A large bull market in the encryption market in 2017 tripped a growth in the whole blockchain industry, but 2018 converted into a yr of fluctuations. The blockchain industry, which includes just entered the general public view, appears to have experienced a routine of wealth and decrease that other sectors have observed in years or even years.
Under this circular of market washing, many companies have been removed, plus some young start-ups have constantly explored and adjusted their business models and embarked independently street of development.
Like a company with the backdrop of traditional financial quantitative transactions, Amber Group has completed the procedure from assembly, integration to growth with the introduction of the whole industry. in an interview with Lianwen, its CEO Michael Wu also shared the knowledge of the way the company steadily shifted its concentrate from traditional financing to encrypted financing, and then gained market reputation and a location in the encrypted financial industry. There are moved into the globalization, system, large-scale stage, as a control string news also evaluated some of the main element nodes of the introduction of the encrypted financial industry, this content is sorted out the following.
Dialogue Michael Wu: reveals the Development Street of Amber Group to break through the Carry Market.
In 2015, the financial industry promotes the introduction of blockchain technology– the core founding team of Amber Group devotes itself to traditional financial quantitative transactions.
Block string technology has steadily entered the mainstream market eyesight in 2015, and the greater famous event is that on July 30 of this season, Stephan Tual, an associate of the ethernet project, officially announced the birth of ethernet network on the official blog.
The research report of Chuancai Securities also pointed out that the development of blockchain technology was initially promoted by the financial industry, and there is a natural and close relationship between blockchain and finance. As the technical solution of Bitcoin, blockchain was born. Bitcoin can be understood as a peer-to-peer electronic cash payment system, and payment is an important basis for everyone financial activities.
In 2015, blockchain technology was separated from the idea of “bitcoin” and became an unbiased research direction, relying mainly on the promotion of the financial industry. It had been in the summertime of 2015 that, Amber Group’s predecessor, founded in Hong Kong, used machine learning algorithms to quantify transactions in traditional marketplaces.
Michael revealed to Lianwen that the prototype of the business comes from a part-time entrepreneurial task between several co-workers and friends, exploring how to use more cutting-edge algorithms such as machine learning, neural network and support understanding how to financial transactions, that was also a respected and progressive attempt in the Asian market in those days. The six founders likewise have virtually identical backgrounds, with backgrounds of famous abroad universities, and have worked in well-known Wall Street institutions or large financial technology companies such as Morgan Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Goldman Sachs (Goldman Sachs), Bloomberg New York and so on.
Dialogue Michael Wu: reveals the Development Road of Amber Group to break through the Bear Market.
As mentioned earlier, the Chuancai Securities report points out that the development of blockchain technology was initially promoted by the financial industry, and that blockchain technology has the inherent advantage of optimizing the financial infrastructure, such as the natural application of this technology to the change of payment and negotiation systems. they have excellent significance in the areas of digital money and payment, invention of digital expenses and words of credit, securities and other financial loans registration and purchase.
Michael agreed with this view, telling that whenever the team was create, he found new technology and technology revolutionizing the financial industry step-by-step, and the combination of technology and finance was the development direction of the whole company.
Michael shared what was interesting about the team at that time. Because most of the team was in Hong Kong, while CTO, as the main technology development pressure, worked in New York, sometimes there was a difference between the two sides, and everyone had to work throughout the day, so essentially they could only meet each day on the east coastline of america, very past due in China to go over projects, improvement and arrange cooperation, often until a couple of o’clock each day. But in those days, people didn’t find it very hard, but loved it.
The strategy of the team at that time achieved relatively good performance for more than two years in a row, and as the whole core team was more mature, some basic frameworks had been built, and the development concept of innovating finance with digital and intelligent new technology had also been fully recognized and consensus. so in 2017, team members officially started a full-time business, and the company was named Amber AI at that time.
During the outbreak of blockchain industry in 2017-2018, Amber Group stepped into and used in the encrypted financial industry.
In 2017, the encryption industry ushered in a huge bull market, and blockchain industry became a favorite industry in those days., Amber Group also steadily shifted the concentrate of its business from traditional fund to encrypted fund at this time. Michael remarked that this change is both unintentional and inevitable.
Amber Group started trading cryptocurrencies in the bull market in the next fifty percent of 2017, and initially it was only quantitative financial transactions when the best bull market broke out. However, the complete encrypted trading market is very energetic, and there’s a huge trading quantity. at the same time, Amber Group has found many high-frequency and arbitrage opportunities under the characteristics of high volatility and high liquidity of encrypted property, and regards the whole encrypted trading market as a low-risk and high-return trading target.
At the beginning of 2018, the business related to encrypted assets grew rapidly, and the market attention and management level were also very high. Many customers also arrived to inquire about the relevant business, wishing that Amber Group could help users to get this done business., Amber Group also discovered that the range, development rate and potential of encrypted possessions business even exceeded the original financial business that were accumulated for somewhat longer.
After the Spring Festival that year, the founding team made a courageous decision to shift the focus of the whole company from traditional financing to encrypted financing to invest in and cultivate this young industry.
Michael said that in retrospect, the decision could be said to be accidental. If it had not been for a bull market in 2017, it would probably not have been involved in the industry so quickly, but it also contained inevitability, because the cryptographic financing industry and Amber are very compatible, both of which have both financial and technological attributes, including the need for a very strong heart of exploration and technology on the market all together. That is also highly constant with the genes and character of the founding team.
Dialogue Michael Wu: reveals the Development Street of Amber Group to break through the Keep Market An organization picture of the 6 founders.
2018-2019, the accelerated development amount of encryption financial industry– Amber Group seizes the chance to expand business.
- Development opportunities brought by keep market.
In 2017, the complete industry was a large bull market, when most people involved in the cryptocurrency industry could make money, but in 2018 the whole market quickly turned from a bull market to a bear market, but it was the bear market that brought Amber a bigger development opportunity.
The all-time high since the birth of Bitcoin occurred at the end of December 2017, when the purchase price was near to $20,000, but by the first quarter of 2018, the purchase price had almost halved, falling completely to around $7,000 to $8,000, and mainstream coins, including Ethernet Square, had fallen a whole lot worse. even many small currencies are straight near to zero.
Motivated by the bull market, many primary and secondary market companies rushed in to the market. Michael said that lots of companies around them fundamentally find the long strategy in a solid market, but they fundamentally lost excess amount, and even lots of the companies that began in the same period went bust in early 2018.
As Amber Group came from the traditional financial industry, accumulated a lot of experience and lessons of the traditional financial industry, and maintained a heart of awe to the market, so it would be considered in the crazy market situation at that time. Stick to the bottom line of risk control, do not bet on the path, do not wager long and brief, in support of do some low-risk market-neutral strategies.
Therefore, against the backdrop of the dismal performance of the cryptographic money market by the end of the first one fourth of 2018, because Amber Group works together with a long-term and continuous concept, it achieved an optimistic return of almost 30% in those days, which was very hard and rare in those days, which made Amber stick out in the complete market.
Amber Group’s excellent performance in addition has attracted the interest of mainstream marketplaces and the press. For instance, Bloomberg News centered on the unexpected submit the cryptocurrency market in 2018 and became thinking about Amber’s “contrarian results.” in its record, Amber called Amber “the best carrying out cryptocurrency hedge account in the world.”
Michael said frankly that the report could be regarded as a milestone for Amber Group, and the attention of the market also increased, especially attracting the interest of several global institutional clients, including many family money, traditional money, hedge money, and even some very traditional large multinationals, who also took the effort to get hold of Amber Group after reading the record.
If they had an in-depth knowledge of the team, they gave high reputation to Amber, not only reached an assistance but also hoped that Amber could perform more business, that was a great chance for a startup in those days.
Michael figured opportunities are still left to prepared people, on the main one hands, because Amber Group is doing the right thing, adhering to the bottom line of risk control and long-term philosophy, while also benefiting from the professional accumulation of the team before, helping the business take benefit of such a far more accidental chance to quickly gain market reputation and usher in these top institutional customers.
two。. Ecological design of encrypted financial business.
If a business wants to get reputation and development on the market, its own products should also endure scrutiny. Michael also distributed to Lianwen the ecological design of the company’s entire encrypted financial business.
In terms of business layout, Amber has naturally expanded many types of services in the process of cooperation with some large funds, project parties, multinational enterprises and other institutions in the industry.
Michael said that when customers put forward the necessity for Amber Group to give a certain business, regardless of the team has the capacity to expand, so the company is definitely customer retention, satisfaction, stickiness is high, users are also ready to grow with the business, so Amber Group naturally evolved into an one-stop encrypted financial service system for fund-raising management, financial management, trading derivatives, and financing.
Through the perspective of strategic cooperation, Amber Group closely strengthens the cooperation with the industry ecology and expands the business boundary. For example, there are a lot of technical exchanges and business cooperation with Fireblocks, a digital asset security company, at the level of security hosting. At the same time, it has communicated numerous asset management levels, including distributed capital, like the establishment of encrypted quantitative finance management company Gamma with gf.network.
- Early participants in neuro-scientific DeFi.
Throughout the interview, we found that Amber Group had already set foot in neuro-scientific decentralized financial (DeFi) as soon as 2018 and 19, when the idea of DeFi was just stated. With the introduction of a series of products and infrastructure, such as stable currency, loans, DEX, AMM, etc., the heat in the DeFi field was detonated. So far, the total number of DeFi users has exceeded 240000, a nearly six-fold increase since the beginning of June, according to Dune Analytics.
Dialogue Michael Wu: reveals the Development Road of Amber Group to break through the Keep Market.
In 2018, DeFi was still a comparatively unfamiliar area for most Asian companies, but Amber Group already had a lot of cooperation and exchanges with this ecology, like the recent popular decentralized lending agreement Chemical substance (COMP) reached the official cooperation with Amber as soon as August 2018, and Amber is also its first liquidity partner in Asia.
From 2019 to 2020, all sorts of new models in the encrypted financial industry emerge one after another– Amber Group design all around the globe, upgrading the platform strategy.
- The development strategy of globalization and compliance.
Amber Group announced in June that it had obtained a Canadian MSB (Money Services Business) license, and had previously obtained a MSB license in the United States, and has set up branches in Seoul, South Korea, Vancouver, North America and Taipei outside its headquarters in Hong Kong. These possibilities imply that Amber Group strives to build up in direction of globalization and conformity, which includes been talked about with Michael.
Michael responded that for Amber, globalization and conformity will always be the business’s strategy. Cryptocurrency itself is a worldwide asset without nationwide boundaries, so from the early days, Amber Group’s customer base has spread all over the world, whether from Asia to Europe and the United States.
Michael shares that the business has been providing round-the-clock service from in the past, be it 4am in LA or Sunday evening in Hong Kong, which kind of work has steadily developed a worldwide service capacity.
Using the advance of globalization, it also brings higher compliance costs, because the regulatory requirements, regulations, getting etc change from region to region. Michael said that for a worldwide company, portion global users and needing to adjust to different marketplaces, different regulators and compliance requirements, this investment is well worth it for Amber Group.
Conformity is also your path for the industry all together, because in the long run, it is through conformity that more users throughout the world, such as institutions, encrypted finance, can embrace this market, companies and government agencies.
As the industry itself becomes more institutionalized and compliant, companies like Amber Group that are prepared to invest more in compliance is a long-term advantage. Therefore, globalization and conformity isn’t just a strategic design, but also thinks that it is going to end up being the other two major benefits of Amber in addition to specialized features and professional financial services. With constant investment and dedication, it will get a long-term come back.
two。. Update of platform, scale and production.
Amber Group completed round A financing of US $2800 in 2019, and formulated a platform, production and large-scale strategic upgrading plan at exactly the same time. Michael also distributed to Lianwen the primary planning and current improvement of this proper upgrade.
Prior to the A round of financing, Amber Group has been in a leading position in the to B field of the whole encryption financial industry, and the market share of several segments of business is also very high. But Michael said it saw some periodic ceilings, although Amber Group could provide professional and complete one-stop encrypted financial services to satisfy the most picky institutional customers and high net worth customers. But on the whole, the scope of such groups continues to be relatively limited.
On the other hand, Michael believes that the technological advantages of Amber Group itself have not been brought into full play. Amber Group started from doing AI quantitative transactions, so how to use technology to achieve automation, to do big data digesting, algorithm suggestion, etc., is the business’s accumulated strengths, so the service use of products, online way to present to a wider audience round the world, is also the natural choice of the company’s development.
Therefore, the next stage of the company’s strategy is to strive to achieve platform, creation, large-scale, desire to serve a wider selection of global users through technology, products, the business may also be mixed up in layout of products. For instance, the net end, which is principally for B-end users, premiered by the end of this past year, which completely automates a few of the services. This season, Amber Group is concentrating on developing mobile products-Amber App, defines the product as a smart encryption financial program (Smart Crypto Fund Product), expectations to bring institutional-quality professional services to a wider range of users.
Dialogue Michael Wu: reveals the Development Road of Amber Group to break through the Carry Market
- The head of the encryption industry will explore the street of convergence in the foreseeable future, but it has the benefit of subdivision.
Recent current information that Coinbase would have begun preparations for listing, completed as early as this year, has also attracted industry attention. If successfully outlined, Coinbase is expected to become the first large cryptocurrency exchange to be outlined in the United States. Coinbase was appreciated at more than $8 billion in the latest round of private equity financing in 2018.
Michael affirms this is very good news, not only because Amber Group has a collateral collaboration with Coinbase, but also out of admiration to catch up with leading companies like Coinbase.
Coinbase follows an institutional development path under the compliance framework, and most of it is customers are normal person users, from the original pocket, to the later exchange, and then to the present development into a comprehensive encrypted financial ecological company. Coinbase hopes to provide individual users with compliant products and services.
Michael believes that is the right path for the industry and it is highly comparable to Amber Group’s own long-term eyesight. But unlike the road of companies such as Coinbase, Amber Group at first developed from specific niche market but huge financial groupings such as service organizations and high world wide web worth users, and today will get into the broader global specific user market through product layout.
Michael believes that with the introduction of the industry and the improvement of community acceptance, what we should do can be closer and better, but you will see their own advantages and advantages, which is very healthy for the industry all together, and we desire to see increasingly more corporations with the long-term notion of making the industry bigger and more powerful, rather than making short-term and quick income end up being the mainstream of the industry.
- Prospects for future years of encryption Financing Industry.
By the end of the interview, Lianwen talked to Michael about some visions and views on the introduction of the cryptographic financial industry this season. Michael said that the business will not wager on the path of the marketplace and can not place too much focus on short-term price fluctuations. Many years of financial trading history also makes the business know that timing is the most challenging, but still securely think that the industry still has a great deal of room for development.
Michael says it has seen a lot of positive signals, such as the fact that this year more and more people from outside the industry, or some institutional investors drifting away from the industry boundaries, are slowly entering the industry to allocate encryption assets, which is an important driving trend. Because the first step in getting bigger in the industry is to make cryptocurrencies and cryptographic assets an indispensable part of the portfolio of institutions or individuals with the ability to invest, and the proportion of investment depends upon everyone’s risk choice and propensity, which trend is starting to show.
In the foreseeable future, Amber Group will concentrate on how to allow more people to create long-term asset allocation through Amber products and services. Secondly, we desire to guide some money with speculative mentality and want to battle for quick comes back to be allocated more rationally, so that speculative money that make a difference prices for a while can be changed into long-term allocation money (sticky money and real cash) that can drive the healthy development of the complete industry.
Finally, Michael desires Amber Group to accompany the long-term development of the industry and witness the bright future of the industry.