Interview with Elation Studios from Elastos community
Jiawei
Firstly, could you please introduce yourself, your work experience, and professional background to the community?
Hello, my name is Fakhul Miah, co-founder of Elation Studios (2nd term Council member). I am also the CEO of CreDA (which is Elastos important ecosystem project), which recently had a very successful launch on ESC with over 1,000 users already! My background is in Investment Banking where I spent over 15 years at Morgan Stanley, most recently serving as Morgan Stanley’s Head of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa Cleared Derivatives Client Service Group. Prior to this, I was the Global Head of Institutional Margin Financing, Margin Technology Development and Risk Control with teams based in New York, Baltimore, London, Bangalore, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Whilst at Morgan Stanley, I was instrumental in the buildout of crypto futures in 2017, including operational flows, product architecture, risk modelling and margin methodologies. This was my first experience with crypto and what led me to ultimately move into this industry full time.
- Elastos ($ELA) has recently been listed on Coinbase, can you please present a brief explanation of the Coinbase platform?
Fakhul: Coinbase is globally the most trusted crypto trading platform and largest in the USA. Coinbase is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, which is the top stock exchange for technology stocks, including the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google. In addition, Coinbase customers are protected by both crypto and FDIC insurance. Globally Coinbase is available in over 100 countries, has 100 million users, had over 300 billion in trading volume last quarter and is often in the top 2 exchange rankings on CMC and CG.
2. What is the significance of the $ELA listing on Coinbase for Elastos? Does it mean that Elastos has successfully entered the mainstream cryptocurrency marketplace?
Fakhul : Absolutely, the Coinbase listing of ELA is a significant milestone for the project as it is now accessible by the US and global retail market. In addition, being listed on Coinbase I believe is a signal of trust and recognition of our ambitious project.
3. It has been said that Coinbase has a very strict listing process. As the main instigator of this listing, what work was undertaken in order to achieve this success? What challenges did the process provide? What is the biggest lesson learned from your experience of securing a listing for $ELA on Coinbase?
Fakhul:That is correct, whilst details of the listing process need to remain confidential, I can confirm that it is very difficult to list on Coinbase as they have a very in depth, rigorous vetting process that is undertaken by their internal Digital Asset Listing Group who evaluate assets for compliance, legal, and information security. A significant amount of information needs to be provided, further details of the listing process can be found here https://blog.coinbase.com/listing-assets-on-coinbase-is-free-and-always-has-been-8b60cb873af4
4. Will Elastos focus on the global market next? Will more exchanges be pursued for $ELA listings? Are there more compliant and mainstream strategic layouts?
Fakhul: Yes, I can confirm I am in advanced discussions with further top tier exchanges to list ELA. These conversations need to remain confidential but will be announced as soon as finalised and no longer under NDA.
5. Do you have any comments on the performance of $ELA after its trading launch on Coinbase?
Fakhul: Listing during a bear market is never ideal but unfortunately the listing schedule is out of our hands. However, we did witness strong performance as soon as the official listing was announced with the price of $ELA rallying ~20% within a few days. In addition, there has been strong demand for ELA on Coinbase with ELA trading volume on Coinbase alone topping over $1 million within a few days of the listing, which was more than 10x of all other exchanges put together!
6. CRC has recently reached a cooperation with Kairon Labs, a well-known market maker in the industry. Does it have a long-term plan for the market performance of $ELA? Can you share your thoughts on this too?
Fakhul: By onboarding a tier 1, professional market maker that is already well adapted to a variety of unique market dynamics and digital assets, Elastos stands to provide a far more stable, sustainable, and liquid market for traders and other individuals and organizations seeking to engage the Elastos ecosystem.
Kairon Labs will support the Elastos’ presence in public markets by:
- Increasing market liquidity and order book depth
- Reducing price volatility and dramatic price swings
- Facilitating fair price discovery
- Ensuring efficient bid-ask spreads in order books
- Providing orderly entry and exits points for traders
- Reducing slippage
- Accommodating large orders
- Facilitating OTC Trading
In addition to stabilizing public markets for ELA, onboarding Kairon Labs opens a wealth of new networking opportunities in the exchange and investment space. Kairon Labs will be able to add value to the Elastos ecosystem as a networking agent by:
- Exposing Elastos to potential synergies and partners with other blockchain ventures
- Introducing top-tier CEXs (including U.S.-licensed exchanges)
- Introducing VCs and Post-TGE (Token Generation Event) OTC investors
- Offering discounted market making prices for Elastos ecosystem projects
I would encourage the community to join the upcoming AMA that is being held with Kairon on July 22nd at 10am EST on Twitter spaces, questions can be submitted ahead of time through https://twitter.com/ElastosInfo/status/154727886469038489
7. Everyone believes that Web3 will become the next key development direction of the cryptocurrency industry. What do you think is the biggest market advantage of Elastos in this regard? What other efforts should be made? What areas should you focus on?
Fakhul: The recent bull market witnessed the explosive growth of DeFi and the NFT craze, which you could argue grew too quickly, creating a bubble fuelled by retail hands that ultimately burst resulting in the fallout of Luna, Celsius, 3AC, BlockFi, Voyager etc and the significant reduction in price and volume of prominent NFTs. This is not unusual and similar black swan events and boom-bust cycles exist in the traditional stock market.
GameFi and the Metaverse were beginning to gain traction at the end of the recent bull cycle and whilst they have also been affected, I believe they will continue see further investment and growth alongside DeFi 2.0, which will be forced to innovate to alleviate the issues that we saw in recent months.
Regulation is always a hot topic in this space, however the sheer size and number of recent issues, in particular the impact it has had on retail hands will force governments to push through regulation in a quicker timeframe then initially expected. This was always coming and can be a big advantage for Elastos as we offer an entire open-source tech stack that can be used to fulfil a lot of the requirements e.g., decentralized Identifiers (DID) will become mainstream. Elastos not only has a market leading DID (being protected by merging mining of more than half Bitcoin hash power) but it also supports verifiable credentials(SoulKey), which will undoubtedly be needed with upcoming regulation. In addition, core components such as Hive, Carrier, Elastos Essentials significantly reduce centralization risk, which most of the recent failed projects/companies were e.g., Celsius, 3AC, BlockFi, Voyager.
The future of Elastos is bright and we have the potential to be very successful as our technology is finally mature enough to be commercial across a range of applications including DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi and the Metaverse, however significant effort needs to be made to bring our product to market, which I believe can only be achieved through focus on Business Development (BD) and Public Relations (PR).
6
