Capdax Community Update — January 2019

An update on our recent progress and future outlook ahead of Capdax’s imminent release.

Dear supporters and friends of Capdax,

In 2017 myself and the team at Capdax embarked on a mission to build a cryptocurrency exchange that would rival even the most established online equities trading platforms with functionality catering to beginner and professional traders alike.

Today, we are on schedule to announce the first public release of Capdax in Q1 of 2019, pending the final integration of our Matching Engine. Additionally, as a team and company we remain financially stable, have a renewed product roadmap and go-to-market plan, and are committed to keeping you — the Capdax Community — informed of our progress on a regular basis.

It has now been 10 months since our Token Generation Event (TGE) successfully concluded and as we prepare for the imminent release of Capdax, I wanted to take this opportunity to personally share with you what we’ve been working on and what you can expect to see in the near future, as well as extending a sincere thank you for the support and enthusiasm you’ve shown myself and the Capdax team throughout this journey.

Preparing Capdax for public BETA

In the following weeks, we plan to release the Capdax public BETA — a fully functional exchange featuring a variety of base and quote currency pairs. Whilst we had originally planned to launch in mid-2018, our release was delayed on a number of occasions by challenges that impacted both our roadmap and leadership team.

Most notable of these challenges were the replacement of key leadership and issues faced in developing a secure, sophisticated and scalable Capdax backend. Today, we have a clear direction and experienced team in place, many months of front end user experience testing, and a robust new back end nearing completion.

• In late-Q2 of 2018, the Capdax Matching Engine — a crucial component of our exchange platform — was found to be lacking in stability and scalability. Subsequently, our former CTO and Project Lead both amicably stepped-down to make way for two new experienced leaders, who now provide the necessary in-house expertise to oversee Capdax’s development. For security reasons I’m not yet able to share the name of our new CTO, but I can confirm that he’s an industry figure that many members of the Capdax Community will already know.
• In early-Q4 of 2018, after numerous attempts to improve our original Matching Engine, it became clear that this component needed to be completely rebuilt. After initially starting this rebuild in-house, it quickly became apparent that, in order to avoid further delays, an outside partner would need to be engaged. Shortly after, we appointed a highly-experienced provider with over 20 years of experience working on major projects in the trading space.
• In late-Q4 of 2018 we faced further delays when the 3rd party provider responsible for delivering our new Matching Engine missed their deadline. Today, after additional development and a restructure of their in-house project team, we are optimistic that this final piece will be finished in time for a late-February launch. However, whilst our internal team and code are entirely ready to launch, we recognise the possibility of our provider missing their deadline again and will be keeping the Capdax Community informed of their progress over the coming weeks.

Refining our product roadmap

Beyond our public BETA, the team is already hard at work validating a handful of powerful features with the aim of differentiating Capdax in the market. In addition to world-class customer support and a sleek, intuitive interface, our white paper proposed that Social Trading would be the first major feature to appear in the product. However, whilst we still plan to introduce Social Trading at some stage, new market conditions and extensive feedback from the broader blockchain community have prompted us to focus on a number of other promising alternatives in the near-term.

• Fiat-to-crypto: We’re making strong progress on this front. Our team recently gained preliminary authorisation to operate and are currently working with multiple European jurisdictions to identify the most legally-sound way to proceed.
• Derivatives: This is one of our favourites and has major market potential. It also comes hand-in-hand with various legal and banking challenges, and a significant development effort, all of which are currently being evaluated.
• A Securities License: Whilst multiple jurisdictions are still establishing regulatory frameworks to accommodate this within the crypto space, we are now — from a legal standpoint — ready to move. This would be a major expense but remains something we see a lot of potential in, as it would enable the listing of any STO token on Capdax.

In addition to these major features, we plan to deliver many smaller features and improvements regularly.

Overcoming challenging crypto markets

Despite the continued depreciation of cryptocurrencies globally, Capdax is financially lean and adequately liquid, with fiat and crypto cash reserves that will comfortably see us through to 2020, after which we plan to support our growth through new revenue and additional partnerships.

Whilst we are stable, a significant amount of the capital raised during our TGE depreciated due to poor market conditions and banking delays. In response, myself and the team took steps to adjust our approach and ensure Capdax remained in a strong position to grow and succeed.

• At the conclusion of the Capdax TGE, we planned to immediately convert 50% of our Ethereum to fiat currency. However, we faced numerous barriers to establishing a legitimate fiat bank account as a blockchain-based company, during which time the global crypto markets continued to depreciate. This ultimately reduced the rate at which we were eventually able to exchange our crypto for fiat — in some cases by up to 85%. Fortunately, we diversified a portion of our ETH into BTC, which acted to offset some of this depreciation.
• We’ve taken a number of steps to significantly reduce our operational costs and continue to monitor our spending closely. Notably, our Operations team has been scaled back in favour of a larger Product team, and our new senior leadership are now incentivised primarily in tokens and vested equity rather than large salaries. Additionally, myself and co-founder, Saber Aria continue to see Capdax as an exciting opportunity and dedicate a large portion of our time toward its success of without drawing a salary.
• In preparation for the launch of Capdax, our leadership team is heavily focused on customer acquisition channels and strategies that are likely to drive results in today’s tight crypto market. We’re also currently exploring synergies with a handful of popular technology partners, through which we aim to tap into existing customer bases by providing streamlined purchasing of specific coins/tokens. Once these strategies have been proven and product market fit is achieved, we will seek further funding in 2020.
• In Q4 of 2018, after successfully completing Capdax’s foundational legal work, John Fenton transitioned from COO to a role as an ongoing consultant, which concluded in December. In his place, Eugene Petersen is now acting as interim COO whilst we assess a handful of promising long-term candidates. Additionally, in the coming months, I plan to divide my role as CEO into two new roles: Managing Director and Executive Director, to ensure we have strong leadership presence across all of our key strategic, commercial and technical initiatives.

Keeping you informed

I’m particularly conscious that our communication up to this point has been inconsistent and that the Capdax Community has often requested updates that we were unable to deliver as quickly as we would have liked, especially in the wake of product delays. In future, to ensure the Capdax Community are aware of important developments as they happen, we will be publishing summarised updates at the end of each quarter.

Myself and the team are firmly committed to building transparency between ourselves and the community through these quarterly reports and will continue to answer community questions via the Capdax Telegram channel. As always, we aim to respond as quickly as possible, but please be understanding of the team’s bandwidth, especially in the lead up to our first product release.

It’s no exaggeration to say that, from a technical and legal standpoint, Capdax has been one of the most ambitious and rewarding projects that myself and the team have ever worked on. Over the past 18 months, the team has not only produced the beginnings of a world-class cryptocurrency exchange but remained focused and agile in the face of rapidly-evolving regulation. Today, we’re more excited than ever about the outlook of Capdax and the role that it will play in the evolving blockchain space.

I hope this update was able to shine some light on both the internal happenings and the future outlook of Capdax. I have tried to cover the majority of topics that came up in our community discussions, but if you feel that I’ve missed anything, please feel free to reach out to the team through Telegram.

Thank you again for supporting Capdax and I can’t wait to share more news with you over the coming weeks and months.

For further information, questions or to speak with a member of the Capdax team, please join us on the Capdax Telegram channel.