Hisham Khan on Cryptocurrencies.ai’s trading platform

0:01i am ashton addison from eventchain for investmentpitch media and the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have hashem khan the ceo of cryptocurrencies.ai hey sean welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to be here today yeah thank you ashton for having me on your show i'm really excited to dive into cryptocurrencies.ai uh the solutions that you're providing

0:23in the space i think are really needed and there's a lot of new traders coming in um that need some tools to you know get more familiarized with cryptocurrency trading and you have a couple different routes that you have for for different traders and for analysis and and all of the uh things surrounding that so i would love to just kick it off to start

0:45from you with just a high level overview of ccai and some of the solutions that you're trying to pinpoint uh towards these cryptocurrency traders yeah sure so uh cryptocurrencies.ai is a next generation exchange where we are going to be launching a well we've already launched the decentralized exchange which is one of the world's fastest built on the solana blockchain and we're

1:07going to be launching a centralized exchange as well and trying to really bridge the gap between d5 and c5 by having both under one platform kind of one ecosystem and you can imagine if traders want to trade on let's say you know a centralized exchange with high leverage we'll be offering them spot in futures trading but then if they wanted to dabble into d5 they can easily transfer

1:30some funds some funds from the centralized exchange to the ccai wallet and you know let's say trade a coin that's launching on on the decentralized exchange or potentially get into yield farming and pools in the coming days so overall it's it's going to be a pretty uh robust trading platform targeting both c5 and and d5 traders and and kind of happy

1:52to dive into both and before as we'll talk about the product a little bit more on what the advantages and benefits are for the trading community by using ccai definitely sean thank you for that intro and yeah i'm really curious on the centralized exchange part there have been a lot of exchanges that have been popping up and you know it's hard to compete with

2:13some of these top exchanges that have billions of dollars of volume and what would you say is going to be the unique competitive advantage that's going to allow ccai's centralized exchange to have long-standing success and bring more adoption and become one of those larger exchanges in the long term yeah absolutely that's a great question so you know we got when we got started

2:36uh thinking about the idea for ccai that was in in 2018 you know i had just just left bloomberg wanted to put a team together to build this product and at that time i'm sure as you recall when you were using exchanges as a trader you couldn't even see your profit and loss right like it was very kind of a bear experience and having come from bloomberg and seeing

2:56what a really kind of well-established financial product should look like um even if we wanted to have a simpler version for the retail crowd we still there were still some fundamental things that were missing and so we we realized and kind of scanned the industry around centralized exchanges and um you know we kind of noticed that all of them offer

3:15similar assets right trading pairs and then also very comparable kind of technology and tools around it the liquidity varies by exchanges but but really other than that they were all very similar and so um we set out to build ccai for those traders in the crypto space we're trading more actively not not if you're a first-time crypto buyer ccai will probably be too advanced

3:37for you but if you're in the space you're trading crypto then ccai has built what we call smart trading and within smart trading we allow you to just take control over your portfolio with automation customization with things such as more advanced stop losses take profits and that can really help a trader out in kind of playing out their strategies or automating it or doing better risk

4:00management so we felt like we really wanted to focus on the innovation and bringing a superior experience to the centralized exchange trading space which just simply wasn't there on the centralized exchanges and it still isn't there and you bring up a good point around liquidity so what we've done is we've partnered with one of the largest uh liquidity exchanges

4:21to kind of tap into that liquidity for our traders and looking at a lot of exchanges which launched in 2017 18 and 19 and probably continue to do so because it's a really lucrative business a lot of them have failed for really two reasons it's lack of innovation and lack of liquidity so if a new exchange launches and it's going to offer let's say bitcoin you know usdt trading

4:46um and there's really no reason for anybody any trader to go and trade on it right so we're changing that with the innovation that we've done with smart trading and then with this partnership you know tapping into the deep liquidity partners we're able to offer traders uh billions of dollars of kind of order book volume um from day one so so we don't have

5:07necessarily those problems that traders are going to face on on the first time or when they get launched with ccai definitely and yeah liquidity is going to be key especially on those major trading pairs to keep up so thank you for that information hashem and i was going to ask you you touched on it there about you know the audience size and you have all these advanced

5:28uh trading functionality and and analytics um and cryptocurrency trading is fairly small niche compared to regular equities traders and you know but it seems like there's more people getting involved uh with trading in the markets uh in the past year or two here so are you really continuing to focus the platform on advanced traders and is it going to have technical barriers

5:55to entry and it doesn't really matter because the market is large enough or will you try to build you know light versions or have people that are you know because on the defy side especially on the decentralized side it's even more technical and having those technical barriers to entry can stop people from wanting to use the platform if it's a little bit too technical so is that a

6:15balance that you have to have between having advanced functionality and entrances into the decentralized finance world but also making it not too technical uh for users that aren't you know programmers or advanced computer scientists yeah that's a great question and uh that's something that we realized early on and my background being like a product guy

6:36building products for about 10 years and seeing how teams usually build an amazing product but the user experience is just not there and the best of products will not get used by anyone if it's not going to be you know well designed and and the ux side is missing so i'll start with the defy side d5 is def look crypto trading on centralized exchanges

6:57is hard enough for regular folks and then when we get into the d5 space it gets even more complicated um but at ccai we feel like it doesn't have to be that complicated right so if if the platform is well designed if it has proper onboarding and can guide the users onto the platform and explain things to them and make it as intuitive as possible then it doesn't really have to be

7:20that scary or that intimidating so we built our decentralized exchange with that in mind exactly um when we discovered uh for instance solana and and what they were offering last year the speed and the power of solana was extremely promising like we got super excited and wanted to get involved and started kind of building or decentralized exchange on it and with

7:42that kind of speed we feel like you know our decentralized exchanges is almost comparable to a centralized exchange and we've then since then what we did was you know their solana is a new ecosystem so there were some lack of wallets or or um you know a better kind of onboarding process for for traders to get in so we launched the cci wallet and then made that really easy to kind

8:03of uh you know get started with so even if you haven't created uh you know many wallets or haven't uh kind of gone through that experience we make sure that we make it as easy as possible so anybody can really do it um but overall our goal really is to kind of target a bit more advanced crypto native user right so it's it's it's probably not going to be for the like the first time

8:23uh person who's just getting into crypto but if you've already gotten into crypto traded on a dex or even a centralized exchange um the tools that we offer are advanced um but at the same time we've made it in a way where any skill level should be able to take advantage of them and benefit from them um and we we at the same time have this especially

8:44on the centralized exchange when it's going to get ready to launch we have it in a pretty standard way so when you kind of log in as a user you'll see a terminal that you're familiar uh with that you've seen on other exchanges but then there is kind of like this pro option this advanced option and when you click on that that just transforms the whole terminal

9:03and it enables you to kind of do all these interesting things we have a trading view integration you know we allow you to as i mentioned do more advanced order types dollar cost averaging and and even then we've tried to make that as simple as possible so you know you don't have to be necessarily like a pro trader to be able to take advantage of them

9:21but definitely there's a lot of power and a lot of tools that are going to be available great hashem yeah and i really find it interesting that you've developed the decentralized exchange on solana because for the most part uh ethereum ecosystem is where all the d5 protocol lending protocols are are working on but it seems like celina's infrastructure is

9:45just faster cheaper it has a lot of promise on the foundation but still up and coming and i don't think a lot of people are familiar uh with solana's ecosystem yet and it seems like it still has a lot of room to grow and i think getting in early and building a decentralized exchange backing their technology it is a good choice definitely yeah we felt the same way so

10:09we have seen the problems with ethereum in the last bowl cycle right like uh with crypto kitties and some of the ico fundraising where things would just kind of become unusable and seeing that again with the rise of defy as refreshing as the rise of d5 was for us because uh quite frankly we got into this industry because of the promise of decentralization

10:29and that we were working on a centralized exchange which i still feel is super innovative and we were excited about um but at the same time seeing defy was just that much more kind of interesting to us and and then you know stumbling upon solana and and really like for us it was like a side project we were like all right let's see if we can you know build sort of like a prototype

10:49and an experiment and one d um once we built uh once we built the the decentralized exchange and kind of i you know made the first trade on our test system seeing how fast it executed and settled my mind was blown away i was like all right this is definitely the kind of user experience that we need to be uh targeting for for users to get into the space and so

11:15ever since then we've just kind of doubled down and and the first thinking was you know maybe solana is going to capture some market share from ethereum but given how strongly things have been progressing and how much interest and excitement there has been around the solana ecosystem with so many amazing teams and i believe in the recent recent hackathon

11:33that's probably still ongoing there were like about 10 000 plus participants so with that uh kind of growth we see that the future could be really bright and really big for solana yeah definitely hashaman thanks for that and i know that the platform is fairly early on and uh you've built a great foundation but can can you give a snapshot for the viewers

11:56on at what stage you're at right now um in terms of the centralized exchange and the decentralized exchange uh are they at the production level and ready to trade and people can go there right now and or what are you needing to have done in in the near future here to get to that level yeah so our decentralized exchange is live um fully functional already in production

12:19you can your users can go to decks.cryptocurrencies.ai and i actually encourage them to go and just try it you know you'll you'll be blown away if you've experienced d5 and ethereum and you try it on solana there's going to be a huge difference there and as i mentioned you know we launched our decentralized exchange we then launched a wallet right after it

12:39because the onboarding was was kind of something that the community was complaining about um naturally because solana is still new and a lot of the infrastructure is being built as we speak so we decided to kind of launch a user-friendly wallet that's already been built and we are also working on some interesting features for uh on the defy side unfortunately i

12:59can't speak too much about it that's sort of like a surprise as we if we may call it that and we'll be coming out with it in the in the coming weeks um in terms of the centralized exchange you know there's been there's kind of been a lot of closed beta testing that has happened for quite some time now and um we're just kind of taking it one step at a time and and not overwhelm our team

13:19by releasing too many products at one so that we're able to better support them once they do go to production so lots of lots of releases coming out from our team and uh the reason we've been able to kind of move at at that pace and build a lot of stuff has also been because you know we were we've been we've been on this for like the past two plus years

13:38so it gave us a good opportunity to kind of take our time and uh and build a lot of products in the background yeah thanks to sean and i'm excited to see how the centralized exchange and more specifically the decentralized exchange and the d5 functionality continues to grow and expand and your customer base expands as you continue to work out and continue to build on the product so

14:00that that's quite exciting and in terms of the longer term success you know and and the widespread adoption and becoming one of those main exchanges and the go-to place for for traders what do you think will be one of the key factors to success to to have all that mainstream adoption with ccai yeah so we're betting big on the solana ecosystem we feel like it can enable

14:22tens of millions if not hundreds of millions potentially a billion plus people on there that's the that's the promise that's the dream and with that sort of a grand vision and kind of the the robust or the amazing technology that solana team are building we definitely want to be one of the teams that are you know kind of riding that wave and building as much as possible in this

14:42ecosystem so that's really important for us to continue innovating continue building products focusing on user experience and and making defy uh not as intimidating you know uh my experience with with bloomberg is kind of like a funny story uh if you've seen the bloomberg terminal it's pretty intimidating right like so you'll have all this kind of you know uh very uh technical looking

15:04screen and someone had mentioned to me while i was there that it's it's by design right so the people who use the bloomberg terminal the customers um they feel you know i guess smarter or more intelligent because they're able to kind of master such a complex system so it was it was like a moment of pride for them it's something that they wanted to brag

15:23about like hey we you know we're we're using a bloomberg terminal or or i have my own terminal however that's a barrier for mass adoption right crypto should be for everyone not just for institutional uh players or more advanced tech folks and if we want everybody to get in then the user experience has to be super simple to the point where you know we stop talking about

15:44protocols and and and you know all this kind of blockchain talk and just make it all about the product the service that we're going to be offering and hopefully that's kind of the vision that we want to fulfill with ccai in the future definitely well said and i agree about the solana ecosystem and backing on that and i think that there's so much room for growth still

16:03so both great points hasham and we are running short on time but for the viewers that are looking to follow along uh with these updates and the d5 updates and the centralized exchange uh to get more information on all of your products what's the best way for them to get involved and to get involved in the communities yeah we can you know they can follow our

16:23journey on twitter for any kind of announcement so that's ccai underscore official however i encourage them to get involved give us feedback you know use our decks use our wallet we're always really keen and eager to get the opinion of you know the the industry right so any kind of feedback would be appreciated and for just kind of talking to us and our team

16:44members you can join our telegram chat at ccaiofficial once again you know become part of our community and and let's build stuff together definitely hashem thank you so much for that i will leave those links in the description box below all the best with ccai moving forward and let's follow up in the near future yeah thank you thank you for having me