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Beyond Human Limits: Why Automation Matters in Finance, Dragomir Dikov, JLabs | ETHSofia 2025

ETHSofiaSun, Nov 9, 2025, 12:00 AM

When code and advanced technology give you superpowers in trading and portfolio risk management, you move beyond human limits. In today’s fast-paced markets, automation is not just an advantage - it’s essential for maintaining a competitive edge. Dragomir Dikov is a Master’s in Structural Engineering; 15+ years’ experience. Specialized in geotechnical modeling and structural design. Python programmer & quantitative data scientist focused on probability and stochastic modeling. Co-founder & CEO of JLabs, building trading technology and market-analysis tools. This video was recorded during the ETHSofia Conference and Workshops - September 24-25th, 2025. ETHSofia is Bulgaria’s premier crypto event exploring Ethereum technology and blockchain innovation. In 2025, it’s set to unite builders, founders, researchers, investors, and crypto enthusiasts to collaboratively shape the future of Web3. For more information visit our website. Links in our channel. #TradingTech #Automation #ethsofia

Transcript

Thank you guys. Uh nice to be here with you. As you probably may wonder what a structure engineering doing in crypto. It's an interesting question because of the way we are doing stuff in the engineering is working with numbers. So uh I will start my introduction by asking a question.

Where are we at our technological achievements? Are we reached the point where human beings can no longer make complex decisions and solve complex problems? In the today's age, you maybe will agree that this is the case. But I will strongly disagree with you. Why?

Because if we look at the human curve history, we can see that on on in almost all cases the human intellectual is actually uh extended by the technology. So this answers one question but rises another. What about human speed? Are we as humans uh you know sufficient enough to be able to uh maintain a speed to be able to be isolated from emotional bias? Do we have limited capabilities in terms of technology in terms of today understanding of trading?

Of course, we as humans can proceed a limited or analyze a limited amount of information and this is understandable because for us speed and to be able to be focused is not constant in time is changing. Why? Just because of our human human nature. How about the emotional bias? Ladies and gentlemen, intentionally intentionally or not, we are going to produce the bias in our decision and then we can most certainly rep uh replicate this bias into let's say algorithms we're trying to produce.

So we can and have to be very cautious about this and not on and not on the last place limited scalability. Why is that uh the important? Well, we cannot um how do I say it? We cannot um m we cannot maintain the the ability to analyze large amount of information and in today's technology in today's market we need to do so. There's a large new asset class called cryp crypto and there is a large a large amount of information there.

So we need to be able to scale our ability to analyze the data and this is not always possible. But let's look at evolution of uh the decision making process of evolution of building an analysis based on the presumption of uh u how do we say to based on uh on certain problem that we we're trying to solve. So what was the basic workflow so far? We have a public outcry. We have a public demand of sol solving some problems.

Then we turn to technology and to algorithms in term to be able to solve this problem and this is fine for the situation that we are for example for at least 5 years ago but now we have an AI technology what we are going to do with that where going to place this technology in our decision making process let's uh let's ask another answer are We going to place this technology in such a way that is is going to describe our problems to be able to solve our problems or in the whole way from the start to the beginning. Well, we may consider that but uh we need to very carefully consider where is the role because ladies and gentlemen in my point of view and this is my personal uh opinion in my point of view we cannot understand the solution unless we understand the problem. And how we are going to understand the problem by involving in decision making process by trying to solve the problem no matter if it's successful or not we must try this in order in order to explain this solution that is already driven by AI technology. On the next step, the automation processes in our decision making are um something that uh um actually solve uh very interesting uh tasks and very interesting challenges. For example, we have used an automation process in high frequency trading which is almost impossible if you do it manually.

Portfolio rebalancing the crypto markets never sleeps in 24/7. So automation technology is something that we need to consider must consider as well as in risk management and compliance and u this is uh important in terms to be uh up how do you say to be in the pace of the uh of the crypto market because there the the challenges are more. So why automation is important? But I have mentioned in the in the beginning of my presentation the speed as one of the factors that we're trying to solve in a human bias. But let's face it guys if we if we're building a sophisticated models complex models of course we need to sacrifice something.

We need to sacrifice something that we can consider less important and this in my point of view is speed because the complexity of the model is not will bring uh the latency in the making decision. So the speed is the most natural thing that you can sacrifice. Of course, we all strive for accuracy and this is the main thing that we must focus on. Not the speed but the accuracy in our decision making process based on automation. So what do future bring us?

Uh of course we are all going to integrate the technology if we were not unable to do so at at one point. uh we must do so to keep up with the with the with the demand. But uh let's let's face it, at least from my my in my point of view, the coraboration between human ability to dream, human ability to innovate and AI technology is is certain. I cannot see at least in the near future the total replacement of uh human cap capabilities with uh with an AI. This is of course not u an impossible.

It may happen one time of the day but uh at least not in the uh near future. So this was my presentation guys. Thank you very very much for your attention and actually I know that my presentation maybe rise more questions than answers but uh I certainly like to provoke people in terms of uh of uh technology Heat.

Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.