VALR: The Crypto Exchange Changing the Playing Field for the World - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024

good morning everybody it's a great pleasure to be with you all thank you all for being here I am the co-founder and CEO of Valor valor.com as mentioned and it's a great Delight for me to be here in Singapore to share the stage with um with all of you to be here to really tell you a little bit about who we are where we're from where we're going not just as a company but as an ecosystem and as a world I think there's a lot of focus uh whenever we come to these conferences to be talking a little bit about the technology or you know how much money people are making or uh you know metrics but there is not enough attention that's paid to why we're doing this where we're going to what end and so I'm going to speak to you a little bit about our hopes and aspirations as Valor as a community of now nearly a million people around the world that are our customers and over a thousand institutions that we serve uh globally so Valor is a crypto exchange based and headquartered in Johannesburg but a global exchange now that is serving customers from all around the world we offer over 90 different assets we have um the largest selection on the African continent we've got res serving clients within the corridor between Africa and Asia and we're fully licensed in South Africa we've got the approval to serve the crypto assets space from the ministry of Poland and we've got initial approval from Vara the virtual asset regulator Authority in in Dubai little bit about me about why we started this um so I grew up in Kenya in Africa and every year I used to go with my family to the United States to visit my grandparents and there was a huge contrast between the reality on the ground in Africa and the life that was being lived in the United States of America namely Los Angeles and this dichotomy always felt very strange to me we're living in one world yet the differences and life style the differences in Opportunity the differences in infrastructure the differences in the ability to access Finance was so very different in where I grew up Nairobi Kenya and Los Angeles so I studied in California studied economics try to understand what this world is all about went into Consulting with deoe and McKenzie went McKenzie in South Africa that's what took me initially to South Africa really to understand the world the Cor corporate world and the finance world and then I deepened my understanding of the finance World by going and joining the largest Investment Bank in Africa um for about six years where I spent a lot of time in global markets Investment Banking private Equity U um Global markets and and group treasury just to really understand what this world is about and there are a few things that stood out number one is that Finance is very very siloed and very few people have an understanding of how our entire Financial system works they're very specialized in their own Fields but very little attention is paid to the infrastructure the way our financial system works the frictions in our entire system to actually create a service that will actually help Humanity So based on this background myself and my co-founders started Valor in 2018 we're 6 and a half years old right now we didn't do any marketing for the first four years really because we're just trying to build the best product that we possibly can it gives me great pleasure to be a platinum sponsor here at token 2049 now to really have our name in the lights because we have a product now that we're very proud to bring to the world our million strong customers have told us that our API and our uh service through our technology is on par with the best of the world so this excitement of where we are and where we've come from is the beginning of our journey from Johannesburg to the world we're now spending a lot of time we've got a lot of team members in Hong Kong in Singapore in Malaysia in East Asia in Europe and and and in the west as well and really this is based on our belief that we need to Mo move towards a more unified world and if you look at our current Financial system it is very very fragmented and when you look at how we deal with FX as an example or even how we look at the very concept of money money being something that's very tied to our identity as a human race you see that the identity level is really on the national level or a regional level but the world has moved on with the internet with everybody over here that's come and flown in from all over the world really we're living in a world that does truly recognize the Oneness of the human race our politics our institutions our infrastructure haven't quite caught up and so that what's that's what drives us at Valor to really ensure that we're building a system for the benefit of humanity and for the with the recognition of the Oneness of the human race now I had a conversation at our stand and I encourage you to come and see us uh pay a little visit to us to chat to us more in the back by the speaker's Lounge but I was talking to someone yesterday a former employee and he said to me you know far is where I am is great but we have got a lot of insight into what other exchanges are doing around the world and his words to me were Valor is too moral and I said what do you mean by that and he said if you look at some of the biggest players in the world right now the things that are that they are doing behind the scenes are not what is uh actually happening before our eyes and so what I mean by that is we used to talk about wash trading in the industry a long time ago where people would inflate their volumes in a way that was not represented of reality a couple of years ago I had a conversation with someone that started to tell me try to sell me a product called volume generation again trying to inflate the the value of the trading volume on a platform that is not representative reality this individual yesterday was talking to me about this concept of chart maintenance which is required from some of the largest exchanges in the world to ensure that people are trading more than they necessarily need to but to have the appearance of activity at Valor I'm very very proud to say that from day one we've never done a scense a Satoshi of any wash Trading of any volume generation of any kind of chart maintenance and the reason is we believe we owe it to you to be completely transparent so that you can decide where you want to trade you understand exactly who we are and what we are and I invite you to come to our platform to sign up at Valor and you'll see some of the deepest markets in the world we are the largest rant to crypto Market in the world uh players like binance are also in our Market we're about 20 times the size of binance in South Africa a lot of the international exchanges are in are are in South Africa but you'll see some of the deepest markets but you'll also see some markets that are very immature or more shallow and we're bringing more liquidity by inviting our customers by inviting market makers but it's critical to us to ensure that our value set never gets compromised and I encourage all of you in your interactions in the space whether your customers or your builders to really question your values because it's very very easy in the world that we're living in right now to get caught up in all the hype and the light and to try to look like you're doing something that's amazing when it not really is but that's not fair to others it's not fair to yourself and it's not fair to the world so what we're trying to really do is to ensure that we bring a product that is world class but is representative of reality Valor the name Valor comes from the word values which really underpins who we are it comes from Valu which is things that we we trade and we got rid of the O and the U to say that we're actually not American or or or English with the spelling but we're actually Val for the world so it's really important for us to have a really solid foundation of values with the vision of creating this Oneness of humanity this world that we deserve as a human race if you take a step back and look at all the challenges that we have there are tremendous amounts of conflict around the world there's a tremendous amount of disunity the United States elections are coming up I spend a lot of my time in the United States between the US and South Africa and the divisiveness that we're creating in the world is really eating at the core of society and so as Valor I really invite you and to come and join us to share in this vision of values to share in this vision of building a world that is truthful that is transparent um we really believe in Sharing values not just in our in our ethics but also in what we do so we run a lot of different campaigns where the way we actually got on we're the largest player in South Africa by a large Martian right now and the way we did that is we were the one of the first exchanges to offer negative maker fees on the spot markets so as we earn we pay our customers and right now we've just launched Perpetual Futures we started with a spot Market spot margin we've just launched Perpetual Futures and right now we're paying out up to $5 million depending on the volume for our highest traders to incentivize people to come because that's the only way truthfully that we'll get the largest traders in the world to come to us that are already coming to us to share that value to build the liquidity to build the Dem markets so that can together go and offer a service to the world that is worthy of the Integrity of our customers around the world so with that I want to thank you all for coming I would like to invite you to join Valor vr.com I'd like to invite you to come to our Lounge to talk to us and one of the biggest things I'd love for you to take away is this concept and idea of unity it really does it service for all of us when we talk about the crypto Space versus trafi and how we're battling each other at Valor we welcome anybody and everybody that wants to serve Humanity to work with us whatever you call yourself so that we can provide a better Financial system a better Financial infrastructure for the world we deserve better the world deserves better join us in that mission it's been a great pleasure to spend a little bit of time with you this morning thank you so much for your attention