The Institutionalization Of Crypto Assets - Jehan Chu, Robert Dykes, David Wills @ TOKEN2049

[Music] good morning everyone thanks so much for getting up and being out here to listen to our small presentation my name is Jehan Shu and I'm the co-founder and managing partner of kinetic we are a blockchain platform and I'm joined on stage by Robert dykes and David wills who will introduce themselves as well so really quick about kinetic we are a blockchain platform we are focused on four areas and those areas are technology we build applications and smart contracts and security audits we also have an area focused on tokenization and tokenization advisory and I say tokenization advisory rather than ICO advisory because really what we're about is trying to help early middle and increasingly late stage companies understand the full benefits and the full potential of tokenization full-stop because it doesn't begin and end with icos it's really about the long game it's about how we capture value from the overall ecosystem using tokenization and blockchain as a backbone next we're focused on asset management we're focused on the ability to help everybody in the community manage their assets and also investing investing in the community investing in funds investing in tokens and of course also investing in early-stage companies through shares and then finally and I think this is the most important aspect of our platform we're focused on community we have a full verticle which is all focused on helping to spread blockchain spread education of blockchain and awareness and try to help the overall community understand again the potential and the possibility of blockchain now my background is that I came from the the community itself I helped to start the Bitcoin Association in Hong Kong back in early 2014 with seven other gentlemen and I also started the etherium meetup in Hong Kong in March of 2014 I also helped to start the hyper Ledger made up so I'm very committed over the course of my experience in blockchain to help in the community grow across the across the board in terms of chains now what that's led me to believe is that the community doesn't only mean the spirit of decentralization and the spirit of the upstart that we came from what I've come to understand is that institutionalization is not a bad word now there are downsides to this idea of institutionalization it seems to go against the spirit of where we all came from it seems to create power centers and centers of gravity in terms of you know how the the overall community is structured and it can even stifle or slow growth I get all that but I think as we've been able to build these businesses and grow the overall pie what we've also seen is that institutionalization of crypto and the entire ecosystem has some benefits it has benefits of volume and scale if you have a party and you're the only one there it's not really a party it has the benefits of being able to have greater stability as we grow the overall platform we can all benefit by all of the types of functionality and all the types of of capital that can come in and then finally it's about adoption now anybody here who is involved in a start-up or who's investing in startups you know that it's not just about the technology actually the secret sauce is adoption if you're able to kind of get people onto your platform that often will help determine whether your platform or your project will live or die so when we're talking about adoption we're really talking about the end game of crypto where we're not even talking about blockchain we're not even talking about crypto what we're really just talking about is life and business in society and crypto and blockchain comes along very quietly very efficiently in the background and it's a seamless invisible force that drives everything that we're doing to me that's the real kind of idea behind and the real potential this institutionalization now to that end at kinetic we're really happy to be in a JV with Torah which is a best-in-class financial technology company 14 years old for our new project that we're announcing today called Caspian so I'd like to turn it over to Robert dykes who is the CEO of Torah and the CEO of Caspian to tell us a little bit more where we came from thanks jihun for the warm introduction I'm really excited to be here today to share our vision on how Torah can help institutionalize the crypto asset management space for those of for those of you who don't know who Torah is we're a global provider of buy-side technology to hedge funds which means we provide execution management systems order management systems systems X portfolio management systems risk systems compliance analytics essentially everything you need to run a hedge fund we're about 250 people globally most of which are engineers and our clients trade over a hundred and 50 markets every day you know I see a lot of things that are happening in the crypto space today that are really similar to where tourists started back in 2004 in Asia at the time hedge funds were starting to proliferate investors are starting to allocate into the region but most of the hedge funds were still using spreadsheets and telephone to make and execute orders and taura really came in to provide an institutional layer for those hedge funds so providing electronic trading capabilities allowing hedge funds to manage risk better using risk systems to look at their portfolios to rebalance their portfolios to attribute gains losses to the different strategies and I think that institutionalization of the hedge funds in the equity markets equity derivative markets back in the early 2000s really catapulted the whole asset class and industry and you know fast forward to 2017 when I talk to our institutional clients today half of them are trading crypto or in the process of looking at crypto as a new asset class to trade which is part of the reason why we're so excited about this opportunity why we've been working closely with kinetics forming this joint venture and to launch Caspian so yeah thank you Robert so let me just talk to you a little bit about that the history of how a case Ben came about so my background was Iran trading for a large multi-strap hedge fund called ox f and anyone who's been in institutional trader in this room will know that you know you sit in front of six screens you've got a full trading technology stack in front of you whether that's an execution management system PMS RMS you've got you know the ability to see multiple dashboards and charts etc and so coming into the crypto space it became very clear that you know everything is very fragmented everything was very clunky you know the more traders that I spoke to you know the more I heard the people using like Excel or Google sheets with API linked into multiple exchanges and there was really no first class first grade system that an institution could really use to manage everything from front to back so that's full trade life cycle through to P&L monitoring exposure tracking performance attribution compliance monitoring etc so when I thought about this problem it was like okay do we start from scratch and try and build something which realistically is a 12 to 18-month project with lots of capital invested with uncertain outcomes or do we partner with you know a company such as Tora who add a lot of respect for who I'd use previously and they have a great reputation to mark a really great team and essentially you know fast forward the the development of the system to bolt on crypto as an asset class into a very well developed system so you know we got talking with Tora and it became very clear that it was a great culture fit and we shared a lot of the visions and values about sort of you know what it makes to be a good company that the service for clients and just general thoughts about the crypto space so it you know when sizing up the opportunity we thought okay well what is the crypto landscape now you know I think at that point in time this is around November last year there was about a hundred funds or so now I think there's about two hundred and twenty six crypto funds and you know the the surveys that suggest that existing institutions are looking at crypto trading bolting on crypto trading strategies talk to what they're currently doing and really despite all the market volatility we think that there's enormous growth potential in the space as you have more and more products come into play so thinking about the institutional participant challenges what what are they they're fragmented liquidity it's 24/7 market there's you know multiple exchanges that it's very difficult to manage if you're a trader trying to get access to all of those exchanges you know security etc so building a system that essentially gives you a single interface with 24/7 customer support a fully integrated portfolio management system or an execution management system risk management system for doing scenario analysis stress testing was really something I think a lot of institutional traders are really going to get you know a lot of mileage out of because essentially I think if you are a sophisticated fund you may have built a part of that stock but you don't have all of that stock so we're coming at it with you know a system that's had been in development for about 14 years or so there's mentioned there's about a hundred and ninety developers and I think our helpdesk is actually larger than most other development teams out there so it's a very exciting project to be a part of where you know we're essentially going to build a decentralized layer on top of Caspian as well so it allow traders and developers to build applications to share data information analytics I really create value for other traders which will all be powered by utility token and and ultimately the you know the trading stack from day one we're already connected to ten exchanges and about four to six weeks will be connected to 20 exchanges and then so the system will essentially be that single interface into all those exchanges and then provide reports and analytics to all of the various stakeholders be it institutional investors or fund administrators internally or your analysts and portfolio managers to generate all the analytics and reports that you ultimately need just a quick wrap on the team so we have Robert as a CEO I'm CEO oh we're we're fortunate enough to have Michael lurch as our chairman who was the founder of evolution Capital Management and has been in the space for a number of years we have Jehan as our chief strategy officer Garrett is our chief technology officer and Paul is out a CFO here's just a couple of screenshots but for anyone that would like more information about the system we have a booth outside we'd love to welcome you and meet you and give you demos we also have a website Caspian tech where you can sign up to our mailing list for any further information and we'd love to join you as part of the community thanks David so the only thing that I would add to that is you know I'm not a traitor myself I don't really come from the training space and so it was a really big learning curve for me to understand what this whole world actually is about but when I got there I really understood that the long term game of this is actually not just about utility tokens it's not just about training Bitcoin either payment currencies etc it's about the entire universe of value being traded in the form of tokens what we're starting to see now are really amazing projects like crypto kitties and a theremin and the whole universe of assets that are being developed on top of platforms like decentral and things that are very much at the core of our community and the blockchain community which we'll all be able to be traded through this platform the long term roadmap of Caspian is one which involves the the retail community as well so shifting not just from the institutional players the hedge funds but actually to everyday retail traders who will be trading value in the way that they trade crypto now so that's a really exciting kind of proposition for us and I think just to kind of finish up because I think we're just about to be running out of time the only thing that I would I would add to all of this is really nothing to do with Cassidy and nothing to do the kinetic it's really just something that I want to leave everybody in the community with we're at a really important inflection point of the community the markets of the markets down but right now the whole world is watching what we do and I think it's a testament to everybody in this room whether you're a startup whether you're an investor whether you're media or writing or whether you're from you know the the quote-unquote institutional space coming in here for the first time and trying to understand what this whole world is about everything that we're doing at this moment has the potential to be the most important thing that you do we are shaping the entire landscape of how this world of value unfolds how this world of technology unfolds and the only message I want to want to leave you with is just keep working at it just keep finding that good fight because I think that you know this will be all of our legacy and I really just hope to to kind of leave everyone with that message so thank you very much if you have any other further questions please find us at the casting booth thanks Robert thank you David thank you very thank you everybody [Applause]