Transcript of AMA with CEO of PointPay – Vladimir (CEO) Kardapoltsev

Dear PointPay family,

PointPay CEO Vladimir Kardapoltsev participated in a video session at AMA on November 24, 2022. He discussed the recent events with FTX and shared how PointPay navigates the crypto winter.

Below is a summary of the AMA held on the 24th of November, 2022.

AMA Transcript

Vladimir (CEO): Hello, PointPay family! It’s my pleasure to conduct our traditional end-of-the-month AMA session. This time around, we have one of my colleagues, Diana, who will be helping me today.

Diana (Host): Hello, everyone! We're excited to be here. Let's get started with the latest news and announcements.

Vladimir (CEO): We're closing this difficult year. It brings me a lot of joy because it also concludes my first year as a CEO at this company. I think we have achieved quite a lot of great things.

Given the market turmoil, we need to be transparent with our customers. That's why I'd like to share with you how PointPay operates within the current market. Let's take a look at what we have achieved as a company in the last four weeks.

As we usually do, let's start with our interfaces, in particular, the web:

We've implemented the User Levels. You will have different things to achieve, and if you achieve them, you will get an additional PXP. We're going to be introducing trading competitions very soon.
We've migrated to the native SumSub interface. From the security perspective, this is a big improvement.
Staying on the topic of security, we've implemented the new 2FA flow. Now the users can use both 2FA methods on (email and google authenticator). This will go live once synced with mobile apps so we do not disturb our users.
Lastly, we've implemented several architectural improvements that enhance our development process.
Also, we improved the user experience by eliminating several bugs within our platform. We're very grateful for your suggestions that you leave us on telegram.
We've made fixes to the referral program. Now it works a lot better.
We added notifications for the correct delivery via the authorization flow for KYC.
Made some adjustments on the web due to a few features being removed from our platform.

Let's move on to our mobiles apps:

We've implemented the history widget on the dashboard. That's the first thing you see when opening the app. Users can see all of the transactions from the Regular to the Savings accounts, etc.
We've implemented a new epic for the Referral Program where users can share the referral link on their mobile phone and get people into our platform. We will be rewarding them with PXPs.
And we've also implemented User Levels. We will have an enhanced version of the Referral Program, making this a friendly place for people to invite people and achieve things. That's a certain level of gamification within the platform.
Lastly, we made a lot of improvements concerning the Launchpad on our mobile app. Now it is natively integrated into our mobile app.
Added an ability to buy project tokens on the mobile app.
Implemented the project display with full information. Users can get detailed information about certain projects.
Also implemented the functionality of the PXP voting as well.
Introduced a separate FAQ Launchpad.

Speaking about our core functionality. Let's start with the exchange, the main pillar of our platform.

We've implemented the Markets page on the exchange to make it easier to choose the cryptocurrency for trading.
Secondly, we've deduced the necessary business metrics for the exchange for more efficient monitoring.
We've also updated the system for displaying the information on CoinMarketCap.
Updated the API for the application of PointPay exchange for Coingecko;
Completed the display of the transaction for the users' necessary information that they have in the trading history.
Updated the UI of the trading history and charts.

Let's move on to the bank:

We've moved the Savings to Go microservices;
Also improved the system quality by writing automated tests for all of the parts of the platform;
Made quite a lot of progress on implementing the new statistical mode. Now it works perfectly; we collect the data in a very secure and efficient way from the bank services;
We've also displayed the exchange rates that change within 12 to 24 hours.
Generated the new requirements for the redesign of the Bank Dashboard. That will be changed to provide key information that will simplify the flow;
Launched the B2B service as part of the new MVP. Users will be able to register a company within the PointPay platform and use the exchange and the trading API for the withdrawals and the purchase of cryptocurrencies;
Updated the pages’ design and made it easier to list the project in terms of the ICO.
Made it possible to pay out voting rewards in PXP tokens for the top voters within the Launchpad platform.

That's all for the products; let's move on to Legal. I'll be quick there.

At the moment, we are working on adding SEPA.
Also worked on technical compliance and crypto liquidity with SticPay. That's an Asian market provider. We are integrating SticPay, so you will be able to use MasterCard / Visa UnionPay within our platform.
We have also applied for the MTL license in Wyoming, and we expect to obtain it within four months.
And we have also worked on the technical requirements of obtaining the PCI DSS for the licenses in Georgia and Kazakhstan.

Vladimir (CEO): I think that is all in terms of the teams' updates. Let's go ahead and do the questions now.

Diana (Host): We have received several questions regarding the listing of the PXP token. The questions are:

Is it still worth listing on other CEXs in this hard time?
Will we see the promised Tier-1 listing this year?
Is PXP still on track to be listed on the Tier-1 exchange by the end of the year?

Vladimir (CEO): I know that I said at the last AMA session that the listing on the Tier-1 exchange is probably going to happen by the end of this year or early next year. Many things have changed after that. The promises of a Tier-1 listing were made before the crypto winter, the FTX bankruptcy, and the collapse of Celsius and other companies.

We're still holding talks with three tier-one exchanges. FTX wasn't one of them. I think we will be waiting for the right market conditions to ensure that this exchange is not going to collapse and that it is sound and secure.

I hope that this crypto winter will soon be over. All markets will bounce back, and a Tier-1 listing will be in the nearest future. At the current market conditions, at the bottom of the market, listing on an exchange will not be successful. We'll have enough time to perfect our platform and get that listing afterward.

Diana (Host): Okay, thank you. There were also several questions regarding the market situation. I have combined them. The first one is: What do you think about the FTX case?

Vladimir (CEO): The FTX situation was utterly devastating. I have friends who lost all their life savings. I think a lesson was learned. That's why we see so many people withdrawing funds from decentralized exchanges; it's fueling the crypto winter.

Sam Bankman-Fried acted illegally. He was trading and investing users' money without letting them know about it. That's against every code of conduct. I think he knew that it was wrong.

But the blame should also fall on the regulators. Most of the users were American. Most backers were big investment funds and didn't care to regulate this billion company. I do hope that this will be a wake-up call for global regulators.

What is happening right now is the wild year 2000 on Wall Street, which brought a lot of regulation in America. Ultimately, this should facilitate regulations of the cryptocurrency industry.

PointPay will flourish within the industry because we are trying to be as legally compliant as possible by obtaining various licenses in America and the European Union.

Diana (Host): Was PointPay in any way involved with SBF, Alameda, or maybe FTX? After the recent FTX event, can PointPay survive the crypto winter?

Vladimir (CEO): PointPay had no exposure to FTX. We don't trade our assets to generate profit or lend your assets to other companies. Everything in terms of our structure is quite transparent. This applies to both centralized and decentralized protocols. Furthermore, our yield-generating strategies do not involve trading on centralized exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, FTX, etc. No user funds are stored on those exchanges as well.

Second of all, we are a licensed company. We have a license in Lithuania, which took a lot of work to obtain. In 2022, we have authorized as an operator of deposit virtual currency funds and a virtual currency exchange operator in Lithuania. Furthermore, we are trying to obtain licenses in various jurisdictions where we operate, including the US market.

Our company has taken proactive steps to secure business separations in the bearish market:

Reduced interest rates on Staking and Savings accounts.
Restructured the way that we do our services.
We disabled the possibility for our users to receive unsecured cryptocurrency loans;
Built a diversified portfolio of services. This means we have a diversified profit stream.

Last but not least, we take great care of the safety of your holdings. We provide a secure technical infrastructure for users to store their funds. Nobody's allowed to use them. We want to ensure that all of your funds are safe and secure.

Diana (Host): Are you thinking of being as transparent as Binance regarding the assets?

Vladimir (CEO): We have no problem at all becoming more transparent. So far, the audit could make more economic sense for our company.

Exchanges will have to provide the number of assets and the proof of reserves that will have to be audited by the third party. That will come sometime next year. At the moment we already had talked about this feature. I don't think it will be introduced very fast like Binance were able to, but it will be an industry standard.

Diana (Host): Are you planning to improve the PointPay rating on CoinMarketCap?

Vladimir (CEO): As I mentioned at the last AMA meeting, the listing of the PointPay exchange on CoinMarketCap was a great success. We are working right now to make sure that our volume is correct. The APIs are a little bit weird. They should stabilize over the next few weeks. They will be much more stable in December because they will have last month's data. We started at #292 and then jumped to #125, and right now, we are at #180 because of market conditions.

Our goal is to be one of the top 100 cryptocurrency exchanges by the end of the year. We are trying to improve our trust score. As new people join our platform, our volume and traffic will naturally increase, and we will increase the rankings.

We are also working on the listing on CoinGecko. We have submitted the new APIs to them. Unfortunately, it's not up to us. I would like to say that we will have a CoinGecko listing by the end of the year. That would be the icing on the cake.

Diana (Host): The next one is more a statement than a question. The HR Talent feature has been shelved until next year, but looking at the popularity of Upwork, HR Talent is one of the unique features that, if marketed aggressively, can create value by adding users who are averse to crypto.

Vladimir (CEO): I agree with you and think it is a great product. But we have decided to restructure the PointPay platform. We should remove all not 100% finished products from PointPay to concentrate on the core functionality. We want to have 100% working functionality across the board. After we bring new people to our platform, we will reintroduce those products as standalone products.

Diana (Host): How will the introduction of corporate accounts benefit the PointPay ecosystem?

Vladimir (CEO): As we continue to grow, we can't just rely on the regular B2C customers. We also have to think about expanding our business in the future by Introducing our own Payment System.

That's why we tried to tap into the B2B market. That was one of the main goals that I wanted to achieve. We've introduced the KYB feature. We are now introducing separate cabinets for the businesses, where they will be able to use trading API's on their native platforms or process payments via PointPay.

Diana (Host): How would you comment on the situation regarding the decline in the PXP token price?

Vladimir (CEO): The PXP token does not exist in isolation from the entire cryptocurrency market. If the cryptocurrency market goes down, the PXP price will also decrease.

If we look at the overall picture and compare the BTC and PXP prices in percentage terms, we've done quite well this year. The last news about the FTX collapse killed the market for now. But we will most definitely survive it. When the market goes up, we'll be able to enter it at the right time as a new fresh face company.

We will introduce new functionality and utility to the PXP token within other services. Now you can pay PXPs for the fees on the exchange, and we will introduce this feature within the entire ecosystem. The price will organically improve. And we're still committed to the regular token burns.

Diana (Host): I understand why the price has dropped. But what is the reason that the PXP trading volume decreases significantly?

Vladimir (CEO): Again, look at the current market conditions. After the FTX crash, we saw a significant outflow of users from centralized exchanges and providers. Many users decide to move their funds to decentralized wallets and monitor the situation. It will bounce back in the future.

I agree; we had almost $6 million half a year ago. Now, it's close to $200,000, which could be better. It's overall market conditions; people are trading less, waiting for what will happen.

After January, people will be tired and start trading again. The market will change as a whole. As we increase the PXP utility, the volumes of PXP will also increase.

Diana (Host): Speaking about it, are you planning to increase the utility of the PXP token?

Vladimir (CEO): We have developed the discount system for the trading fees on the PXP platform for the PXP token holders that will be introduced quite soon. You will be able to reduce your fees by up to 35%. We will introduce other services, such as trading levels, competitions, etc.

Diana (Host): There are 14 points in the roadmap for Q4. Which one will be completed in Q4?

Vladimir (CEO): We should complete the overall ecosystem by the end of the year. Furthermore, we're working very hard on the ACH payments. We have signed with Circle; we want to introduce SticPay to integrate Union Payments on our platform. Furthermore, we will be launching corporate accounts.

Most goals should be completed apart from margin, futures, and options trading. We will develop them and introduce them in Q2 or the end of Q1 next year.

Diana (Host): When will the roadmap be available?

Vladimir (CEO): We have a PointPay end-of-year report. There will be a more comprehensive report for this year. It will outline all of the great things that our company managed to achieve this year from January until December. At the end of this report, there will be a roadmap for 2023. We were planning to release it around Christmas time. It should be released by the next AMA session.

Diana (Host): Why are US customers not allowed to use the PointPay services?

Vladimir (CEO): We must legally separate US customers from global users. First, the KYC procedure for US customers is much more extensive. Second, the company reporting will also increase.

We're trying to get all the relevant licenses in Wyoming and New York. We plan to implement it the same way Binance did: Binance US for the US customers and the general Binance for the global customers. Binance US has a reduced functionality.

Because you can't trade certain assets, you cannot use certain functionality within the platform, like margin trading. At the moment, US users are not able to get staking rewards. That's all about the SEC regulations.

The US market is of great importance to us. The PointPay subsidiary is registered as MSB and is an authorized Money Transmitter in the USA. We will introduce the PointPay US website around the second quarter of next year.

Right now, we have to get the regulations straight. We will be able to get the Money Transmitter License in Wyoming in four mounts. That will let us operate fully legally in America.

Diana (Host): Binance is looking for solid projects to invest in. Have you contacted them?

Vladimir (CEO): Not yet. We would love to have funding from Binance as well as their expertise. But we have a possibility of being greater than Binance. We're relatively small and agile, while Binance is becoming stale and unwieldy. We should surpass it within a year or two.

Diana (Host): With this drop in the market, is it possible to develop the project? Do you think about giving up?

Vladimir (CEO): No, of course not. I never give up. We have a bright future. That's why we are constantly moving; that's why we are restructuring the company. Every single market has ups and downs, creating a market opportunity. Big companies collapse, and we will learn from their mistakes and make our way to the top spot very stealthily.

Right now, we have a new design; everything works perfectly. We have come a long way. At the end of the year, when I present the final report to you, you will see how much we have accomplished this year.

Diana (Host): I think that's all! Thank you very much for all of your answers!

Vladimir (CEO): Thank you very much, Diana, for helping me and gathering questions from our wonderful community. Thank you all very much for joining me for this AMA session. It was great talking to you and answering your questions.

I just remembered that I should mention one thing. Our withdrawals have improved dramatically. That's why I don't see any questions within our chats that withdrawals don’t work or anything like that. It's our road to success. I'm incredibly optimistic about the future of PointPay. Thank you all very much, and have a wonderful weekend!

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