LBank AMA Recap with CHO

LBank Listings&Projects
12 min readJun 28, 2022
LBank AMA Recap with CHO

On 27 June we held an AMA with the CHOISE.COM team, hosted on LBank official telegram channel. If you missed this telegram session, here’s another chance to get a full transcript of the AMA event.

INTRODUCTION

Guest:

I’m a Brit living is Scotland that has worked right across the world. Until 10 years ago I had spent all my career in Insurance, first in the UK where I became Director of Strategy for the International Division of the Aviva Group, then out to Australia, Czech Republic and then Moscow in 06, where I set up 2 Life and Pensions companies, one in Russia and one in Ukraine. I am probably the only person to ever do that.

When I left Russia in ’13 I was running an insurance Group with over $1bn in revenue, 3,000 staff, and had just sold the pensions company I helped create for over $200m

Bit of consultancy led me to Crypto and in turn Crypterium where I have been ever its creation in 2017. And Crypterium in now becoming Choise.com with the launch of our new Defi solutions and CHO token on LBank today

QUESTION 1.

Why did you create Choise.com?

GUEST:

When we set up Crypterium in 2017, the key questions were ”how do I buy Crypto and once I have it, how do I spend it?”

It was very difficult to know where to start, and it was certainly almost impossible to spend it in the real world. With the Crypterium App we solved those problems. We were the first company in the world to have a globally issued payment card linked to Crypto.

Today you can pretty much do anything with your crypto inside the Crypterium / Choise App that you could do with your dollars in a banking App. We are very proud of what we have achieved. So nobody asks anymore how do I buy Crypto or how do I spend it? The crypto community has moved on.

The question on most people’s lips is now, ”how do I make money with Crypto, How can I earn more?”

There are a lot of companies out there that offer a Crypto saving account, often paying returns as high as 10% for stable coins. Crypterium does that as well. But the vast bulk of these offerings are part of centralised network solution or CeFi. Where it becomes very exciting is when you move into decentralized finance, or DeFi, where peer-to-peer networks can generate returns many times greater.

But there is a problem. We estimate that there are 100m CeFi users, but less than 4m DeFi users. If most people are looking for high returns, then why such a huge difference?

DeFi is incredibly complicated and even crypto experts are afraid to get involved. It is time consuming, requiring many steps. It is expensive as each step incurs a new gas fee. A transaction for say $1,000 could easily cost more than $150 to set up. And it is seen as risky as it is peer to peer.

So we took a deep look at this and quickly understood that the things we did to set up Crypterium are the same things that are needed today for Defi solutions. We need to take away all of the complexity, risk, and most of the cost out of the equation and simply offer customers a simple way to earn more. If Crypto is to reach the masses (100m is not the masses), then we need to move away from all this jargon and complexity.

Ask a person on the street if they know what a savings account with an interest rate is, probably 100% of people can answer yes. Ask the same person if they understand liquidity pools, blockchain bridges, crypto farming, gas fees and so on and he is likely to look at you blankly.

We solved the buy and spend problem. It is time to solve the Earn question and make it simple for everybody. This is where Choise.com steps in. We are evolving the leading Crypterium App into Choise.com so that it not only does everything crypto to fiat and vice versa, but also offers the simplest, safest and best returns for people to save their money.

We believe putting the two together is a very powerful proposition.

QUESTION2:

What is the value of the project? What will Choise.com give to people who use it? What is MetaFi?

GUEST:

3 questions in one!

Let mego back to basics for a few minutes

CeFi (Centralised Finance) is what almost everybody is using today. It is a centralised solution with usually a single controlling entity managing the core functions under one giant ledger.

DeFi (Decentralised Finance) is in fact the opposite. There is no controlling entity, each person or entity controls their own accounts. CeFi is governed by the rules of the controlling entity. Defi is controlled by Smart contracts and community agreed decision-making protocols.

Sorry if I am telling everybody what they already know

But all of that sounds confusing. For me the simplest thing is to think of a bank. They are a CeFi solution and they decide all the rules and procedures. Probably most of the community has faced an experience with their bank where they have perhaps refused to open an account, or questioned the source of a payment, or even had their account blocked due to the fact a payment has been received from a crypto exchange. This is the bank’s game and you play by their rules.

In a decentralized world, there is nobody to set the rules. If you have a wallet, it is your wallet to do with what you like.

But of course, a network of wallets that are not connected in any way is not very useful, so the DeFi sector has built lots of different blockchains that ‘money’ can flow down, governed by smart contracts that you can choose to use or not. It is your choice, your decision.

But with so many different chains, smart contracts, different tokens, it is a little bit like the wild west. If you make a mistake in your bank, there is somebody there to help you, maybe even give you your money back if it was an honest error.

One is therefore not better than the other, they are different.

At Choise.com we believe that by combining the two, we can offer all the benefits of the CeFi solutions, such as custody wallets, payment cards backed by Visa and so on, and remove all the risk factors associated with Defi. You choose the amount to save, we will do the rest and take the risk on our shoulders.

That is the MetaFi, a combined solution of CeFi and DeFi.

Putting the two things together means any customer can download an app that enables them buy, store and spend their crypto just as easily as they can their dollars or rupees whilst earning some amazing returns from DeFi projects without risk or technical knowledge.

That’s the vision and we are now launching a whole set of solutions to make this happen

QUESTION 3.

Describe CHO Please share the Token utility value & Tokenomics?

GUEST

Good one

Our CHO token is the driving engine behind everything that is DeFi in Choise.com. I would summarise it as having two core elements. Governance and earning. One of the benefits of token economics today is that there are now some very successful token models that we are able to take the best out of and improve where possible. We think we have developed something special

Let’s start with Governance. DeFi needs a decision-making process, and it has been shown that this is best served by giving a voice to those that own more of the network via ownership of the token.

This will give those token owners a huge say in the next evolutions of the Choise.com solutions. This is particularly important for our B2B customers who all want a voice so that their slightly different B2B needs are heard first. I have not previously mentioned B2B, this is a huge part of our business as we have more than 40 B2B customers all of whom use our solutions under their brand, and they all want a say in what to do next, which chain to integrate with, what products to enhance etc.

But core is the earning function. We will reward users for staking their CHO token and taking rewards in our token. The benefits will be seen in either lower gas fees (the more you stake, the bigger the slice of cost reduction benefits that you will get from our savings aggregator) or higher returns on your savings accounts.

Choise.com will do a lot of work behind the scenes to earn high returns on customer’s staked tokens. For this we will naturally take a small share.

Perhaps, for example, one particular protocol can pay 16% return, double what a customer could earn in CeFi. We will pay the customer, again for example, say 13% in the currency that they staked, rising to perhaps 14% if they hold a set amount of CHO.

But we do not stop there we will also give the customer choise to earn the full 16% in the CHO token.

Now let’s say that customer decides to take the 16% in CHO tokens, those customers will fall into two groups.

Group A continues to hold the CHO token knowing that it is strong token that can appreciate in value as well as increase future returns on other crypto currencies.

Group B may simply decide to immediate sell the token in the market. Not a problem, since Choise earned the full 16% and can easily cover such a transaction without a net cost to the company.

Consequently, we have both the opportunity to provide very strong returns to customers, whilst having enough liquidity to cover redemptions.

Also I would add, that is why companies do a pre-sale.

We only sold a very limited supply, just enough to generate the right liquidity pool, and only to funds that can help us on the journey

Those funds were limited to $250k in tokens, no more was possible for any single fund

And they are all locked in for 12 months, with a slow-release over the next 2 years

There is no pump and dump strategy

The recent rise in our token is price on other exchanges is a sign of the quality of the project, not some special marketing campaign

QUESTION 4.

Why have you decided to launch on such bear market?

GUEST:

Interesting question

What we are building is both complex and time-consuming. If it was easy, as they say everybody would be doing it. We started on this journey to build a MetaFi more than 12 months ago when the market was very different.

But that does not matter so much since markets change. The longer you look backwards, the further you can see into the future, and as we all know, look back over any reasonable period of time and we can see that every bear market has changed to a bull market and vice versa. So the current run is not so important to us.

In fact, I would argue that a bear market is in fact a good time to start.

During such a time, people look every harder for the best returns for their assets. They can not just sit on them and watch them appreciate, so they need to do something to manage the returns the best they can.

And of course we can not ignore some of the problems faced by a few very big players that are struggling for liquidity. When those assets are released, many customers will immediately look to place their money elsewhere, and we will be ready to pick up the slack.

Finally, since our token, CHO, is integral to everything we do CeFi, delay in the launch of the token means delay in the launch of essential services which we believe, for the reasons just mentioned, that the world is crying out for.

So bear of bull, it does not matter to us. A good project remains a good project regardless.

SECOND SECTION

@eleanor_hughes_1992

Do you guys feel satisfied by seeing your progress and achievements till now, when you look back to the day when you have started this project?

Guest:

Answering this one as it is the first, that means something

No we are not satisfied, we could have done so much more, but on the other hand we are still around

How many projects that set up in 2017 Crypto boom are still around

Not many, maybe 2%

And we have done this without raising huge amount of capital

And we believe we are the world leader in crypto B2B

Strange thing about B2B is nobody knows about it since it is not our name

But it is very important as we are effectively paid to take on new customers

And they all need our solutions

We are also about to launch a global Mastercard solution which is exciting

But I think we could have done better. We actually spotted the DeFi trend about 2 years ago

But we were too focused on CeFi to have the resources to do anything about it.

But as I say, we are a leader in some sectors of CeFi and still going strong after 4.5 years, so we did something right

@eliayala1994

NFTs is hot trending now, Do you have a play to have NFTs in your platform? If so, can you tell us the plans of your project in NFTs?

@AustinKimm

Guest

I will give a personal opinion here, maybe the company will do something different.

I do not believe in NFTs in their current form. I think it is a trend that will very quickly die

I do believe in the technology of NFTs, they have great potential.

But customers still want NFTs so we may provide a solution, but it is not a high priority.

Most P2E NFT Gaming can only be played for PC users this is a major problem for users who don’t have PC so my question is will games be available in the mobile version? or only for PC Users?

Guest:

Most P2E NFT Gaming can only be played for PC users this is a major problem for users who don’t have PC so my question is will games be available in the mobile version? or only for PC Users?

@etta_starks

Can you briefly describe your PARTNERSHIP so far and upcoming partnerships?

Guest:

Not clear on this question, but what we do is all about partnerships

Our entire ecosystem is really a massive range of partnerships

We work with 3rd party partners for KYC (Onfidio), custody (Fireblocks and BitGo) bank accounts, (Walletto and ENSTL), Visa and Mastercard and so on

It is the same strategy for DeFi. Rather than build the protocols that earn money, we are building bridges to access the best in the market

If one protocol is no longer attractive, we can immediately switch.

That we can deliver the best returns rather than be linked with just finding our own solutions.

The same logic goes the other way.

Our B2B users all use our services, our wallets, KYC, savings accounts and can issue Mastercards in their own brand, with their own pricing and club parameters.

So everything is about partnerships.

@VENOMSTER_007

My question answer plz :

Do you have tutorial videos so we can get to know your project more clearly or do you have a YouTube channel or something? can you share it with us?

Guest:

Yes, we do have some tutorials and Youtube channels, as well as our own website choise.com. We will share after this session.

@omoadeofficial

Hello Mr. Austin

In addition to “$CHO” Eth and Sol networks, will there be the possibility of trading with more networks in the future, for example Bsc or others? I would appreciate it if you could provide information about it.

Guest:

I can not give exact networks, but as I wrote about, it is our vision to be connected with as many networks as possible. If we are to be able to provide the best returns, we need to be connected to a wide range of networks, not focus on just a few.

Of course, each one takes a lot of time, so we started with just a couple, but I would expect to add new networks every month.

@Claribeladams1995

Hello @AustinKimm Have you being audited ? Have not heard you talk about that security of funds is what every investor craves for and plans to escape in case of insecurity if funds,scams and rug pulls? How strongly built are your security put in place?

Guest:

This is too complicated a question to answer here, but I can confirm we have been audited and we are constantly being tested including ethical hackers.

There is no guarantees, but we are not a new company.

almost 5 years and more than $500m in transactions and no issues so far.

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