How a New Social Trading and Investment Platform Is Spearheading a Financial Services Revolution
The advent of blockchain is about to shake up the online financial services industry, according to the creators of SociumTrade — the new social trading and investment platform that harnesses the power of blockchain to match traders and investors securely and transparently without intermediaries.
“Every day, scores of market onlookers with various amounts of capital are looking for opportunities, but find themselves stymied by numerous barriers to participation the industry sets up,” says Ilya Abugov, who brings seven years of experience in IT and financial services to his role as CIO of SociumTrade.
“All around them are traders looking for liquidity and investments, but there’s no infrastructure to allow these two groups to reach one another without significant risk or costly intermediaries. SociumTrade solves this problem.”
There’s clearly a market for a solution like SociumTrade. Financial services comprise about 20% of the total GDP in developed economies, with the size of the global financial industry topping $13.5 trillion. And the industry is growing, showing strength in a number of sectors — especially “fintech” (financial technology). The Global Top 50 Fintech Companies show a five-year change in value of 169%, having grown to $1 trillion in 2016. Asset management has been another big gainer. Total value under management is expected to nearly double in size from $84.9 trillion in 2016 to $145.4 trillion by 2025.
What has been hindering the industry’s online evolution are concerns over security and identification. As Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies put these concerns to rest, social networks and peer-to-peer systems are bound to see wider adoption in the industry, replacing the traditional segregated, centralized, institutionally-dominated operational dynamic and introducing a much more individually- and socially-driven one. And SociumTrade is on the cutting edge of these trends.
“SociumTrade lets individual market participants interact directly with one another and the market, investing in assets and each other safely and securely without intermediaries,” says Abugov. “The advent of blockchain technology offers a new level of transparency and security — one that overcomes the problems that plague other platforms. SociumTrade is using blockchain technology to bring the social media revolution to the financial services industry.”
SociumTrade combines a dynamic online exchange with a social network for traders and investors. The exchange and social network are fully integrated using private APIs and blockchain-based “smart contract” protocols. Every transaction a trader or investor makes is recorded on a blockchain and available for review on a distributed ledger. Capital resources are controlled by smart contracts, as well.
SociumTrade offers users a unique degree of control and flexibility to invest in one another with confidence. Investors can back traders using customized smart contracts. The contracts keep investors’ funds safe and secure while providing traders with the flexibility they need to act on investors’ behalf. These and other features allow investors to go beyond simple “mirror trading” and engage in truly social trading and investment.
Traders, in turn, can attract funds from investors based on their particular strategies and performance, earning mutually agreed-upon commissions and building a reputation that everyone can trust and anyone can verify via the blockchain. The platform allows investors to set up investment pools and traders to set up consortiums with fellow traders, bringing investors and traders together like never before.
To verify identities, Socium Trade uses person-to-person validation protocols pioneered by such platforms as LinkedIn and Yelp that make peer-to-peer financial interactions transparent and trustworthy. Its “know-your-customer” (KYC) protocols go far beyond standard requirements, incorporating functionalities.
In addition to the social investment tools, SociumTrade offers all of the features expected of a traditional exchange: multi-asset trading, a full range of order types, margin trading, credit loans et al. Portfolio management tools let traders conveniently manage their assets and investors manage their trader allocations.
The internet revolution continues to put unprecedented power in the hands of individuals to make informed, complex decisions in ways that benefit their lives. SociumTrade’s unique combination of social networking, blockchain, and trading and investment tools finally brings that revolution to financial services.
Unlock the full potential of social trading and investing in the blockchain era. With SociumTrade.
