Covering the latest events, insights and views in the Web3 ecosystem.
Ishan Pandey: Hi Johnny, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind KuCoin Exchange ?
Johnny Lyu: Hi, this is Johnny, Co-Founder, and CEO of the company. I am leading the company’s day-to-day operations, spot trading, Earn, as well as the expansion and prosperity of the KCS ecosystem.
About our story, I can tell that behind our company are two tech geeks (two founders of the company who were early blockchain adopters). Having started coding at the age of 8 and founded his first startup at 16, one of the geeks heard about Bitcoin in 2012 from his boss (another geek) and immediately began to mine. While he tried to sell some BTC on Mt.Gox, he discovered that, what was the world’s largest platform at the time, was difficult for beginners to use. As the adoption of blockchain continued, they realized that it was reshaping the financial system, building a new system that serves the few richest and everyone in the world — even the uneducated, unemployed, and unbanked.
By the end of 2013, they wrote down the first code in a cafe. After that, they spent over two months completing the code for a trading system. The initial API documentation of this is still present on GitHub. However, because the whole cryptocurrency market was still in its infancy at the time, and they each had their jobs, two geeks were not yet prepared to start a business, so this matter took a back seat.
After they returned their focus to the crypto industry in 2017, they found it incredible that even though 4 years had passed, the systems and services of the entire cryptocurrency trading market were too far removed from the internet industry. Exchanges often suffered delays and downtimes. The instability in the trading system caused the user experience to suffer. So, to bring a better trading experience to the crypto industry and bring blockchain and cryptocurrency to the general public, they created the company, the ‘People’s Exchange’ which allows everyone to embrace digital assets.
Ishan Pandey: Can you please explain the concept of Social Trading to our viewers and what are the added benefits of getting involved with a social trading platform?
Johnny Lyu: The company has added social interaction to classic trading, opening up new opportunities for cryptocurrency traders of all levels. For example, novice users can focus on the portfolio of professional and successful traders and copy their trades.
Social trading is becoming an important element for the formation and cohesion of the community. Thanks to such an approach, investors can unite around a particular token and make decisions jointly, thereby influencing its value.
Ishan Pandey: Meta plans to invest the next decade in creating a realistic virtual world that encompasses scent, touch, and sound, allowing users to immerse themselves in virtual reality completely. Do you think, in the future, humanity will slowly completely migrate into the metaverse?
Johnny Lyu: I’m optimistic about the transfer of humanity to the metaverse. The metaverse is one of today’s most exciting topics and a brand-new way of life in the near future. When both giants such as Meta, Amazon, and Tencent and wealthy investors such as Elon Musk are heavily investing money, talent, and technology into the metaverse, one has to believe that this is going to be a historical trend that delivers a truly unique experience. Beyond the integration of games and virtual reality in the public imagination, the metaverse can become far greater through efforts and innovations at the neuron level.
Due to the pandemic, some blockchain projects have held their meetups in the Metaverse space, such as in Decentraland, where they can communicate, work and play in virtual communities. The company is also exploring more application scenarios in the Metaverse space. For instance, the company built a virtual office based in Bloktopia. A Skyscraper made up of 21 levels that allows earning through real estate ownership, advertising revenue, playing games, and building networks.
As a new chapter of the Internet that tech giants are seeking after, Metaverse is poised to change the way we work, connect, shop, entertain and have social interactions. To accelerate and lead this evolution in the crypto space, the company has launched the Metaverse Fund to further strengthen the application of blockchain technologies to the Metaverse projects.
Before humanity can learn to digitize everything that you mentioned, we must learn to digitize ourselves, thereby gaining the ability to […]
source Talking Crypto and DeFi with Johnny Lyu – CEO at KuCoin
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