Highlights from “Earning (More) Crypto” — VegaX Digital Asset Education Series
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This edition of the VegaX Holdings Digital Asset Education Series in Partnership with Chinaccelerator features Simon Yu, Founder and CEO of StormX — “Earn crypto while you shop.”
Don’t miss out on Simon’s key insights. You can revisit and replay the recording of this edition of the webinar series, titled “Earning (More) Crypto,” by clicking on the link below.
Watch Recording: VegaX Digital Asset Education Series: Earning (More) Crypto.
For a summary of the webinar discussion, keep reading!
As always, please reach out to us with questions, comments, and suggestions for topics/speakers for our Digital Asset Education series!
About Simon Yu, Founder and CEO of StormX
Simon has a professional background working as an underwriter at KeyBank, as well as driving for Uber and Lyft. He also started a food truck catering business prior to founding StormX. He became interested in bitcoin early while working as an underwriter because he happened to see transaction fees that were occurring within the banks, including bitcoin transactions. Eventually, StormX was accepted into Chinaaccelerator’s program, the company started growing rapidly, and the following year Simon, his co-founder, and the StormX team raised 32 million dollars in funding.
When asked what the biggest obstacle was that he had to face when building StormX, Simon responded,
“You probably feel the same as well as a lot of other entrepreneurs that set up companies or have some exposure in the US — regulation is probably one of the biggest challenges just because they constantly change. It’s not like “here are the regulations that are going to be going forward starting now” — it’s going back retroactively and saying that if you’ve done — crowd stuff — or something in three or four years, we’re still able to penalize you or take some sort of action against you, which a lot of companies are facing. So you see companies like Ripple saying, “Oh we’re just going to try and move out of the States because it’s too hard to operate here. A lot of crypto companies are now having to spend a lot on legal because they are in the position where they have to try to predict where the regulations are going to head. In other countries like Singapore and South Korea, everything is a lot more open. Governments are giving grants for five hundred thousand dollars to first stage companies.”
Can you give us an introduction on how your thought process went in trying to create a platform that allows people to basically gain crypto but through their everyday activities that they would be doing otherwise? Also, the differences you see between that and just going out and opening an exchange account and trying to buy crypto?
“The reason my co-founder and I decided to launch the product was because we were both sort of in financial hardship back in college. When we grew up we both funded our own college education and so we were always looking for ways to earn money online. So the part that got us really excited is that there’s currently no single place you can go to find a bunch of gigs or side tasks that can offer you two offers and supplementary income — so that’s what we’re trying to do.
There are a lot of smaller rewards, like for a couple of dollars that are ignored each day that you can still do to earn money, but if you do this and try to earn traditional fiat it’s impossible because the wire transaction fees are way higher than the actual reward that you receive if you’re a transglobal scale business. So because of this, we figured out a way to utilize blockchain and figured out a patent where you can send transactions for less than a penny. We’re actively live right now in more than 150 countries so even though the amounts are small, we can still offer additional income to our users and that’s what’s really exciting to us.”
What are your thoughts on DeFi? What’s happening and why should people even pay attention?
“I think the potential is endless. The peer-to-peer aspect of decentralized finance, and the fact that you don’t have to use a middleman, or a bank or a custody provider. You can just use smart contracts to transfer value which is much cheaper because you don’t need to have all these services — and one of my biggest pet peeves is definitely inefficient technology. In the last U.S. election we saw how the votes were hand-counted, but why can’t we just do everything electronically? Well, because people are afraid it’s going to get hacked, but if we are afraid of hacking then we shouldn’t use anything, because there’s sensitive software like bank accounts and government agencies and it’s more dangerous if information from those were to be leaked. I think decentralized finance aims to solve these issues and create a way where we can use technology to make money evolve so we can put more of the transaction fees back into the user’s pocket.”
What are your thoughts on the next couple of years, as the president in the U.S. has changed, and how blockchain and crypto development differentiates itself in the East and the West?
“China is developing their own digital currency and it’s just like completely different perspectives in terms of how they’re taking it vs in the US. I think honestly just the biggest barrier will be the regulators.
On CoinDesk there was an article that stated that some policymaker for Biden is a bitcoin billionaire, and there was pro-bitcoin news related to that, but I still don’t think that change toward how crypto is perceived will happen fast enough in the US because outside of governments, the most powerful institutions are banks. The world’s largest banks are in the US and the industry is going to get disrupted again. Just like how oil companies tried to stop alternative energy, hotel companies tried to stop AirBNB, and taxi companies tried to stop Uber. These industries were definitely powerful, but not as powerful as banks. So there may even be tighter regulations. Also, new technologies are adopted much faster in some countries in Asia than in the U.S. If crypto adoption and support of the technology does happen in the U.S., the scale will definitely be larger because the resources are much bigger. Hopefully, we get there.”
What do you think people should be the most excited about or pay attention to in the crypto/blockchain space right now?
“We are seeing more and more examples of companies, for example, Square, putting more of their reserves in Bitcoin. Also, in countries like Venezuela and Turkey, there is hyperinflation, but the fact that Bitcoin is a global currency where people can trust its value is exciting, especially for people in those countries that have unstable local currencies. If we can put more money into the hands of users, then that will evolve the next boom cycle because they’ll be able to use that for spending or for more risky ventures like starting a company.”
How can people get involved in StormX? What can people earn from StormX and what is the best way for them to get involved in crypto?
“With StormX, you can shop at Nike, or eBay, or Alibaba, we have hundreds of different stores where people can shop online and earn cashback. One of the biggest barriers to crypto is that people are afraid of losing money. However, with StormX, you shop and we give you back the transaction fees so you can get some cashback.
We offer some aggressive rates. Our highest cashback is up to 87.5% depending on the company you are shopping at, so try it out. We have iOS, Android, and Chrome extension apps. With our platform, you can get crypto without having to risk initial capital.”
Stay tuned for the NEXT edition of our Digital Asset Education Series. Learn more about Digital Assets and enhancing returns by joining our newsletter: https://vegaxholdings.com/
As always, please reach out to us with questions, comments, and suggestions for topics/speakers for our Digital Asset Education series! info@vegaxholdings.com
StormX: https://stormx.io/
StormX is a crypto cashback app that allows users to shop at their favorite stores and earn crypto while they do. The app has been featured in leading publications like Yahoo! Finance, Nasdaq, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Cointelegraph, and Decrypt. Earn up to 87.5% crypto cashback!
VegaX Holdings: https://vegaxholdings.com/
VegaX Holdings is the “BlackRock” of the Crypto Asset Industry. We provide investors globally with one-stop access to sophisticated and secure crypto asset management. The asset management industry is the largest in the world representing more than $80 trillion dollars in investments through investment products like ETFs, mutual funds, and indices that outperform investments in individual stocks. VegaX is the first to create similar investment products for Crypto providing investors outperformance versus buying individual cryptocurrencies. On average, investors buying VegaX products make 30% more profit versus just holding Bitcoin.
Chinaccelerator: https://chinaccelerator.com/
Chinaccelerator is a mentorship-driven program assisting internet startups from around the world cross borders — from the world into China, and from China to the world. It is operated by the venture fund SOSV, which has $700M+ AUM and operates 5 global accelerators. Chinaccelerator offers three months of rigorous guidance, training, and resources from mentors, partners, and investors. The robust and active alumni network continues to support startups long after they complete the Chinaccelerator program.
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