Alpha Impact x CardStarter AMA 2021/05/30
Participants: H H (Hayden Hughes), Ashwin Somasundaram [CardStarter Senior Ops Advisor].
Ashwin: We will have rewards for the best questions so get ready!
Hayden: Hey guys! Hayden here :)
Ashwin: Hey Hayden! Thank you so much for being here! How is everything going today?
Hayden: No problem! Really happy to be here. Crypto seems to be stable, no tweets from Elon!
Ashwin: 😂😂
Hayden: Great to be here!
Video Excerpt: “Hey guys what’s up. My name is Hayden, it’s good to see everyone here!
I am the CEO and Co-Founder of Alpha Impact. Really excited to be here this evening — can’t wait to talk with you more. I wanted to let you know our IDO is happening on June 3rd, I also wanted to let you know we have a whitelist lottery that’s going to be happening — It’s actually starting Today so I can’t wait to tell you a bit more. Let’s get the AMA started — right now!”
Ashwin: That is exciting! Can you tell our audience a bit about the whitelist lottery?
Hayden: Sure, no problem at all. In order to democratize the process for our supporters we decided to give everyone — including those who don’t have the same resources as others — the chance to compete and get an allocation for the Whitelist if they complete some tasks.
https://medium.com/alphaimpact/alpha-impact-launched-their-first-whitelist-lottery-today-fa116ac0d28e
Ashwin: Nice! I also love that you call the community members “alphas” 😂
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Hayden: Sure! Great question.
Hi there! I’m Hayden Hughes, the Co-Founder and CEO of Alpha Impact. Before starting this company with my Co-Founder and CPTO Austin Chaird, I became a lawyer before working in crypto in 2017. From 2017–2020 I worked as Head of Distribution for Techemy, a regulated investment bank focusing on crypto and blockchain. Immediately before co-founding Alpha Impact I was actually working at Crypto.com, where I led Institutional Sales in Singapore.
I have previously founded 3 companies and this includes 1 exit in my native Canada in my mid 20s. I’m excited to build new businesses!
My Co-Founder Austin has spent 15 years in banking technology, working as a Vice President where he designed trading systems for banks and hedge funds when he worked for JPMorgan and Macquarrie Bank.
We hope you join our Telegram channels:
ENGLISH: https://t.me/alphaimpact_fi
VIETNAMESE: https://t.me/alphaimpact_fi_VN
Ashwin: That is quite impressive. We are excited to hear more about what such a talented team is bringing. Can you give us a broad overview on Alpha Impact?
Hayden: Sure! This project started when Austin and I were teaching ourselves how to trade. We spent hundreds of hours researching coins (including ADA which we picked up at 8c last year) but we found that there is no transparent way to know which traders are good. For example there are many on Youtube, Telegram, and even TradingView who claim to be good traders but we have no way of knowing who is a good trader or not.
We thought to ourselves: there must be a better solution!
So we set out to build an honest copy trading platform: one where everyone can find a top trader to follow whose track record is backed by their real portfolio — not by what they say.
The way our tech works is that we get real time access to the trader’s trading account — we see their real times and update the leaderboard in real time.
We started Alpha Impact last year and we’ve been delighted with all the support in the community and can’t wait to launch next month!
Ashwin: That sounds beyond valuable…
I am excited to use this platform just from hearing about it again
Hayden: We’ll invite you for a beta trial! We have 3–4 beta tester sign up roles available at www.alphaimpact.fi
When you do arrive, my username is DangerousDave
Ashwin: 👍🙏 I am sure some of our audience members that trade very regularly will be excited to try this out.
So the next question might seem obvious, but it is important to establish. Why Cardano?
Hayden: We’re very excited to build on the Cardano for a few reasons.
First and foremost, our view is that Ethereum was Cardano’s testnet. From an efficiency, scalability, and energy consumption perspective, Cardano’s blockchain operates better than ETH’s does. So from our perspective we’re building two businesses: A CEX social trading business and a DEX/DeFi social trading business. The DEFI piece is very important to us but the issue of gas fees comes up again and again.
Building on a highly scalable blockchain is very important to us for this reason.
With the mainnet launch happening very soon this seems like a good fit for us. DeFi is clearly headed to ADA (we see it moving away from ERC as we speak) and we think ADA is the perfect blockchain for this use case.
On a slightly less (but still) relevant note, I met Charles at a conference a few years ago and thought he was very down to earth, unlike some of the characters that run other blockchains (not referring to Vitalik but no comments on others)
Ashwin: “Ethereum was Cardano’s testnet” 😂😅
I’ve heard this a few times and it is still very accurate.
How do gas prices impact (pun intended) your project?
Hayden: Great question! Sorry, was busy looking for memes.
Our community over at our TG channel has made some fire memes.
Check it out! https://t.me/alphaimpact_fi
Ashwin: Haha nice👍
Hayden: We’re building smart contracts to help traders copy a top trader while executing on chain. This gives traders the ability to save on gas fees, but the only way we can truly accomplish this on ERC is to have a large pooled smart contract execute trades to copy the top trader. This accomplishes the goal of reducing gas fees but means that we need a massive pool. We see the potential to allow investors to do copy trading on the ADA blockchain without having to pool the investments, compared to the ETH blockchain.
Ashwin: Beautiful answer and it makes perfect sense!
What aspects of your roadmap are you excited to share with our community at this time?
Hayden: Sure! We’ve actually got a lot happening now:
May 28 — June 2: Whitelist Lottery (See our medium article or our TG)
June 3: IDO ON CARDSTARTER BOOYEAH
Mid June: Liquidity Pool creation — everyone can earn yield by adding liquidity to our farm!
Mid-Late June: Single asset staking on our website!
Late June: V1 LAUNCH — Signals Mining!
In Signals Mining, we’re running 3 ten day trading competitions for three classes of investors: shrimps, lobsters, and whales. We will be awarding up to $100,000 based on the number of entries.
Here’s our roadmap in depth:
Ashwin: Amazing!
Hayden:
Ashwin: Hahaha I am loving these memes!
Hayden: I am amazed at our community’s meme skills
Ashwin: Ok, now we will open up our chat for questions!
The best questions will get rewards 👍
ARUNSAWAS: Base on different market condition, can we setup automated trading strategies by selecting/copy from multiple traders in the same algorithm.
Hayden: It will be human driven to start — not automated. Having said that we will of course, based on your level of staking. Allow you to follow multiple traders.
Calvin: How does alphaimpact differ from other copy trading platforms?
Hayden: We see ourselves being different in a few ways.
1. WE NEVER ASK YOU TO DEPOSIT FUNDS WITH US. Our platform is non custodial, meaning that you keep funds in your own account.
2. WE ARE NOT ANONYMOUS. I showed you above my and Austin’s LinkedIn. Both of us have left stable jobs in financial services to build this business, and we’re excited to be on the journey.
3. WE COVER CRYPTO OPTIONS. For all the crypto degens out there, we’re allowing you to ape into options and follow top options traders.
4. WE COVER LOW RISK TOO. For all the investors wanting safer alternatives, we will allow customers to sort top traders by investment style including volatility. Finally, a safe way to trade crypto by following a safe investor!
Here’s my and my co-founder Austin’s LinkedIn:
https://sg.linkedin.com/in/hayden-hughes-499718a
https://sg.linkedin.com/in/austinchaird
Jeff: Will I be able to copy multiple traders at the same time, and set budgets for each one individually?
Hayden: Copy multiple traders — yes for sure.
Set budgets for each one — I am not entirely sure what our Devs are cooking up but this seems like a 100% reasonable thing for us to focus on. So I’ll say probably, but I need to check.
Adriel kwok: what would the different tiers be like in terms of trading fees paid to alpha impact be like? (assuming trading fees are not solely gas)
Hayden: Yep we charge between .02–1% per transaction based on the level of staking.
Jeff: While some traders are high frequency scalpers and some are lower frequency swing traders, how will you distinguish between strategies in relation to your leader board besides just PnL
Hayden: Unlike all platforms that allow you to focus on top performing traders, our platform will allow you to sort by risk as well. You can sort by:
ROI
Volatility
Consistency
Drawdown (worst month)
Sharpe ratio (risk adjusted return)
Vivi Enna: Can you list some outstanding features of $IMPACT token? Do you have any token burn plan?
Hayden: Yes — we’ll use 30% of our token supply for LP rewards or for burning. We haven’t modeled out the exact % that will be burned, but it will be based on transaction volume.
Andreas Wittman: How does Alpha Impact generate revenue specifically, and will a part of that revenue be going to Token holder/stakers? if i understood correctly, a benefit of staking tokens as a follower-trader is a portion of the generated fees?
Hayden: Actually if we share revenue with you just for staking, this would make our token be considered a security or what we call a ‘collective investment scheme’. Then our project would get angry letters from the government(s) around the world and we’d need to shut down.
So staking is a way for you to earn a fixed interest rate based on the amount you have deposited.
You can also deposit tokens into the Uniswap Liquidity pool, and earn variable interest by providing liquidity into our Uniswap pair. I strongly suggest this as your go to option as it will be a higher APY and also help the community :)
Ashwin: Amazing!
Hayden: BTW here’s our socials!
Website: http://alphaimpact.fi/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/alphaimpact_fi
Official Telegram: https://t.me/alphaimpact_fi
Vietnamese Telegram: https://t.me/alphaimpact_fi_VN
Vietnamese ANN Telegram: https://t.me/alphaimpact_fi_VN_ANN
ANN Telegram: https://t.me/alphaimpact_fi_ANN
Indian Telegram: https://t.me/alphaimpact_india
Medium: https://alphaimpact.medium.com/
Bangladesh Telegram: https://t.me/alphaimpact_fi_bangladesh
Sean Taylor: How are you working to build communities that are faithful to the project, it’s mission and vision?
Hayden: We’re working with an amazing CM team that is expanding. I would say it comes down to sharing our values, sharing who we are as people (this is why you see me in videos etc), and building something we ourselves will use. Half product half communication :)
Sean Taylor: What is your criteria of choosing people to win the whitelist lottery?
Hayden: Check it out here: https://medium.com/alphaimpact/alpha-impact-launched-their-first-whitelist-lottery-today-fa116ac0d28e
Ashwin: Thank you for all your thoughtful and complete responses today! 👍
We are all very excited for what Alpha Impact is building and bringing to the space!
With that, we will conclude our AMA at this time and I would like to thank our guest and our community for their participation 😊🙏
Have an awesome day everyone and look forward to the launch!
Hayden: Thanks so much everyone! See you on Telegram:
https://t.me/alphaimpact_fi
Video Excerpt: “Hey guys Thanks so much for coming to the AMA this evening!
Head over to our telegram channel to find out more and I also think you should really pay attention to the whitelist lottery. You can find out all the details on our Telegram channel.
We’ll see you soon, may the trend be your friend and remember;
Don’t just trade
— Trade with Impact
Have a good night everybody.”
END OF AMA
About Alpha Impact
Alpha Impact is a DeFi compatible platform focused on democratizing lucrative investment strategies usually reserved only for experts. By providing customers with a safe way to follow top crypto traders across strategies, venues and DeFi protocols, we aim to reduce the high barriers to effective investing while providing existing expert traders a monetisation strategy that requires no behavior change.
