Bitmax Exchange Listing AMA
Dear Community,
On Monday March 8, 2021 we conducted an AMA with the team at BitMax Exchange (bitmax.io) to celebrate our new Listing Partnership and introduce Connect Financial to their telegram community of over 40,000 members. We’re both proud and excited to have formed this relationship and look forward to continuing our quest to make CNFI even more visible and accessible by announcing additional exchange partnerships in the future.
Here is the transcript to the AMA for your reference and review. If you have any questions, always feel free to reach out.
Q: If you don’t mind, maybe we can start with a basic introduction of the Connect Financial project, its vision as well as the team behind?
A: Sure, our vision is to provide a means for every crypto holder to have access to utilize their cryptocurrency for their everyday needs, without having to liquidate it. We’ve accomplished this by putting together an actual Credit Card program that allows you to collateralize multiple cryptocurrencies to establish your line of credit. This may seem similar to other card products in the market today but there are a few very distinctive differences:
· We are a true Crypto Collateral Credit Card. Other cards are considered Prepaid Debit Cards and can have limitations on their usage. Sometimes online stores will refuse the prepaid card, paying at a gas pump will get rejected, anything that requires a pre-authorization or a bill later after service you run a high risk of rejection.
· The other cards require you to completely sell your crypto first into fiat, then load that fiat into your card to use. We do not. We allow you charge against your crypto and pay monthly towards your outstanding bill, much like any other credit card.
· We allow fiat deposits in multiple currencies, via multiple different routes (Wire, SEPA, Interac, ACH) offering IBAN accounts to our users if they prefer. This fiat can be used for card payments, to purchase support crypto, or as collateral for your card if you wish. We also allow fiat off ramps for those who want to borrow cash against their crypto, or sell it completely.
· Our team consists of financial veterans, credit card program managers, compliance giants, and a superb smart contract/defi team. I myself have over 20 years of US banking experience and have held an EVP role at a one of the largest banks.
Q: I am particularly interested in the collateral part, users being able to charge against their holdings, could you share a bit more details on this would work and look like for users?
A: Absolutely. When you open up a card through our Client Portal it will generate a linked “Funding Portfolio” account. These funding accounts are specifically designated 1:1 with your cards (You are able to open multiple cards if you wish), any funds you load into this portfolio is held in insured custody with Connect Financial through our partner. You then commit these funds towards your credit limit. In Example, I open up a new Black Card and add in $40,000 in BTC. I have the option of selecting a credit limit of up to $20,000 (50% initial value of the BTC). Most supported crypto is 50% initial value, stable coins are 90%.
As the market moves, we monitor your credit limit, collateral, and charges against on your account. When you start crossing the 70% LTV mark you will start getting notices either via text, email, or eventually push notifications from our app. In a worse case at approximately 83% your collateral will start to be liquidated to cover expenses, and your available credit will start to be temporarily reduced.
Q: Interesting, so I regard this as bringing the collateralization, defi model into real world payment & credit scenarios. How long has the product being operated? Where are you guys standing thus far? any insights or data to share?
A: Exactly. We will also support our own defi liquidity pools where individuals can park certain crypto to use for lending to our card users as they borrow on their cards and earn a portion of the interest. Our initial client signups will be open this month with the release of our initial client portal. Users will then go on a waiting list for the cards as we receive them from the factory and can get them embossed and shipped. We are 100% approved for our Visa program and are awaiting the initial proofs from the factory any day. Covid has slowed down this process a bit unfortunately. We did get the initial material samples a month or so ago and approved a very high-quality metal for our top two tiers.
Q: Cool. I guess my next question is about your native token. Could you give us an introduction of what role it plays and how does it fit in the platform and product you guys are building?
A: The Connect Financial token, CNFI, is used primarily as a membership indicator. Your staked tokens are used to determine your card eligibility level and your program tier for our other services. The higher tiers receive more attractive interest rates, both on borrowing and interest earned from lending, lower fees on crypto conversion or fiat purchases along with the higher tier cards receiving more/better benefits. Such as the Black card comes with Airport Lounge Access provided by Priority Pass, Telehealth and many more perks.
Staking your tokens also earns you a reward from the daily allotment of CNFI distributed to the staking pool from the treasury.
Q: So, to summarize, Connect Financial offers: Staking Yields, Access to favorable terms for product, and Treasury yields?
A: Yes
Q: What is the most ambitious goal of your project? What is the ultimate vision that You are trying to achieve within the Blockchain space? I would appreciate it if you could share with us any Upcoming Updates?
A: The most ambitious goal is the actual issuance of a true Crypto Collateralized Credit Card, it’s taken a lot to get this point. In structure, collateral management, program setup and approval. Even the art approval for our cards was a significant endeavor.
Q: “Borrow against your cryptocurrency holdings, with cash wired straight to you” Does this mean you can borrow money, let’s say to invest in on a token and payback? If so, will there be any interest involved? How much?
A: Yes, you can borrow against your holdings and receive say, USDC or USDT to use for any purpose you see fit. There is interest which is dictated by your membership level. You do not have to stake anything if you do not wish to, we have a basic entry level with no requirement.
Q: I am an experienced developer and ethical hacker, do you have plans for Hackathon so as to check the security of your ecosystem periodically and also invite developers to build?
A: I will double check with our CTO, but this I believe is in our future for certain.
Q: At the moment, where you are focusing right now? Building and developing product or getting customers and users, or partnerships? Could you share it?
A: We are completing our MVP products on the FINTECH side right now. Our CMO, who we were just able to hire, is completing our 2021 marketing and advertising road map this week and we will start implementing it asap.
Q: At this point, do you think you need exchanges as a Binance to keep growing? Or is it better to forget those things and focus on other activities?
A: Any well-rounded business plan in this space realizes the tremendous benefit that exchanges bring. They allow for global liquidity and a presence in the market that we may not able to acquire through other means.
Q: NFT and Defi are one of the trending trends in the crypto market and they are effectively expanding with many new projects coming up in the field. What do you think about the development of NFT and Defi? Which area are you focusing on at the moment? (DeFi, Stake,Dapps..) and what is your goals in this year ?
A: We have several NFT plans slated already. NFT’s are a very exciting space for sure. I myself follow quite a few of the projects and they are fascinating. There is a TON of potential in that space. DEFI is one of our major core DNA’s. We are mixing traditional and defi financing and finding a marriage between the two.
We are majorly focusing on DEFI this year as far as this area is concerned. Our liquidity pools, Connect Protocol, DAO and Governance platforms are all major integrators of DEFI and our CTO is (in my opinion) one of the top minds in DEFI today.
Q: No one can achieve anything valuable on its own, please tell us about your current and future partnerships that will lead you to success in this highly cramped crypto space?
A: One of our major marketing arms is our ability to partner with other projects. To date we have two major partnerships with Axion and Trustswap. We’ve aligned with them in separate ways to offer a value to their communities and also support for them in our program. Axion is about to reveal their branded metal card supplied by Connect Financial. We have several other projects we are talking with and some non-project crypto communities that are in discussion. Our user base is near limitless as we allow a favorable way to access crypto and having a way to access the value of your crypto today without having to liquidate it.
Join our growing community!
Discord : https://discord.gg/GYeWZ5uE4P
Telegram: https://t.me/connectfinancial
Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/connectfinancialnews
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ConnectWallet
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfKkFD8FwnRvoxdOODTz_Ug
Official Website: https://www.connect.financial/
Staking: https://token.connect.financial/
Client Portal: https://client.connect.financial/
