If you are new to the crypto world and you are thinking of getting in, you don’t want to miss out on some valuable information in this article. If you are in in the crypto world already, you will for sure recognise current pain points.
The blockchain and crypto environment are really new to the world as we know it. The technology itself has been around for a couple of years now, and, however great the opportunities, there are problems with the way it works today. For one, early initiatives and start-ups are very basic and technology focussed, with user interfaces to match. Solving a problem and bringing good things to the world quickly is more important to these teams than offering a comprehensive service and impeccable user support.
This focus on a quick time to market can lead to agile teams with limited scope, the priority being the first in the space instead of building a high quality product. What’s more, the blockchain technology environment changes on a daily basis, contributing to the dynamics and complexity. Security is never first on the list of priorities.
Some things you will encounter when you immerse yourself in the crypto world.
First of all, you need to get ‘traditional’ money into the system. Trying to spend some Dollars, Pounds, Euros or Yen on the coin you like will always be the starting point. In the early days, it was hard to find a company that could provide trustworthy service. Nowadays it can still be difficult, because a lot of banks are not serving crypto companies anymore. Current crypto exchanges are not regulated entities and lack serious transparency and reporting. Still today, individual people offer to sell you crypto in forums and chat groups. This is very risky and for many can be a costly first lesson.
Bitcoin is the first decentralized, world-wide cryptocurrency, it is the father of all cryptos. The other coins are therefore called alternative coins or “altcoins”. The Ethereum network with the coin “Ether” is the biggest after Bitcoin. Using the Ethereum network it is quite easy to implement an altcoin, there are about 2000 of them that are more or less alive and this number is growing on a daily basis. There are exchanges that only offer Bitcoin. If such an exchange happens to be the exchange of your choice, your first buy will be Bitcoin. If you have obtained some Bitcoin, you have the freedom to move it around as you please. But it is still on the exchange from which you bought it. To pursue to the altcoin you initially set your mind on, you need to transfer your Bitcoin to another exchange that lists the altcoin, or to a personal Bitcoin wallet that you need to download and configure.
If you want to register at an exchange nowadays, they will ask for KYC (Know your Customer) information. The amount of verification of your identity that you can offer will determine the level you will get at an exchange. The level granted to you is maximising the amount of money (fiat and/or crypto) that you are allowed to withdraw or transact with. This KYC process however is not transparent, you have no idea how they store that data. Most annoying for a lot of people is that this process takes up quite some time with zero feedback.
And time is money, very literally. So just imagine, you have bought some Bitcoin and you decided to use this to buy Ether. You transfer your Bitcoins to an exchange that offers Bitcoin and Ether only to find out your KYC level is too low to get the amount of Ether you want to buy. And, even worse, you can’t get your Bitcoins out anymore because you do not have the required KYC level for such an amount! The only thing you can do is buy the daily allowed amount of Ether until your KYC is cleared. Apart from having the ultimate frustrating and unfriendly customer experience, you have now lost hundreds and hundreds of dollars because you could not buy all Ether at the price you wanted. There’s no phone number to call, nobody seems to care.
One thing you will need is a wallet. Or very likely, multiple wallets. If you want your crypto to be really yours today it can typically not be on an exchange. An exchange will have its own set of crypto addresses on a given blockchain to be able to interact with that blockchain. To use a crypto address (or account) you will need a private key. And guess what, you will not have the private key of the address that holds your crypto. So if the exchange goes bankrupt or gets hacked, your crypto is likely gone. An exchange will also have its own internal ledger that is not directly connected to the blockchain. This allows for faster trading on the exchange itself and there are no blockchain fees that need to be paid by the exchange. Your crypto will be stockpiled with the crypto of a lot of other people on an address of the exchange. That does not hurt your crypto, obviously, but it makes a much more attractive target for hackers. So either you want an exchange that is more or less decentralised on their solution or you want an exchange that is designed from the ground up with the highest level of security in mind.
So back to wallets; once you installed a wallet, you need to create a crypto account. Some wallets are like a full-node, you need to download the complete blockchain before they can operate. On a smartphone this does not really work, so only a recent part of the blockchain is downloaded and if you perform a transaction additional information is downloaded if needed. This is the price to be paid for having a decentralised consensus system. Nowadays there are websites and services that act as a blockchain hub, meaning the wallet does not have to connect to the blockchain and download part of it, but it can connect to a site using standard technology, and, by doing so, gets access to all information in the blockchain. In both cases, wallets are still very cumbersome to work with and interaction is often based on technical necessities inherited from the blockchain technology. It would be great to have a platform running that even your (grand)parents could use.
When you made it to having your own crypto on an exchange, you have two options.
First you can hold your crypto until (much) later, with the belief the value will be much higher then, in crypto space this is called “HODL” (some people are very excited about having their own crypto slang). The second option is to be an active trader, in which case you will try to purchase crypto at a lower price and sell it at a higher price. You can make profit with this strategy within hours, but you need a firm stomach if the price drops astronomically below your purchase price. A disadvantage is that you might be looking at the computer screen for a large part of the day, and it can keep you anxious at night as you always want to buy at a bottom (symptom of FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out). Some help from intelligent algorithms is very good to have in this scenario; you want support for multiple strategies. In the crypto world, simple buy and sell orders don’t cut it. Having multiple buy orders fulfilled automatically does not really fill you with pleasure when you wake up and discover the price is a couple of thousand dollars lower than when you bought it. If you want the maximum protection of your investment and you want the maximum profit on you investment, you need enhanced technology like Artificial Intelligent (AI) and Robotic Technology. Often price rises and drops have a very small volume, this is induced by people who want to lure you into a buy or sell. Again, AI on the exchange itself can help to protect you against such malicious trading patterns.
The last thing I want to discuss in this article are ICO’s. ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is the way to raise capital in the Blockchain & Crypto space and it is currently very hyped. Whether you are a professional investor, a working mom or dad, or you enjoy your pension, if you want to participate in an ICO, you are subject to a lot of risk. There are scammers with fake ICO’s on one end and there are very serious and good projects being hacked or compromised to get your money on the other end.
With this in mind, don’t be surprised if you get direct messages, twitter messages of personalised email directing you to transfer crypto to an address that is mentioned in the message. Criminals will try everything and the simplest thing is not to hack but to make you transfer your funds to a fake address. If security awareness is even a little sloppy with ICO team members, hackers will get their fingers behind it.
At this point in time, no one can help you to get it back, and there is no one to call. Imagine the great peace of mind for you as an investor if there was a professional exchange that could make your transfer safely and that could guarantee that it would be delivered to the actual project. For this purpose a dedicated partner portal will be developed that makes the token listing process easy, efficient and quick. Sovren will provide a full set of libraries, Open APIs, SDKs, and documentations for the developer community. A technical support team will be available the developer community as well.
Time for a solution
In this article I highlighted several issues that will be solved with the world class Sovren Solution. sovren.exchange will be a regulated All-In-One UK based exchange that will lead the consortium of European crypto exchanges in defining the regulatory guidelines for financial bodies. Our exchange mobile apps and web platforms are specially designed for the Uber generation and remove complexities and technicalities found in crypto trading.
We are building a crypto exchange with a hybrid matching engine supported by AI technologies for security and trade execution that accepts FIAT currency from global customers and will list most crypto currencies and trading pairs.
Sovren will have a dedicated partner portal to make the token listing process safe, easy and efficient.
No despair anymore with the Sovren Exchange 24/7 Contact Center staff who are responsible for all customer queries and issues within strict Service Levels. A technical support team will be available for the developer community to support ICO’s.
Learn more by going to https://sovren.exchange
Media contact:
Chris Parker
Head of Business development
chris@sovren.exchange
Investment Queries: privatesale@sovren.exchange