Carboneum: How Blockchain Technology will Democratize Social Trading Platforms
In the financial market system, social trading has been recognized as an important investment tool that allows investors to replicate the operations of expert traders without requiring those investors to have expertise or large knowledge of financial markets. Furthermore, the trader-follower relationship is based on two main criteria: percentage of successful operations, and diversification of trader investment portfolio. Therefore, how would social trading instruments be implemented upon a blockchain protocol to decentralize and democratize the financial market industry?
In April, we had the opportunity to visit Thailand and interview Max Kortrakul, Founder and CEO of Carboneum, a democratized social trading platform, to know more about the project and how Carboneum is building its platform to bring social trading tools into the blockchain ecosystem.
A brief introduction into the Carboneum blockchain project
Carboneum is building an open distributed infrastructure for sharing investment knowledge within the digital assets trade. Using copy trading mechanisms, Carboneum enables platform users to take up the role of followers, and gives them insights to duplicate the transactions of expert traders. Furthermore, as an openly distributed protocol, The Carboneum platform named CoinRadars, which is planning to first launch by October 2018, aims to bring transparency and democratization to the traditional trading model.
CoinRadars is expected to display some features such as “Safety Belt” to manage investment risk by setting up automatic stop-loss orders; and “Whale Watcher” to get investment insight from large investment management strategies implemented by investment leaders within the Carboneum network.
The simplification of technological investment tools, and the accessibility to those tools for ordinary people, are the main elements resting upon Carboneum’s business philosophy. Furthermore, Carboneum’s decentralized trading platform will be built upon the Ethereum protocol and smart contracts to create a token called Carboneum. Consequently, by the use of blockchain technology, Carboneum seeks to bridge the gap between professional traders and ordinary people interested in exploring the investment of digital assets, by creating a platform and being equipped with technical tools that allow you to copy trading orders, while incentivizing the actions of trade experts who share their knowledge and investment experience within the Carboneum ecosystem.
The main problems of the traditional trading system according to Carboneum:
- Investment in cryptocurrencies and digital assets is very complex, and the sources of information required to increase trade literacy in cryptocurrency and other digital assets is still overwhelming and dispersed.
- Traditional investment platforms are centralized and lack transparency and accountability.
- The existing incentive and revenue structure of traditional trading platforms represent an imperfect alignment of interests.
Carboneum’s solution to this: CoinRadars
The mutual contribution that characterizes decentralized blockchain platforms helps Carboneum identify and obligate one user to another, linking a follower to a leader via smart contracts.
- In CoinRadars, as a blockchain-based platform, all transactions are recorded. This feature makes them traceable, verifiable, and auditable to impart transparency to the structure.
- Simple learning experience for new investors, by observing the strategies of expert traders.
- Customizable tools to filter suitable digital assets in regard of each user-based investment behavior, expected returns, and risk preferences.
- Through a sharing knowledge structure, CoinRadars aims to create a system that pools market research, trading strategies, and collaborative work, to enhance the free flow information on digital asset investment in order to democratize its benefits.
- By using smart contracts, followers’ fees are charged only upon positive trade results; leader traders are remunerated once they bring tangible results to their followers.
The following is the transcription of our interview with Mr. Max Kortrakul, founder and CEO of Carboneum.
Before go into Carboneum, could you please introduce yourself, and tell us about your background before founding Carboneum?
I actually graduated in chemistry, not related to financial IT at all, but after I worked for the first year, I realized that I did not belong to that field. Luckily I got the opportunity to work in a chemical factory on a project to improve their information system, so I found the tech side of the business to be very interesting, so that is why I tried to get my master’s degree in technology management and moved away from the chemical industry. From that moment I had the opportunity to work with an Australian company for content filtering. I worked as a regional marketing manager for the Southeast Asian market. Then I started to learn more about the technology industry in the whole region.
From a personal perspective, I am an Apple fanboy, and their technology and design. For this reason I started a company for software development for iPhones mobile applications. But during that time, we saw that if we kept doing applications for others, it may mean that we could not do the things we really wanted. Moreover, in the meantime, my close friend convinced me to invest in the stock market. From that time, 10 years have been passed already.
Why did you name the company as Carboneum, what does it mean?
Carboneum comes first from Carbon and Ethereum. It is basically from the idea of Carbon as copy, so you can let people copy from each other.
“We believe that if we learn from who succeeds, it leads to an easier path to success too.”
So we try to use technology to help people learn from the ones who have more experience. We are trying to provide the platform for the purposes of giving people the ability to share their knowledge and incentivize it, but still making it fair through the fees structure. Our fee structure is a win/win approach to let people earn money; if none win, none earn money. So this is the main key of Carboneum.
Could you tell us about how you came out with the idea of building up a blockchain platform for social trading?
During my experience, I realize that the financial literacy in a country like Thailand seems to be very low still. So people do not really know how to invest, and furthermore, investment for them sounds like something very scary, and when you talk about the stock market, people think you are talking about gambling, rather than anything else.
Regarding this context, what we tried to do is to learn much more about investment itself and combine it with technology, since such a combination seems to be very valuable in terms of the market itself. Not only for Thailand, but for all developing countries, where more and more people seem to be interested in investing. For this reason we put ourselves in a position in the investment-tech field to support that interest to help people to learn. Moreover, narrowing down a little more, we are an investment tech company. That is why we started to create applications for investment.
Our turning point was when we got an offer from our VC, CyberAgent Ventures, a Japanese company. Japanese companies usually come to Thailand and explore a lot more than any other country I would say; more than Korea or the US. Japan seems to have a close connection with Thai people, especially in the automotive industry, so we are also very familiar with them. Also in the realm of culture, I think we work very well with each other. After exploring all opportunities, we accepted an investment from them, which was our turning point and transformed us into a startup.
“So for our company, cryptocurrencies are another asset class, such as stocks, derivatives, or mutual funds.”
After that moment, we developed our platform, and started to make our first profit last year in 2017, at that time, StockRadars made a profit with the key concept of using technology to help people learn how to invest. Meanwhile we started to see cryptocurrency opportunities, despite its volatility. Moreover, our customers also started to ask us why not turn StockRadars for crypto investment as well. That was when we realized the need to change our angle and started looking into cryptocurrency as another asset class, and how we could help people to invest better in it.
“For us, the one who makes some fortune in a off-day investment is not one who trades better, but it is the one who does portfolio management better.”
When we decided to work within the cryptocurrency world, we had in mind that we would become a part of the global population and not only Thai people anymore. Despite what people think, we have strong experience in terms of Thai equity; what we want to know is which kinds of assets are going up or down, and who are doing well in what and where. So basically we try to make sure that we can provide all those platform tools to everyone needing them, regardless of country and where they are located.
The idea is not actually new, we know well about social trading in the world, but why we got the idea actually is because the trend of following top stock traders and shareholders by twitter for instance, gave us the idea of “what if we can have such a function in cryptocurrency, and make it more open everywhere in the world?” So that will be a key for people’s success on the platform.
What is the problem Carboneum wants to solve, and what is the social value Carboneum is proposing through the use of blockchain technology?
We believe that if you want to judge people, you should do so for what they have done and not what they have or what their names are.
“In Carboneum, we want to democratize the access to this platform and create job opportunities for people”
Like Uber drivers, we want to have Carboneum traders that help people learn, make money and a living by using our platform, and learn how to invest.
We believe that by breaking down the gap between those who invest and those who do not, we will help more in terms of the country and the world itself, because when people start to invest, it means they have a better life, and use their money wisely. We have those who never have invested and have learned how to do it; basically they start to use their money more wisely.
We do not want to be an exchange by ourselves, but instead we would work with other exchanges. Exchanges compete with each other, so we think they need an extra layer to help them compete better, so we want to fill that position to help them get more trade volume, and also help the retail investor to invest better by using the platform. That may be the key.
“Basically the problem is that investment is too difficult and complex to understand for ordinary people. So we want to help those people by leveling the playing field.”
Carboneum wants to be like Instagram filters for people who want to take better pictures, it means that in the trading field, by using our platform, people can trade better. We want to level the playing field, this is our key belief.
From the social value perspective, if you have more and more people investing, it means better life. Also, letting people learn more about financial literacy helps people directly in their lives, and it also helps to improve the country’s conditions indirectly.
As we understand, Carboneum wants to work as a social network for mentoring people about how they can improve their financial intelligence, not only in cryptocurrency, but also in other kinds of investment alternatives. Could you tell us more about that?
Actually the system that we are trying to implement is very simple. For instance, when a trade leader opens in a certain market and allows others to follow his or her trade strategies, the trader is compensated for sharing those strategies and other relevant information, while followers are able to learn by implementing the leaders’ investment strategies and finally, invest better. This is our win/win model. Therefore, if a leader wants to be followed, he or she should share trade strategies, as well as ideas about where to invest, how to invest better, and other relevant information.
“All those investment tools and strategies brought by a particular trade leader are configured regardless of the kind of assets. It means those assets could be cryptocurrencies or other digital assets, but stocks, derivatives, or other dominant traditional assets as well.”
Carboneum and CoinRadars do not want to limit people about the way they invest their money. Therefore, we are not limited to the cryptocurrencies investment field, because we want to help people be able to do what they want in investment businesses: learning from others or mentoring others.
Who are the main customers of Carboneum and who might be other interested parties?
Retailer investors are the biggest group of people Carboneum is interested to collaborate with. Furthermore, what is challenging us is working with exchanges, since we have to make sure that we get a good strategy to move in-line with exchanges too. Moreover we are open to work with other interested parties in the ecosystem itself like trading schools and all those people who are already established in the stock market, but not in the crypto world yet, because we want to help them achieve a better position within the cryptocurrency financial market. All those are the key players we want to connect and work with.
Carboneum is built in Ethereum protocol, what was the reason of that decision?
We thought a lot about that decision before start doing our ICO, but we found that Ethereum is more standardized already. We explored different options and structures within other altcoins. But at the end, Ethereum seems to have more benefits for us, because is easier to understand for everybody, without going through additional explanations about the protocol itself, thus we thought it would help us focus more on our project.
What is the current stage of development of the Carboneum project?
Doing the ICO, it has been around a year, but actually as team, we are not new, we have had important experience and amounted recognition as well in the development of applications in previous experiences in the market.
Currently we are in pre-ICO and will be doing an ICO in May, and hopefully we can wrap it out in June,and in October we will launch our first app. Moreover, between June and October is the time frame for us to be listed on the exchanges.
Could you tell us more about how your team is conformed and how you found it?
We actually have an existing team, a new team, and a separated legal entity as well. Siam Square is a Thai based company, and Carboneum which is a Singapore-based company. However, such division is only in terms of legal structure, because it is more efficient to split out the organization in that way. Currently we have separated the teams in regards to the product line, but at the end we manage both teams as a single entity. For this reason we have tried to slowly blend them, aiming to have the same organizational culture.
Which challenges have you found during the development of the Carboneum project?
Actually in terms of awareness of Thai technology in the world it has been very hard. Because when a country such as Thailand tries to export its technology abroad, every time when you talk, people start to question if Thai people can do that or not, because Thailand is not perceived still as a technology provider. However in reality Thailand is a lot more efficient than other western countries.
“Thailand has proven to be able to produce products in different fields which are world class”.
For instance, Thailand has gotten rewards in the Asia Pacific within the ICT world, as well as in finance competing with other countries that are some of the leading representatives in finance such as Hong Kong and Singapore. For this reason we are confident to stand up in this stage, and that we are able to provide world class technological solutions and compete with other countries very well.
Do you plan to have other partnerships out of Asia?
Yes, we are working on other partnerships, especially with content providers, because investment is all about content. With exchanges themselves, and also with community leaders of other countries. For this reason we are trying to find more people to start getting bigger awareness and exposure outside of Thailand. The good point is that the crypto world is very well connected; it is not fragmented.
Finally, we would like to know your opinion about the cryptocurrency and blockchain scene in Thailand?
In Thailand, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies are still very new, luckily we have a good regulator who is very proactive. However, they [the Thai Government] should be sure to understand thoroughly the industry before regulating it. But despite the fact that cryptos are very new in Thailand, the country is trying to adapt itself very well.
“In terms of Thailand, we feel we have some advantages, not only in terms of manpower, but more in the ecosystem.”
For this reason we are trying to attract more talent from everywhere in the world and trying to bring Thailand to the next level.
More information about Carboneum and CoinRadars can be found on carboneum.ioand their social media channels in Facebook, Twitter, Instagramand their two channels on Telegram (channel & group) to stay updated. Finally, several related articles can be found on their Medium, as well as videos at Carboneum’s Youtube Channel.
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