CoinMetro 16th November 2018 AMA Notes

VIDEO ARCHIVE OF THE AMA (YOUTUBE, FACEBOOK)

IN THE NEWS

#1. Top Crypto Exchange Binance Adds Circle’s USD Coin in Latest Stablecoin Support Move

• They're "horsesh*t".
• There's a need for liquidity, so they use these coins.
• Exchanges make money from trade volume, so stablecoins are listed.
• Stablecoins are a bandaid.
• They're coming out with these coins because it's easy and there is demand for them.
• This just shows how immature the market is.

#2. Crypto civil war' slams bitcoin, but it won't last, says BKCM's Brian Kelly  

• There was also an expiry of Bitcoin on the CBOE.
• This may have had more influence than the BCash situation.
• This is, again, showing immaturity in the market.
• There was no buy or sell pressure, and the CBOE expiry was the catalyst to cause it to dip, and combined with the BCash situation, it may have exacerbated the situation.

#3. XRP emerges as phoenix amongst fallen angels; attempts to cope with the crash  

• It's not really a crash. We've seen worse times than this.
• Six months ago, this would've been a Wednesday in the crypto market.
• With XRP you do have centralization here, the Ripple Foundation.
• That's why it didn't crash.
• XRP seems to be the more "stable" option.

#4. XRP receives official support from Coinbase Custody; Ripple logo represents the coin

• It's one of the most traded pairs.
• It looks like it's going to be a store of value like Bitcoin.

#5. Ripple Is Aiming to Overtake Swift Banking Network, CEO Says  

• So is everyone and their grandmother since 1975. /s
• Nobody is in the position to do that right now.
• It's not about scalability and superior technology.
• It's because banks have antiquated systems and they work with Swift.
• There are banks that have billions of dollars and they still use MSDOS.
• When banks control the operation, they still control the narrative.
• "Good on Ripple and I hope someone does it in my lifetime." KM

#6. Bitcoin is the ‘Evil Spawn of the Financial Crisis’: European Central Bank Board Member  

• "Well this guy's awesome! Where can I buy this guy a coffee or a beer?"
• He's right- it's a spawn of the financial market.
• What emerges from crises are solutions.
• The vision of Bitcoin now is definitely not what Satoshi intended.

#7. Thai SEC Urges Public to Avoid Unlicensed Crypto Exchange as Regulation Set to Take Effect

• Makes sense: regulator sets regulation, tells you not to use unregulated exchanges.

#8. Arthur Hayes of Crypto Exchange BitMEX Says Trading Against His Own Clients Is ‘Nonsensical’  

• Almost every single FX broker starting from around 2008 says that they don't trade against their clients.
• Why do they do that? As a PR move.
• Clients realized that the brokers were trading against them.

#9. EOS ‘Reverses’ Previously-Confirmed Transactions as Pundits Decry Centralization

• The pundits are right!
• EOS raised $4 Billion USD to create a system that was going to be so much better than the traditional financial system.
• "Some random *sshole that gets elected can reverse transactions. How is this any better?"

#10. As Crypto Prices Tumble, Mike Novogratz Pounds the Table on Real Estate Tokenization

• These are tokenized securities, not security tokens.
• Tokenized Assets are on their way
• Don't get slapped by Kevin.

REDDIT QUESTIONS

Beta Testing

• There will be a meeting with the Dev team to have a report of improvements.
• Most of the updates are on the back-end, so they're not visual.

E-mails from Cosmin

• There will be a formal statement posted on the site shortly.
• He wasn't an employee, he was a contractor that stole someone's identity.
• There is a real Cosmin, but he hasn't responded to CoinMetro's messages.
• The team is making sure that they take extra steps to ensure that this doesn't happen again.

Legal Action against Cosmin?

• Legal action is in motion.
• The contractor is probably in Russia, China, or North Korea, so the options are limited.
• The team has contacted OFAC and filed with the FIU in Estonia, as well as in Romania since this is where Cosmin claimed he's from.
• The KYC and ID data is held in a different database.
• The investigation is still ongoing to know the exact nature of his data access.
• Due to GDPR and other regulations, there's a limit to the information we can release.

CoinMetro Status of the Exchange

• It's a good thing that we didn't mint, because the token would've been way lower.
• Worst case scenario, you bought at a discount, and with the ETH price as it is now, you're probably~ 6x with XCM.
• It's not about creating a token and minting it so people can pump and dump, it's about creating a valuable product and service that is ready to compete in the market.
• Regulation hammers are coming down and CoinMetro is getting ahead of that curve.
• 2019 will be the year of regulation.

Ether Recovery?

• The team has spent most of those funds.
• They've liquidated what they needed to liquidate.
• There will be a sort of an equity funding round.

Better Recruitment Decisions?

• There are different things to blame, but recruitment wasn't one of them.
• The team is trying to centralize most of the employees in one location.
• You can recruit the best people and they can still cause issues.

Should CoinMetro have charged into the market, Uber style, and deal with regulations later?

• Both methodologies work.
• In this aspect, there are too many people going at it "willy-nilly" without regard to regulation.
• This will cause issues in the future.
• Kevin believes he chose the right path forward with CM.
• When Uber came out, nobody had done it before, and if you try and do it today, you'd get into a lot of trouble.

What are your thoughts on the BCash Hash War?

• "I'm against the whole thing that there is the ability to create two different forks and see which one will work."
• I like the idea of decentralization.
• This is an argument for a centralized authority, however.
• What this is causing now is market instability.
• In mature markets, these things are regulated.

COINMETRO UPDATES

• Cosmin update- a contractor hired from UpWork.
• In the initial phases of the company, there was a need for design tasks.
• Cosmin had a "good profile" on the site. There were some tests we asked him to do for design, and he passed them.
• This was around August/September, pre-Token Sale and Kevin was paying him out of his own pocket.
• We asked for IDs, and Cosmin provided them.
• At some point the payments got larger, and we set up wire transfers, but they were blocked by JP Morgan and flagged as being on the OFAC list.
• CoinMetro checked the OFAC list and the team did not appear, but upon a second check around September, the team's account showed up.
• It appeared that they were funneling money to North Korean ballistic missile programs.
• This was a team of 7 developers/designers
• If CoinMetro had known about these details, they would not have hired Cosmin's team.

LIVE AMA

December 10th date for launch?

• This is an internal date where we think everything should be ready.
• December 31st is still the last day for us to launch and meet the deadline.

Debit Card Provider Meetings

• Had one meeting and waiting for the next meeting.

Any reason CoinMetro isn't mentioned on FXPig's website?

• That's a good question!
• Once CoinMetro goes live, there should be some cross promotion.

Well, that's it for this week's AMA with CoinMetro Founder Kevin Murcko! Please join us next week on CoinMetro's Facebook at 2PM GMT for another round and make sure you submit your questions to the CoinMetro Subreddit!

As always, we're available to answer any questions you may have on our Telegram Group 24/7.