Dear ,

To everything there is a season. We have had a wonderful start of the year by concluding our seed round led by BitMEX.  Quoting Alex, “With this vote of confidence and continued support from our key partner BitMEX Ventures, we are now markedly closer to realising our vision of making investment opportunities broadly available for everyone.”  The press release is documented here if you have not read it.

We’ll devote an unprecedented amount of focus on delivering things this year. You might feel that we’re quieter, yet it is the solitude that we need to keep our heads down, to materialise ideas into workable solutions for our clients. We will be eager to talk about bringing our first project onboard the DABS spaceship. soon. Stay tuned!

FMS: Founder's words

The still young year will bring significant change to FinFabrik - it already shows. While for most of 2018 we allowed ourselves to experiment and find our North Star, we are now on a clear path. While we were chasing revenue to ensure our survival, we can now plan ahead and work on things that will pay dividends down the road. 

One central decision shaping our direction is to solely focus on digital assets. We are well aware that this may appear being a risky strategy at a time of depressed asset prices and negative sentiment in cryptoassets markets. Why take that route?

Two reasons: 

First, we enjoy spending our energy on something in which we have strong beliefs and that we know can bring positive change to the world. We believe that the digitisation of alternative, illiquid assets using blockchain technology to create Digital Asset-Backed Securities adds some very interesting qualities to these assets (read on a deeper exploration). Leveraging these new qualities will allow us to broaden access to assets and capital, link supply and demand more efficiently and enable innovative new business models. Ultimately, we will make investment opportunity more accessible to anyone. We'll always have the joy of everyday work on a deeper mission, even if we are wrong with our assumptions about how the environment will change and we fail to achieve all our ambitions. 

The second reason is to venture into new territory is to follow the risk/ reward logic by choosing a more binary distribution of outcomes. This development has the potential to transform capital markets if we take the risk and find out to be right. The attached upside for our company is significant and more interesting than to play it safe. We rather place large bets than hedge our bets. 

Both of these reasons follow the simple idea that the price of anything is the amount of life we exchange for it. The biggest investment in FinFabrik is that people spend their valuable time, share their thoughts and energy to build this great company. We intend to make it worth our while. 

WW: Product Journey

This quarter we are rolling out our digital assets trading platform that offers best aggregated price and deepest liquidity in the market. I’d want to show you the latest we build on Aggregated Order Book.

Combining bid/ask prices across multiple exchanges

The simplistic graph indicates the aggregated order book, the spread/ liquidity of the market.  The smaller the value of spread, the higher the liquidity is. Negative spread can be encountered indicating crossing of bid and ask prices across exchanges.

This year we make ourselves to be more focused than ever. Our strategy is simple. We are building for markets. Our goals are focused. We are connecting asset owners and investors. Our roadmap is well-defined. We are thinking hard, drawing hard, coding hard and testing hard to ensure deliver. We are making investment opportunity accessible to anyone. Big applause to our engineers, designers and quants!

Note: The above is brought to you by our newly joined Product Manger William Wong. 

News & Views

1. Press release: Closing of seed round by BitMEX ventures 
2. Interview: EJ Insight on fractionalising assets on blockchain 
3. Interview: FinFabrik on working with R3 
4. Article: Why tokenise?
5. Coverage: Blockchain Ecosystem Heat Map 2019

All in one

We had a few running product standalone websites where information might be considered to be scattered. We heard your feedback! Both CryptoFabrik and CrossPool are now integrated back into FinFabrik website, forming a clearer picture of our overall strategy. 

Take a few minutes to experience the new flow of information on www.finfabrik.com, and tell us how you like it.

Team Spotlight: Yifeng Hou. Quant Trading Lead.

Q: Who are you?
A: 

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple”

- Oscar Wilde

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

- Sherlock Holmes

I am a scientist and a detective who is dedicated to the pursuit of truth. I find meaning in life and take great pleasure in doing so. I am strong in finding hard facts by analysing both numeric and qualitative data.

One of my biggest personal interests is the theory of computation, particularly complexity theory and quantum computation. My vision is to push the frontier of the theory through practice, hence my choice to be a quantitative trader.

I have been a hardcore video game player since the age of five. That part of me contributed to the career choice of a quantitative trader as well. Understanding trading and financial markets from the perspective of game theory adds fun and offers a huge edge to this role.

Q: What do you care about?
A: 

I care about if people, me included, believing in themselves and believing in life in general.

A short story might explain better what I mean and why I care.

Better education and ever freer flow of information and knowledge has been making us go ever further in personal development. I graduated from college as a finance student. This made it very hard for me to  get admitted into a maths Ph. D programme. I did not give up after multiple attempts. Meanwhile, I was getting countless help from people all over the world, most of whom I never got a chance to meet in person. I remember checking out maths textbooks, writing emails to the author to ask questions and getting very helpful responses. Eventually, with a little surprise I got a chance to pursue a doctoral degree in mathematics.

FinFabrik believes in, trusts and empowers its people. That impresses me and reminds me of all the people that have helped others to believe in themselves and life in general.

On closing

“How can we walk away from requirements that we know to be true to pursue something that we think will help?” It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.”

- Ben Horowitz

Later,

Your FinFabulous team.