decide, okay, let's get the nuts and bolts of the exchange figured out, let's pick our

vendors. And let's go out and start getting customers. Got it. So you're essentially thinking you're telling people think about your business. Before you think of the exchange, the exchange is just enabling devices. A vehicle that will give you there. You need to have all the things you need for a business because the next thing is, hey, business. So you need to know what business where you

want to operate and what's your passion, why do you want to do this? So you need to get the wine, the water figured out before you come to you, who's making the how much easier. Yeah, precisely. And that's, that's kind of something I would tell anyone that's starting a business. But in this case, you have so many nieces that are unoccupied. There's countries that don't have

exchanges yet. And if you do do a little bit of research, you'll be able to find these nieces and opportunities. If if if if something, if you have the currency and the blockchain and this industry is something that you like, and exchanges is is an interesting mechanism for kind of growing in a space. And if you want to provide access to people and really you believe

in the cause or you just want to build a good business, you know, exchanges is a scalable way to do that. And then from there, yeah, it's just executing with everything you want to do on kind of a good business practice sort of sense. So yeah, it's it's like you would something you would do in any business, but thinking about the trends that are happening in

the blockchain space. Great. So what kind of services do you provide to these exchanges? Do you just give them a product or do you provide associated services? development. There's not perfect answers for everything. And there's certainly not someone you can go to for everything. So we this was our model in the FX space too, but also also with cryptocurrency. We really see the need for assistance

and guidance and support. We are kind of a technology company, but also a financial services company. And the way we 60 is our clients need to succeed. And that's really how we succeed. So what we do and to help clients get into the space is yes, we do provide it. technology. We also provide the training that goes along with that. We make it easy to use

and we make it easy for your customers to understand as well. Additionally, we have we do have 24 hour support. And why that's important. Well, there's, you know, it's a we have a global sort of clients. They all have different. Time zones were there talking to their customers. So we have to be there to answer their more critical questions if they come up. So we can

help with that. We usually do some sort of social media chat group where they can talk to our our team and get the questions answered. And what's nice about that is that you just avoid a lot of pitfalls. I mean, there's there's a lot of kind of common mistakes you will make. And a little tip can go a long way. We've seen a lot of the

stuff before, whether it be in cryptocurrency space or the FX space. Just things like payments and legal things. You know, we're we're we're beefing up in our services. In terms of. That sort of stuff, the compliance and regulation, payment gateways, automating, KYC and AML, and these sorts of services to really make your business run smooth as possible. Because shopping around and finding all these vendors Is

an easy task. And what we've done. This integrated with a lot of them that we feel a providing good service or we've, of course, to provide the service along with the technology that we're offering as well. And, you know, it's not going to take a long time to And lastly, the liquidity, when you start off and we talked about this a little bit, but you wanted

to have an order book. Because when a client comes to your website, it's not a friendly cow. And they don't see any orders on the order book. They're going to go away. So what we can do is essentially populate your order book with enough orders. So you look, you know, your pricing is competitive with other logic changes out there now. Wow. So those are, I mean,

so you've really studied this from what are the pains these people will have and they kick it off. And when they're in the ongoing mode and you kind of figured out what are the challenges and provide services around them and fill those gaps. So that's very helpful. Now, how do I, as a client, how much time should I plan from the time I sign a contract

with you to be up and running how much time will that take. And what is a pricing model? Is there a set of fee? Is there a transaction fee? Is there a combination? Can you walk me through that model and a little bit? Yeah. So your first question is about the timing in. It does depend, though, on what you're looking for in terms of the configurations

and customization. It's not. We do custom work on the front end, depending on what it is you want to do. We do have nice styles that you can follow, whether it be a really simple model, where it's just a single level price and just buy yourself Bitcoin or more advanced model where you see the full order book and get a lot more order types and features.

So given that the set of time can range a little bit, but that's more or less what we do on the faster side of things. And on the pricing side, we have essentially a set of fee with a some sort of transaction based model or at least a model where the more users you have, the more we charge. The reason for that is supporting increases, service

base, hosting costs, all that stuff increase. And we, we, that's all covered in the in the cost. So the set of fees, depending on the package you get, let's just say it's around $50,000 and and all apart, around a few thousand dollars a month minimum on the transaction fees. So it's pretty approachable for a lot of people. We've got a lot of reactions to that. Some

people say it's really inexpensive. Some people say it's expensive. Our model is really, it is designed to essentially let someone that has enough money to get it in the space. And if you're a group of entrepreneurs and you don't have a ton of money, that is a price that people can could do. And if they're willing to commit to that, and we give them the same

level support we give anyone else. And they still get all the features in the team and all those things. So yeah, that's that's generally the model that we have. And pretty much so many questions. I'm not sure if I've exchanged this that you have currently on your also have used the same model. There's been customer class for different reasons. So if you can think about the

different profiles we might get. So I mentioned a few like the entrepreneurs. There are some existing, like say an FX company that we already know and they come to us and they want to add cryptocurrency exchange to their existing businesses of poll time. That's a good thing. That's a great model too. There's some, sometimes I ask for it, customize things like integrations with their existing systems

or they want to change the way things are structured on the, on the upside. And we're willing to do those things as long as they make sense. Sometimes they already have a big user client base. And we value that of course. And you know, we have to change the way things are done with setting up the servers and how we service that customer because we know

there's going to be a lot more load on the system. Kind of a different model we might need to do for that. But yeah, I guess my point is we're flexible. We were practical people. We understand that people have different approaches to space. Sometimes we get people that are creating their own economy. They're creating their own token. And they want an exchange to distribute their own

token or do something unique that isn't kind of the token space. So yeah. And you know, they want something different. So it is. A little flexible, but I'd say the most common request is they want to be a traditional scene. And they want something like they want to offer by and sell cryptic to their customers. And that's more along the mile I was describing. And then

you'll be buying these 75 exchanges into buckets. Are these banks are these entrepreneurs first time entrepreneurs are these some effects guy that wants to start an exchange and crypto. What kinds of patterns are you seeing amongst this 75? Yeah, it's you know, I've been surprised. I've seen I was expecting when we first launched the product to be mostly entrepreneurs just because at the time in particular,

there was just a lot of hesitancy about getting in the space. Like watching to do larger institutions were skittish about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and just what that meant. And but you know, pretty quickly we got calls from banks, we got calls from FX firms are talking to a very, very large exchange right now. That's well known. And you know, it's kind of ran the gamut on

who they are. So we're trying to build it out to be kind of cream or packages and be a little more flexible. Have more standards for where you are coming into the state. So you know, I think we're going to be able to do that. And I think it's just because our expectations, you know, it's been more than that. It's really just been. All kinds of

different people all over the world. And I know that doesn't really add a lot of color, but it's just really what we've seen. It's just every. Every week you see something pretty different. Where are you saying you're finding most of your exchanges located? That's also, that's also a vague answer just because it is pretty much everywhere. Yeah. What is number one? Give me the question. Secondly,

I'd say to. So if you talk about the way I would break it down is where I see a little deviation from what one might expect. Or deviation from what we've seen on the effects space. And I'll adjust that really quickly and then talk about the countries as well. But one thing is I think emerging markets stand out more. So. And that's some of that because

people in emerging markets are more excited about cryptocurrency because it solves more problems for them. I can, you know, Brazil, for example, just a lot of capital controls and Bitcoin in Brazil is very, very. It's just it's there's a lot of a lot of interest around it. And Asian, particular, there's a lot of interest in cryptocurrency. So we see a little bit more of that, I'd

say. So, you know, I don't. The countries is tough. It's really. I think just because we, you know, we're in New York and in that we do get a lot of US UK. But it's not. If it's any more. It's very marginally more than pretty much anywhere else. There's a tar. I can't think of one country that if I had to, if I had to summarize

the 75. There's probably like 40 different countries in that. And that 75. So there's not one big standout country. And how do you help these people, these exchanges with respect for legal compliance regulations? Do you do anything in that? Or is that their problem? So that's a, yeah, that's a that question is a big one. Mostly because there's a lot of uncertainty. Not just from people

asking us that want to start to exchange, but also from the regulators. They haven't figured out exactly how they want to treat the market. So we, you know, we give them general advice when they, when they ask us, we do have solutions that are a little more global and more practical to get started. And in areas where it doesn't require a license. So you can start

there. You can target a lot of different countries. And there's certain countries you want to be able to have more cognizant of the rules, especially when you add any kind of security element to the platform. But if it just cryptocurrency, the rules are still pretty, there's still pretty uncertain in a lot of places. And you can get away with a lot of things in the sense

of, you know, breaking a lot of rules yet. And one more countries are coming up. Coming up with policies and bursting on top of that, we actually are looking at adding kind of a legal services team to our, for our company, we're interviewing for that right now, actually. And we're going to be advising people in general and having not just that, but also having package solutions

where they can come and just say, okay, I want to be set up in this jurisdiction, just because it's a friendly jurisdiction. They know what they're doing in terms of regulation in that jurisdiction. And it's an easy path to, to kind of, we're going to be able to do that. And then you can go through the effects space, the effects space is similar. There's certain hubs

where you get regulators and some regulators understand better than others. I anticipate some of the larger exchanges will have multi-jurisdictional companies. We'll have maybe one, two, or even three different areas where they market or paper clients from. Time flies, we have been having a lot of fun here. And we'll be incredible. This is so exciting. I'm sure a lot of all. Just a couple of things.

I think the biggest thing for us is, I think the, we were, I was very surprised when we launched the effects product. I thought that I wasn't sure how long people would be setting up effects brokers. I think that's a big thing. And what I've, what I've seen is that people are still doing that. And a lot of them are still taking market share and have

been doing so as recently as a few years ago. I think that's, I think there's still, it's still very wide open in terms of the exchange base is by no means. This by no means settled. Yes, there's been some big success stories so far. And yes, there's been people that have been going from nothing to a lot. But there's a lot more to be done. There's,

you know, some of the early adopters have had hacks where, you know, they've had stability issues, they've had security issues. They had issues collecting fiat. And a lot of the leaders still have these issues. The market share is there to be taken in, you know, it's not in the, you know, the market share is there to be taken in, you know, it's not in the market

share. It's not just what's out there now. The industry is growing. So, you know, you have this really, really exciting space where millennials are getting more interested in this than they are in the stock market. And you have more and more people coming along global and you have all these new inventions. More so than I've seen in any financial market that I've been involved with. And

that's not much. Just when you think about cryptocurrency and the adventures that are happening. You add all that together and the change makes a lot of sense. And we're super excited about it. We really are very passionate about this industry. We really think that we're at the beginning of a lot more trading volume, a lot more people connected to crypto. People are still not even really

using it on a more practical sense. It's still mostly speculation. Okay. Yeah. So, should I do the question over? Yeah. So, so, so my connection bounce. But yeah, I just think that the industry is still in this mnc. And no matter what you do, I mean, look at the space and take your strengths and apply them to them. It doesn't have to be any change. It

can be anything else. But we're offering, what we're offering is something that is tangible. It touches a lot of people. You can, is a scalable business model. But there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, we still need vendors. So, set up a, if you, you know, if you set up a company that we could use, we'll talk to you. There's, there's

a lot that needs to be done in the space. And if you have any entrepreneurial spirit, and you, and you're thinking about this space, I highly recommend it just from the trends and things that I've seen and just what's happening out there with the money and the inventions and the, and all the trends. It's really something that if you are an entrepreneur, I think it's a,

it's really, really exciting. So happy to be here on of that. And, you know, one of the questions you, you just brought up with a security issue that I've looked up to talk about because, Moncox being hacked and literally over the years, last few years, billions have been lost to exchanges. To the point that I heard actually people on the stage and conference, I say, don't

leave your money in exchanges. There was place leave your money. And you have had 75 exchanges. Has any of your exchanges ever been hacked yet? No. Fortunately, I've not had any issues. We've done testing, we don't have any operations testing on the wallets. There's also, there's also some other things that people neglect. You know, I guess it is something to think about when you're setting an

open exchanges. You know, it's crypto is easy to move around. And that, that, that means that people have access to your exchange wallets that work inside your company. And this is, this has actually been some of these hacks, is where an employee or someone that has access to the wallet just sends it out and it blames it on the hacker. So, you know, think about your

internal policies as well. We do give a lot of advice and we do have a lot of permissioning in our platform to where you can assign roles to certain people. So, the people that process the transactions in terms of seeing the transactions come in, you know, necessarily have the ability to send out the crypto. So, there's some, some things that you want to think about there.

We, we thought through a lot of that. We also recommend, you know, that the exchanges don't keep a lot of their assets on the hot wallets. So, you know, we do encourage our clients, to move a lot of the assets off the cold storage. And then just these sorts of things are, and some of these are just things that people kind of forget about or they

don't think about right away. You do the things that we would, you know, kind of educate you on. But yeah, fortunately, we have not had any security issues. That itself is also congratulations. You know, that's a boat. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Crypto Knights. Never miss an episode. Subscribe now at www.crypto Knights.io.