AMA With Jason Fernandes, Co-Founder at AEToken organized by ethx co
On 7th of Feb 2019 Jason Fernandes Conducted AMA on “ICO, Tokenization, Blockchain technology.”
Jason Fernandes Founder and CEO of www.aetoken.io AEToken is the only affiliate platform using smart-contract to revolutionize industry payment .
He took part of an AMA with cryptocurrency and Blockchain community — https://forum.ethx.co
Questions-
- What is Aetoken? Is it another ethereum based token to serve an industry which could do without blockchain? How does it stand out?
AEToken is a blockchain based payment solution for the affiliate marketing space. My co-founder and our CEO Vadim Fedotov has been in the affiliate marketing industry for over 11 years, from both the publisher and affiliate side and is knows the industry deeply. Along with his partners, his revenue from the existing business is just under 300 million a year. So we are very aware of the problems in the industry, these include 1) Lack of contract enforceability, 2) High minimum payouts 3) Fraud and 4) High transaction fees, when listed like that its quite apparent how blockchain solves each of these problems. In fact I would almost say the Affiliate Marketing industry is a text book use case for Blockchain. Our advisors are also deeply involved in the affiliate and/or iGaming industry (one of whom is Ex-COO of Zynga) and another, Eman Pulis who founded the Sigma iGaming conference.
2. “Jason co-invented the world’s first legal Internet-based DVR, InstantTV”. Sounds interesting, can you share more details about this please?
The company was RecordTV, it was the worlds first web-based DVR. There was a massive lawsuit with MediaCorp (Singapore), out of which RecordTV emerged victorious and that case has been cited in many subsequent DMCA cases, definitely do a google search its quite an interesting story.
3. What is your opinion on the current price trends?
think a lot of this will change once institutional money gets in the game. That will happen once the SEC greenlights some ETFs hoping things get better in another couple quarters.
4. Your website AeToken mentions this: $6,800,000,000 Revenue Generated by the North American Affiliation Industry in 2017. Isn’t most of this provided by largest players in media and advertising including Google? How do you plan to capture that market?
Well our solution is universal, and not limited to just North America. We have secured commitments ensuring that by launch date in Q2 2019, we will already be on our way to mass adoption within the online gaming and dating/adult industry (two of the largest affiliate industry sectors). To that end, we have signed partnerships with 7 online casinos and 2 sportsbooks for the use of AEToken as a payment solution. These partnerships represent a combined 15,000+ affiliates and 1.2€ Billion in GGR Monthly (Gross Gaming Revenue). Affiliate Networks with a collective pool of 8000+ affiliate have also committed to implement AEToken as a payment solution. At launch, we expect to have over 25 operators/publishers and in excess of 7 affiliate networks and over 100,000 affiliates putting AEToken into immediate circulation and use. So we will hit the ground running.
5. What does FunlCorp do? Could you please share a link?
Sure, FUNL is designed to cut down on spam notifications using collective intelligence. The software filters and triages notifications using a social-blocking approach, making real-time intelligent decisions on whether to block or let a notification through to your phone based on data aggregated from the behavior of other users. Users are paid in cryptocurrency to help train the system. The website is www.funl.in
6. What your Thoughts on Blockchain development In India ? In terms Of organization Growth and Policy maker ?
That’s a great question. I think India’s IT industry has a history of being service oriented. The problem with that promotes an approach that lacks of risk-taking and innovation. With Blockchain, a completely new discipline the country had an option to promote this sort of innovation by being Crypto/Blockchain friendly. Unfortunately, with the approach they’ve taken it, you will continue to have blockchain developers from India but very few will make the leap to being entrepreneurs or innovators. There is also a danger of missing out to other countries in Eastern Europe where development is also cost effective and good.
7. With Aetoken, why did you choose to target the advertising market?
That’s a great question. Actually, AEToken’s solution has a wide variety of possible use cases even outside the affiliate marketing industry. It so happens my co-founder, Vadim has a lot of experience in this space and he really saw the problems in the affiliate marketing industry and realized that blockchain was a perfect solution. So for now, we are focused on that industry, perhaps in the future, we could look at other use cases.
8. Cryptocurrency or Blockchain — what fascinates you more?
Its become fashionable to say that we are into Blockchain not Crypto. Partly because of how the market has gone people want to differentiate themselves. The fact is though Blockchain and Crypto are two parts of the same coin. For a Blockchain to be truly distributed. decentralized or permissionless, you would need people to verify those transactions, those people would need to be paid and remember there is’nt a central authority so who pays them? That’s how the concept of Crypto comes about. So really trying to separate them is just playing semantics. I’d say im fascinated by both Blockchain and Crypto.
9. How would you bridge the gap between internet money and real money with Aetoken since most advertising firms might fight it a hindrance to first buy tokens and then proceed with their advertising efforts?
Good question. Well with AEToken there is an existing and active business we are moving to the blockchain, these people are already paying the costs of a broken system, they already face the issues of lack of contract enforceability, needing high minimum payouts, massive fees, fraud etc, so if you tell them there is a solution they sign themselves right up. So we will initially begin moving the existing business over to Blockchain, then we will leverage the existing exclusive partnerships we have and commitments to grow further. We’ve signed agreements with Casinos and Sportsbook representing a combined revenue of 1.2 Billion Euros of Gross Gaming Revenue monthly. So these people are already paying their affiliates, just the method is so inefficient that moving to our system will immediately streamline things and save them about 25% on their costs.
10. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Where do you see Crypto in 5 years?
Its so hard to predict because we live in such a fast-changing world and my industry in particular (Technology) changes even faster. I expect to be working on some kind of disruptive technology but not sure what that will be.Crypto will grow and mature as an asset class over the next 5 years, funds raised by Crypto even at its peak was hovering at about 5 billion yearly, now in 2017 some 90 billion was raised by IPOs. I think eventually there is no reason why the yearly amount raised by ICOs/STOs wont match or even exceed the amount raised by IPOs.
11. How is the crypto culture in Malta?
Malta is cutting edge when it comes to Crypto regulation, there is excitement in the air and many companies are moving to Malta because of the regulatory certainty there. It is a tiny country- some 500,000 people but its making big strides in Crypto
12. What is your biggest responsibility as the COO of AeToken?
Well in a startup everybody sort of pitches in everywhere. Being in charge of operations my main responsibility is to execute the companies vision, interact with outside vendors and just generally tie things together. I recently did a pitch for AEToken at the Blockchain Stars show on BTC TV and really enjoyed that, pitching the company at conferences etc is also one of my responsibilities.
13. Being a columnist, which podcasts, journals would you recommend?
hat’s a great question. I would definitely say check out the Wild West Crypto Show, also Anthony Pompliano has a podcast called Off The Chain which is awesome. If you havent already checked it out definitely go on over to www.bloxlive.tv — they are the first 24 hour crypto channel.
Thanks everyone, for the amazing session. Stay tuned for our upcoming AMAs and don’t forget to check out our past AMAs-https://forum.ethx.co/t/ama and feel free to join our Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/ethxin/ and check ethx co
