[RECAP] AMA: Kommunitas x Digitra.com
During a recent AMA session with Kommunitas, Rodrigo Batista, the CEO and Founder of Digitra, provided us with valuable insights into his project. If you were unable to attend the AMA, you can find a summary of the discussion below.
SEGMENT 1: INTRODUCTION QUESTIONS
Question 1: Can you introduce yourself and your project? What is Digitra.com, and what are its goals?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: Hi, all! My name is Rodrigo Batista, the founder and CEO of Digitra.com. Previously, I was the founder, CEO (2013–2018) and controlling shareholder of Mercado Bitcoin, the largest crypto exchange in South America, which I took from zero to 1.5 million clients in 5 years. I sold my stake in the company in 2019.
Prior to that, I worked for 18 years in financial markets, trading and technology in financial institutions as Morgan Stanley and Santander. Currently, I’m attending Harvard OPM course.
Regard the project, Digitra.com is a global digital assets exchange, headquartered in Brazil. It was born to bring the convergence between Traditional and Digital Assets ecosystems, with reliable systems provided by top tier global suppliers, compliance frameworks, and regulatory engagement.
Digitra.com is backed by partnerships with world class institutions as NASDAQ (first digital assets exchange to use Nasdaq Universal Matching Service engine globally), Fireblocks (Multi-layer security providing one-of-a-kind insurance policy that covers digital assets), and Veriff (AIpowered identity verification and KYC solution, with a fraud prevention engine).
We are up and running, since the app was launched in Aug/2022. Our app has been download in +100 countries, and we have +10k verified clients, who can trade BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, TRX, ARB, ABFY already. We are launching a new trading pair every week. THe most important, WE DO NOT CHAGE ANY FEES OR SPREAD IN THE SPOT MARKET, who hold our native tokens (DGTA) in their in-app wallets. We call this the Zero-Fee initiative. On top of that, we pay our clients DGTAs every day to trade with us in an initiative we call Trade-to-Earn.
Question 2: What is the New Clients Incentive offered by Digitra.com and how does it work?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: As an incentive to new clients, Digitra.com offers a certain amount of DGTA tokens to all new users upon completion of their KYC process until the platform reaches 100,000,000 verified clients.
As the total number of clients reaches certain milestones, the amount to be received by new clients will decrease.
The first 1,000 clients received 200 DGTAs, then the first 10,000 clients received 100 DGTAs. From 10,000 to 100,000 clients, we will airdrop 50 DGTAs, which is enough to enjoy the Zero-Fee initiative. After 100,000 and until 1,000,000 clients, we will distribute 10 DGTA for everyone completing the KYC process.
Question 3: What is the DGTA token and its utilities, and what benefits do DGTA holders receive?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: DGTA is a utility token with a maximum supply of 300 million units minted at once.
DGTA is at the core of Digitra.com business model in two ways:
1) Zero Fee initiative: all clients holding a certain amount of DGTA in their wallets on app will not pay spot trading fees;
2) Trade to Earn initiative: Digitra.com will pay all clients trading in the platform with DGTA tokens, every day for the next
five years. The more clients trade, the more they can earn.
Additionally, DGTA holders will benefit from discounts on the derivatives & futures trading and staking services fees in the future. Digitra.com will also accept DGTA as part of collaterals in the derivative & futures markets.
Question 4: What is Trade-to-Earn and how does it differ from traditional crypto exchanges?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: It is important to note that every client up to 100,000 receives enough tokens to have zero fees when they to KYC
Regard Trade-To-Earn, Today, crypto exchanges/brokers earn income from charging commissions or markups on the prices of the assets the clients’ trade. However, that pricing model is already disrupted in the traditional financial markets by players, such as Robinhood in the United States, that charge zero fees from clients for stock trading. Pricing disruptions have also happened in music, movies, credit cards, and any type of business that deals with information flow. Why should you pay for trading crypto then?
Additionally, crypto projects are creating new types of economic incentives that allow new business models to emerge. One new type of economic incentive is the play-to-earn model. Play-to-earn allows gamers to receive a game native tokens while playing and this type of project have been steadily growing. Another example of innovation is tokens created by decentralized platforms that pay users using their native tokens, based on the volumes clients trade in one day.
We believe that in the competitive crypto space, zero fees alone may not bring good liquidity to a new exchange such as Digitra.com. Currently, a traditional exchange or a crypto exchange creates liquidity by hiring investors called market makers that are paid for creating artificial liquidity in the order books. Since each order individually helps to build the liquidity, we decided not to charge for the liquidity provided, but to pay every user who trades on our platform with our exchange token. It is the “uberization of market making.
Based on the idea of paying for the liquidity provided by clients, Digitra.com created the Trade to Earn initiative, in which 15,000 DGTA tokens will be distributed every day, through five years, for all clients trading on the platform.
25% of those tokens will be distributed equally among those who traded on that day.
However, 75% of those tokens will be distributed based on the volume of trade on that day.
Therefore, the more clients trade, the more they can earn. Moreover, there will be no lock-up periods for the tokens earned under this initiative.
I’m sharing a link here for future reference: https://www.crypto-reporter.com/news/digitra-launches-globally-35710/
Question 5: What are the partnerships that Digitra.com has with other institutions?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: Partnerships are one of our main strengths
When I founded Digitra.com I decided to focus on customer experience instead of building everything from scratch.
Therefore, we were the first crypto business to reach an agreement with NASDAQ to use their match engine technology for trading order books:
This is the post in NASDAQ website whith my interview for them 👆
We also are very diligent with our clients funds, so we reached an agreement with Fireblocks, the Israeli leading company in crypto custody, to store all crypto assets sent to our platform, with a US$30mn insurance policy.
We have also been funded by myself with $1 million and by Ricardo Marino, from Itau Bank family, with $ 5 million
It took me almost 2 years to get the contract with NASDAQ signed
Question 6: We’re interested in getting to know the team behind Digitra.com. Could you tell us how many members are on the team and what their professional backgrounds are?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: Sure! We are a ~30 people team, and most of them are devs working on the product. Our management team includes myself, and:
CTO Renato Martins has 24 years of experience working in the IT industry. Martins helped Batista to develop Mercado Bitcoin, leading the company’s development and maintenance of crypto wallets. Previously, Martins worked for Safra Bank, a traditional Brazilian financial institution.
COO Igor Rodrigues worked mainly in the financial industry in major banks such as Citi and ABN AMRO, joining the crypto economy in 2017, when Rodrigues was responsible for the OTC desk at Mercado Bitcoin till 2022.
I’ll not name the others due to security reasons, but I’ll describe briefly their background
Our CFO is the former CFO of a local crypto exchange in Brazil. Jatahy also founded a company specialized in cross-border commerce. Previously, worked for 4 years at Ernst & Young (EY), a “Big Four” auditing and consultancy firm.
Our CHRO is a former partner director at KPMG, one of the “Big Four” auditing and consultancy firms, and also worked at KPMG for 23 years in commercial, people & culture positions.
The CMO was the head of marketing of a local brokerage firm, with +11 years of experience developing brands, communications, and growth strategies for financial institutions.
The CCO is a former talent acquisition analyst at Mercado Bitcoin with +10 years of experience in administrative and operational areas.
Finally, the Head of Tokenization @occamilo is a former equity research analyst with +20 years of experience in the financial market and consultancy firms. Camilo worked for financial institutions like HSBC, Bradesco, and Goldman Sachs covering several industries in Latam. Camilo also worked for Deloitte, one of the “Big Four” auditing and consultancy firms, providing services in the Corporate Finance/Valuation division.
SEGMENT 2: LIVE SESSION
Question 1: NFT is the best so hot and popular nowadays. What do you think about this trend? Do you have any plans to include NFT in the project?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: I like the basic ideas, but i think NFTs are still in the very early days. Because of this view, we decided not to use them in our business model today, but we will surely do it in the future.
Question 2: Can you tell me? What’s your main focus right now, are you focused on the community or market/Exchange, or the products?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: Sure. Up to 3 months ago our main focus was in building the product. I mean great APIs, apps, websites, and the DGTA token. Now we focus on distribution initiatives such the community, partnerships, etc.
Question 3: Do you have AUDIT certificate? Or are you working on AUDITING your project, to make it more secure and reliable?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: We are working to have some security certifications such as ISO 27001 and others. That is an obligation I have in my contract with Nasdaq.
Question 4: Did you consider community feedback/requests during the creation of your product in order to expand on fresh ideas for your project? Many projects fail because the target audience and clients are not understood. So I’d like to know who your ideal consumer is for your product?
Mr. Rogdrigo Batista: Did you consider community feedback/requests during the creation of your product in order to expand on fresh ideas for your project? Many projects fail because the target audience and clients are not understood. So I’d like to know who your ideal consumer is for your product?
We do consider community feedback a lot. Recently we have done a pool in our social media and communities on the coins clients want us to list.
Additionally to that, we are taking into account the main use case that we get from clients to improve our product. Since we are global from scratch, that is the only way of delivering what is useful for the different regions of the planet.
The ideal clients for us are the ones that use our product every day.
Question 5: According to the project’s roadmap- what are your most important next priorities?
Mr. Rodrigo Batista: My next priority are growing the company 10X. We have been doing that in terms of a number of clients and liquidity every 3 months. I expect to continue following that pattern.
SEGMENT 3: LEARN AND EARN SESSION
QUESTION 1: What clients need to enjoy the Zero-Fee initiative?
Answer: min 50 DGTA
QUESTION 2: How many tokens the new clients will receive after we reach 100,000 users?
Answer: 10 DGTA
QUESTION 3: How many tokens digitra.com airdrops everyday under the Trade to Earn Initiative for everybody that has traded that day?
Answer: 15,000
QUESTION 4: What else DGTA holders will benefit from in the future?
Answer: Discounts on the derivatives & futures trading and staking services fees
Collaterals in the derivative & futures markets
QUESTION 5: What is the value of the insurance policy for crypto held at Digitra.com?
Answer: 30 m
Digitra Official Links
🌐 Website: https://digitra.com/
💬 Telegram Group Discussion: https://t.me/digitracom
🐦Twitter: https://twitter.com/Digitra_com
📱Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitracom/
📺Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@digitracom
