Mandala Exchange: A New Era🎙

Recorded: Feb. 27, 2024 Duration: 1:26:51

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Hello, hello welcome welcome everybody
Trickle on in, trickle on in, grab a seat in the arena.
We got a pretty cool broadcast for you tonight.
This is Acti on the mic.
I'm gonna be speaking from our movie media account.
I got my personal one up here as a co-host.
I got Joseph on the mic as well.
And if you couldn't tell by the title,
we're gonna be talking about Mandela today.
They got some pretty cool news for us.
We're gonna go over a lot of things,
but first of all, Joseph, can you hear me all right?
Am I coming through okay?
Let's do a quick mic check.
Yeah, you're good on my end.
I got you.
All right, all right, all right.
Okay, so welcome everyone.
Like I said, a lot of cool developments with Mandela.
Some of you might know Joe,
because Joe has been on our show a couple of times now.
He oftentimes joins our aquarium sessions
that are every Wednesday for PM UTC.
There's gonna be one tomorrow as well.
We're gonna be talking about this little market pump here.
But before we jump into the strategic vision of Mandela,
all the user experience improvements,
the future, the simple way to on and off-ramp and all that.
Joseph, I gotta ask you, Joe,
how are you liking the pump?
Are you complaining in any way
or is it all good on your end?
No, I'm an active trader.
I love it.
I love seeing the market gain stability, gain, you know,
yeah, find its foothold really as an asset class globally.
So it's fantastic for me to watch, you know,
it's been great to watch, of course,
the rise of this market throughout the last 10 plus years
as a market participant.
So I'm thrilled with this cycle and where we're going.
Oh yeah, a lot of people are very thrilled.
You know, a lot of these top buyers from previous cycles
are re-emerging.
A lot of people that forgot that the web three is a thing,
you know, are coming out of the cracks
and yeah, a lot of exciting stuff.
We got Noah at Eat Denver as well
and everyone's buzzing.
So everyone's exciting, everyone's excited.
The BTC halvening is coming soon.
There's less than about two months, I believe now.
And yeah, you guys can check the countdowns yourself.
But without further ado, if you're not aware,
if you're not sure or if you haven't heard of Mandela,
if you haven't been around for a while, I guess,
the official website is mandala.exchange.
So as we're talking here with Joe, if you want to dive deeper,
if you want to get on board it really fast,
just go to mandala.exchange
and you'll see what we mean when we say
this is some next level stuff that is going on here.
But I'll let Joe talk a little bit
about this new strategic vision for 2024
and moving forward.
And they got a pretty cool agenda for 2024.
And I want to pass it over to you
and just give us a little bit of a background
where you guys were in the past,
why you're shifting away from some of the things
you're shifting away from
and what are these new big updates
that you're so excited about?
Sure, and I was going to bring that up.
You can't really talk about where we're going
unless you talk about where we've been.
And as many members of our community know,
since this company was formed
and then reformed subsequently,
just a 30 second overview for those who are not familiar.
Mandala as a concept has been around for a long time.
The original company formation was done in 2017
with an ICO in 2018,
different ownership group, different founders,
different everything.
They never got past the beta stage
and kind of gave up in late 2019.
I was at the time the head legal counsel,
outside counsel, my law firm based out of Denver, Colorado,
speaking of East Denver,
I used to live about two blocks away
and this is the first year I'm not going in eight years.
But our firm kind of took over
the legal portion of it very early on,
made sure that it was compliant as possible
on a global scale.
Regulation was not the same back in 2017, 2018.
But we had about 2000 or so token holders,
when it didn't get past the beta form
and we said, well,
we were not gonna let these people become disenfranchised,
we'd like to develop a product for them.
So we kind of reformed the company
with a new leadership group,
raised funds internally to move forward
and scored a partnership with Finance Cloud
as the first centralized exchange to launch
on Finance Cloud in 2020.
Since then, obviously,
as we're gonna talk about today,
we appreciate Finance for its stepping stone.
Our vision was always to go independent
of Finance Cloud and develop our own exchange,
which we'll talk about today.
But that was a partnership for three years.
We recently closed up shop with them
as they sunset their cloud program in 2023
and we kind of went on our own two feet.
And now here we are with the most updated
and upgraded version of our crypto exchange,
centralized crypto exchange in early 2024.
So that's kind of been the journey.
There are some people on this AMA who've been there
from the start or from the very early days,
definitely appreciate you guys,
not only community members, but team members
as we hired many of our team members
from the original group that launched the exchange
and also from within our community at times.
So that's a little background on Mandela
and kind of the journey we've been on to here.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
You know, it's, I guess for some of us,
we're kind of used to Mandela and Joe
and some of the team members.
So I'm sorry if I sort of just brush over some of these
things, but well, since you did mention, you know,
getting reformed and working with Binance,
what was it like, you know,
if we're starting from the beginning,
how was it like working with Binance for this time?
Did it open some doors for you?
Did it raise some, I don't know, awareness for you guys?
And how does this impact you, you know, moving forward
since they're basically sunsetting this program?
Sure, so just to be clear,
they did sunset the program last year
and everybody either had to find a new home
or build on their own or kind of just close up shop,
which some of the exchanges on cloud did
and kind of returned user funds and just, you know,
just dissolved as companies.
Well, the process was, you know,
it was rocky at times and it was very good at times.
I mean, obviously the Binance name is a worldwide
recognized name as an industry leader.
So that was very beneficial for us
to launch on their cloud program as the first exchange.
And it did give us a little bit of a first mover advantage,
especially in the early days.
Now, what comes along with that when you are launching
and you're the first one to launch,
you become sort of a guinea pig, right?
If there are developmental delays or tech problems
or things like that, you kind of bear the brunt of it
as the exchange, as the forward facing piece.
So it is very tough at times.
And it was very tough at times to either launch things
that were fully, you know, hardened and tested
or kind of hardened the exchange in general.
We had a very dedicated dev team, a couple of them actually
that would work in the background
while the exchange was live in the foreground.
And people didn't know a lot of the time
that, you know, upgrades were being made,
updates were being made.
And that's the genius of, you know, full stack developers
is that they can do these things on the fly,
but you know, without disruption to the exchange,
which was great for us in the early days, of course,
because we were able to give a fully, you know,
a fully built out spot product to our customers.
Now, in our user base, our community.
Now, as we moved forward, we kind of requested more,
you know, complex pieces to the exchange
and some things that could be developed
and couldn't be developed.
So of course, there were restrictions on it
based on what the development team could do
based on what the API could support
based on different integrations
that could or could not be made
to their existing infrastructure, you know,
because of course the infrastructure
is proprietary to Binance.
So there were points of frustration, no doubt.
And there were really, really good things
that Binance helped us do, like you said,
with the visibility, with the number of pairs,
with the order books, things like that,
the security, the scalability of the marketplace
on the spot side.
But, you know, even without the sunsetting of Binance Cloud,
we knew that it was time to move forward
so that we could offer a more diverse, wider range
of products to our user base
that they were clamoring for
and that really all tier one exchanges offer.
And that's kind of, you know, set the stage
for us to leave in 2023,
regardless of if the program was sunset or not.
Yeah, I like that.
And I know a lot of people are sort of polarized
when it comes to Binance.
You know, some people love it to death,
others are a little biased
and all this sort of stuff.
But overall, I think they've made some great things happen
and they are driving the needle forward.
You know, they, yeah, sure.
They took some fines, you know,
that's, I guess that's part of their maturity process.
I don't know, a lot of bigger institutions
were fined with a lot heavier than Binance.
So I guess this is sort of the way the cookie crumbles.
So setting that aside,
I want to get into your revamp.
I want to learn more about the platform.
I know it's great to have your own dev team now.
I know they're building, they're doing a lot of stuff.
So let's start with something simple
that everybody can understand.
You're revamping the spot exchange, right?
So let's kick it off with that.
What's being revamped, what's being done there?
How many, I don't know, pairs are people,
you know, supposed to be trading on?
What's new, what's old and what's coming?
Sure, and what sets the easiest place to start?
I'm glad you brought that up.
So with the revamp of our spot platform,
we have expanded to 300 pairs to start,
300 assets, I should say,
and over 1,000 pairs or 1,200 pairs or so with those assets.
So a lot of the major assets, as you guys know,
have pairs that are paired with like Bitcoin, Ethereum,
USDC, USDT, BUSD sometimes,
even though it's been sunset by finance.
But, you know, they have these different pairs
that go together with a singular asset.
So with the new exchange launch,
we have 300 pairs to start,
all the relevant, you know, high volume,
high liquidity pairs that go with them.
And we are able to,
and we will be talking about this with listings as well,
add more pairs on a bunch of different blockchains,
a bunch of different networks.
I believe we have 127 blockchains
at our disposal right now.
So a lot of tokens that we've launched
also have their native chains,
which are sometimes, you know,
more cost-effective than Ethereum,
of course, and ERC-20 transfers.
So you will find that on our new platform,
there are a lot of native chain options
to select when you are depositing or withdrawing
or transferring funds as well.
So the spot build-out is really,
it's kind of a game changer to start for us
because it opens up the usability for users
and of course the spread of trading
different assets, right, for users.
Before we had 100 assets at our disposal,
now with 300, there's probably a much greater chance
that you're gonna find your favorite assets
to trade on our exchange and spot.
So basically, by sort of breaking free of the Binance Cloud,
does that mean that you're gonna be more flexible
when it comes to listings?
Will you have, I don't know,
what sort of a process will people have to go through?
Let's say, in case somebody is in the audience
and they're curious about getting listed
on a centralized exchange and particularly on Mandela,
what are some of the steps that these projects
and these founders will need to take
to sort of be onboarded to your platform?
Sure, and that's a great question.
We do have listing forms.
Or our process internally that we evaluate as a team
if a token or a project comes to us for listing
and there will be a very clear cut two or three page form
that you're gonna fill out
that gives the details of your project, right?
Like when it was formed, your team members,
where it's incorporated, if you can provide a light paper
or a white paper, and then, you know,
and kind of what market audience you have,
you're in your track record a little bit, right?
Then we'll do our own research.
We'll meet with the team regardless
and we'll discuss with whoever the founders are
or the community leaders
if it's a more community driven token.
And we'll discuss a few things,
which listing fees, cross promotional things
that we can run now that we have a platform
that allows us to do more of that
and different rewards type programs
we can run as well with your token.
So there's a lot that we can do to engage the audience
and, you know, kind of get them active
and get them activated on our exchange
and trading your token with, you know,
with whatever pair you decide to put it with,
whether it's USDC, USDT, usually recommended,
or if you're gonna do with a BTC or an ETH pair
if you have a different, you know, kind of market focus.
I love that you mentioned the rewards program.
This is something that I wanted to go into.
I know you have some plans for the MDX earn
as well as a referral program.
So maybe we can dive into all of these a little bit too.
Sure, sure.
I think it's a pretty good segue for us there.
But like you said, if they're interested project
listening here, or if you guys are friends with founders
that need an exchange to list on
that's not gonna cost you an arm and a leg
like a Binance or a Kucoin
or a major tier one exchange listing
but we'll still have the same liquidity benefits
and security and compliance and safety of use,
please have them reach out.
So I just wanted to add that in as well.
Now, another aspect to our platform we brought up
is mandala earn, that's new for us.
You know, it was something that we had wanted
to do a long time ago when we were with Binance still
but we could never get the development team
to complete the staking platform
or earning platform, I should say,
that was available on, you know, Binance.com.
Now we have that at our disposal
and we have a very simple way that you can earn.
We're starting with MDX as our pilot program,
of course, our native token.
All you have to do is hold your MDX tokens in your wallet
and you get a daily payout from our rewards pool.
Our rewards pool was initially seated
from our team operations war chest
because we of course held back a number of tokens
from our mint.
There will only ever be 400 million minted
just so everybody knows it's not a recurring mint
and burn type product to fill this rewards pool.
But so it is just from our team war chest
that we've held since 2018.
And we seeded it with that,
but in the future we will be seeding it
with a hybrid of buybacks from the exchange
with fees from trading volume
as well as, you know, different pools
that we have operations pools that we have of tokens.
So along with that,
we will be doing a little bit of fee buy back
and burn type stuff probably on a monthly
or bi-monthly basis.
We're gonna figure that out with our team
now that we have that capability as well.
But, you know, there's a lot of features
that come with the earn
and the more tokens you hold,
obviously the higher percentage of the pool
you earn each day
and you get a higher daily reward for tokens held.
So it's pretty basic.
It's a dynamic variable rate, of course,
depending on how many people enter the pool.
And when you log on the exchange, it's very easy.
If you go to the rewards column,
you just click earn rewards,
you opt in and you automatically earn rewards daily.
It sounds good.
And I know a lot of people get excited
about earn programs in any way.
So pairing that with the referral program,
it can be super beneficial, you know,
seeing how the market's turning
and going into, you know, 2024
and probably 2025 is gonna be a huge year for traders.
So having these programs active
and having these reward programs all around, you know,
is gonna be instrumental to driving more traffic,
keeping people happy.
You know, you wanna gamify it a little bit
because it is finance.
People do take it serious,
but, you know, they want this sort of a little bit
of a gamification, a little bit of fun,
a little bit of rewards here and there.
You know, they know that even if it's something as small
as getting some fees back or something as small
as some tokens.
Right, and that also pairs well,
leads us into our referral program as well.
Glad you brought up earning back on fees, right?
We have a pretty robust referral program right now
that is at 40% for signup, for new signups for users.
It will eventually drop down to 20%,
but any users you sign up under your referral code
who then trade, you will earn either 40%
to start a portion of their fees back
and then 20% after that.
So it is very worthwhile to sign people up to trade
because that is an extra benefit right there
that you get back.
And that is just automated.
I believe it's either weekly or monthly distributions.
It's slipping my mind right now
because we've launched a whole new platform
with a lot of features.
But you will see that kind of credit to your wallet in USDT
no matter what the token is, I believe,
on a weekly or a monthly basis.
So, you know, you pair referrals, you pair rewards,
and really it adds up to something, right?
And that's kind of what we want it to do.
We appreciate our community for hanging with us
for the last few years, of course.
And seeing the rollercoaster ups and downs,
not just with token price,
but with the way the markets rolled
and with the bear and bull cycles of crypto in general
and kind of guiding through different providers
to our own build now.
So it's really a way to give back
and a way for people to see that give back in their wallet.
Yeah, it all ties really nicely
into a better user experience
and creating these improvements.
These gradual upgrades is just make up
for a better experience for everyone trading.
So having that said,
I was actually reading that you're improving
the user experience by a lot.
You're adding a lot of things.
How have you designed it different?
Or what's something that you've developed
to make the user experience as seamless as possible
for new people onboarding?
Have you taken into consideration a lot of user feedback?
Have you tested new features?
How's that process been like?
And I don't think we can talk about new features
and exclude our biggest one that we've added,
which is Futures.
We were, of course,
we thought Binance Cloud was gonna launch Futures
our last year of our contract.
We had it worked in there contractually,
but I guess they decided to sunset their program.
So they kind of put that on hold,
which is a little bit of a surprise to us,
we got it developed and we now have
complete on our exchange over 90 margin pairs
and 25 to start Futures pairs.
We are allowed to add more on and we will
as we see more demand and request
for different pairs and different communities
trading different tokens.
So we understand as an exchange that derivatives trading
makes up a ton of crypto volume in the market.
So we not only saw it as an opportunity years ago,
but also as part of a complete ecosystem
and a complete offering to retail
and institutional traders alike.
And now we're really happy to be able to offer that
to all of our users, whether you're trading
you know, a $50 margin or Futures position
or a $500,000 Futures margin position,
you have plenty of liquidity,
you have the comfort of knowing your funds are safe
and it's just, it really makes up part of what we,
like I said, we consider a complete ecosystem.
So that's been really phenomenal to get launched.
And of course the feedback on it's been great.
It's very clean, it's very easy to use
and it's very user friendly
for even beginners in the crypto market.
Yeah, a lot of people, you know, love Futures
and they love options and they love trading them.
I myself am not a very good trader
or a big trader of Futures.
I've done all right, but I've also done poorly.
So I'm sticking to my DeFi stuff.
I know that you guys also have a pretty cool fiat
on and off ramp.
I believe you have a new partner
or is this an old partner?
I believe it was called Mercurio or something.
I wrote it down, I can't find it right now.
So how has that improved?
So we also right now do offer a Fiat on ramp
with our partner Mercurio
and we are working on getting
the off ramp integrated as well.
Mercurio is an industry standard partner.
They work with all the big boys,
the Binance, crack, sorry, Kucoin.
They have integrations with all the big exchanges.
We had them on, since we've left Binance cloud
we've had them integrated in one form or another.
And it's very seamless, it's very easy.
The fees are pretty reasonable.
It's typically around 4% or so plus whatever network fees.
And that's basic because credit cards
are usually around 3%, 3 point something percent.
So it's basically a credit card
or similar fee plus your network fees to transact.
And it offers a wide variety of cryptos and fiat conversions.
So it's really nice to work with them.
Very easy to work with, good dev team.
And they're very responsive.
If we have a question
or if there's something wrong with our module
we can get them get in touch with them like 30 minutes
or so and it's never a problem.
So they're always on the ball
and it's been a great partnership so far.
Yeah, well, you need a good solid on and off ramp
since everybody's talking about retail coming back.
So I'm pretty excited for that.
I was reading some news the other day
and these ETFs are trading like crazy
like the amount of volume going on there.
There's a lot of people that are excited
that maybe at the institutional level, once retails back
everybody's gonna be looking for a centralized exchange
to on an off ramp.
I know a lot of people do prefer the decentralized way.
And of course, everybody has their favorite and all that.
And perhaps if you're trading futures
and you want a little bit of a deeper liquidity
you might wanna go to a centralized exchange
because that's where the big market makers like to hang out.
So definitely take a look at Mandela, you know
and by the way, the official website
I'm just gonna say it throughout the broadcast
in case we have like new people
or people that wanna just read a little bit
and get involved.
It's just mandala.exchange, super simple.
Now on that on the off and off on and off ramping
are there any legal hurdles?
Is there any type of regional restrictions for people?
What sort of the feedback from the community
when it comes to you and your partners?
Are they looking for more regions?
Are they looking for getting people to onboard
in a much easier way or what sort of the situation there?
Are we making progress is what I'm trying to ask
since you are sort of the legal department here.
I wanna know is the planet onboarding
or are people still stuck
and can't get their money on chain?
Well, first of all, let's address,
I think it's a great question.
Let's address what's coming up this year
with onboarding crypto users for centralized, decentralized.
I don't care what your protocol is,
there's KYC, AML and KYT requirements
that are at the forefront
of all regulatory bodies globally.
And I hope everybody understands this, it's very important.
Whether your exchange is centralized, decentralized
or some kind of CD-Fi hybrid,
those regulations are going into effect by the end of 2024.
And there's not gonna be this whole kind of privacy,
kind of skirt the system.
That's not where the industry is going, right?
It's just not anymore.
This industry and this cycle
is all about compliance, regulation,
being a real, what I call a real business
in that you've followed the guidelines properly
and you've set up properly
so that you are compliant on a global scale.
What we've done to do that
is we've partnered with Chainalysis for our KYT and AML.
They are industry leaders,
they analyze on chain transactions for our users.
And it's very much a security thing, right?
Not only for our company, but for our users.
So when transactions come on and off the exchange,
they are monitored.
If there's any irregularities,
they will instantly notify us, our compliance department
and our legal department.
And we can take a look, you know, freeze funds if we have to,
you know, so that if there's a hack
or a risk of a hack for a user,
we can try to, you know, stop it before it happens
or track it as soon as it happens.
If we can't get to it in time,
we've never actually had a hack on our exchange
in four years, which is great.
But we'd like to continue that.
So we put that in place.
We have security just to make sure that the exchange
and the user base is compliant
and is from compliant countries, right?
There are certain countries globally that in 2024
are kind of either sanctioned or are just, you know,
not allowed to participate in crypto exchanges
for one reason or another.
So, you know, we have of course instituted
these compliance measures in our exchange
so that we can be completely above board,
completely compliant like we've always been
and continue, you know, bringing the proper safety, security
and, you know, peace of mind to our user base
knowing that you're trading on an exchange
that isn't gonna go somewhere, the drop of a dime
isn't going to, you know, kind of rug pull or fold
or do anything like that.
And that your funds are safe
and secure all the way through, right?
We have, you know, all of our liquidity
is sourced within EU compliant liquidity providers
and we have an amalgamation of different liquidity providers
so that, and we've vetted all of them.
So it is really 100% secure where your liquidity
is coming from and where your funds are going.
They just custodian in a custodial manner.
So, yeah, I completely love that.
And, you know, we've been talking about regulation
and compliance, we've had panels,
we've had discussions and everybody sort of agrees
that more regulation is not necessarily a bad thing.
I know you're gonna get your ETH maxis, your BTC maxis
and all these gentlemen that want everything
to be the wild wild west forever,
but that's just not the case.
So for everyone listening in the audience,
if some exchanges or somebody is just letting you trade
on their platform without AML, without KYC and all this,
you might wanna take a closer look
and make sure that everything is compliant
because you might run into some problems there.
Yeah, not only that, it's gonna change by the end of 2024.
If you guys are not familiar with Mika regulation
and the fifth AML directive,
I would urge you to look them up.
It's something that we as, you know,
cause I started this industry as a compliance
and regulatory lawyer back in 2015.
So it's something that I've drilled into my skull.
And I think that every project founder
or even, you know, trader should understand
at least tangentially should, you know,
or superficially should understand
that 190 countries have adopted this regulation
and this regulatory schema.
Basically everyone except the US
who knew the heck knows what the US is doing
from day to day.
We don't, that's why we still don't operate the US
cause you know, we can't get a beat on it.
And I try to help draft legislation for Congress
and I still can't get a beat on what's going on.
So if I can't get it, it's hard,
it's hard to kind of corral,
but you know, it's one of those things that
it's gonna happen on your favorite exchange.
No matter if it's centralized or decentralized,
there will be KYC, AML, KYT procedures put in place
or else those exchanges are gonna be fined
and kind of, you know, shut down and blackballed.
Unfortunately on a global scale,
that's just how it's working.
So it's, you know, it's something you gotta look out for.
So we took the initiative to change our KYC levels
from the old two BTC level with no KYC
to comply with the fifth AML directive
and the MICA regulations, which is a thousand euro per day,
up to a thousand euro per day is fine with no KYC,
deposits and withdrawals.
Once you have your capital on the exchange,
obviously you can trade any amount you want.
And, you know, after that, you have to KYC
just in order to have those levels raised,
but it is after that 100 BTC
and basically unlimited trading,
unlimited deposits and withdrawals for anyone.
Yeah, that's basically pretty nice for people.
You know, if you're, I don't know,
if you've been paid in BTC, ETH or anything like that,
wanna quick off-ramp it, you know,
you jump on the exchange and do it.
But once you really get into trading,
you actually do wanna be compliant
because with MICA and all these other regulations,
you know, and it's like you said,
we don't know what the hell the US is doing,
but when it comes to Europe,
people kind of look up to it
and hope that they're still gonna be on the right track.
I was at this really big event
at the kind of Chamber of Commerce here in Vienna,
and we had the pleasure of talking to some people
that are advising on the panel for the digital Euro.
And the reason why regulation is coming so fast
and reason why regulation is gonna be here,
you know, and it's like Joe was saying,
you know, by the end of 2024,
everybody and their grandma is gonna have to KYC
and do all these AML requests and everything like that,
is because this is the way the industry moves forward,
you know, all these countries and jurisdictions,
they want to have their own digital assets,
they want to have their own digital,
whatever it is, euros, dollars,
whatever you wanna digitize,
but they do need the legal framework,
and this is just the beginning.
And we're making some strides, you know,
I've heard some really interesting opinions
from people that are consulting these big institutions,
which I can say I like, you know,
some people call the part of crypto playing out,
and like, they call it a scam,
and they just want their own CBDCs
to be the actual crypto,
but I think we're gonna see a future
where everything is sort of gonna merge together,
and these assets that we love,
the BTCs, the ETHs, even the privacy coins
and all this other stuff that traditionally people think
it's for criminals or, you know, all this other bullshit,
you know, is gonna just live happily alongside
with the digital dollar, the digital euro,
the digital yuan, and so on and so forth,
because it's just the future, you can't stop innovation,
and well, not the sidetrack too much,
I was reading about your new mobile app,
available on iOS and Android,
what can people expect from that,
to what's there, is it the same as the desktop version
of the trading platform, are there any benefits,
can people get like all the bells and whistles,
notifications and everything like that,
what's going on in that front?
Sure, and you know, I'll just sum up what you said too,
about innovation before we go on the app,
it's not a problem,
I actually like getting into that conversation,
and I'm firmly in the camp that centralized,
decentralized exchanges have a role,
both to play, of course, in this space for
anywhere from new to more experienced traders,
trading on the platform of their choice,
I strongly urge newer traders to learn how to trade
on a centralized exchange first,
it's easier, it's more foolproof,
and you know, you're not gonna type one digit wrong
on your code, on your wallet address,
or a memo or something like that,
and lose all your funds, right, depending on the chain,
so it's a learning curve, and you know, we've all done it,
and I just, you know, I think you're right,
innovation's not gonna be stopped,
there's always gonna be those that want to
kinda color outside the lines in crypto,
there's always gonna be the vast majority
that wanna play firmly in the gray area,
and figure out how to guard rail properly,
this new asset class,
so it's really making sure that we set sensible regulation,
right, and like you said, Mika and the AML directive
are starting that way, in that fashion,
hopefully the U.S. could do something
other than what they've been doing for the last six years,
because it's really absurd, and you know,
as we move forward, we need sensible regulation
so that we can legitimize this asset class, right,
this is the cycle of legitimacy,
is what I like to call it, for crypto,
where the big boys, the institutions are finally getting in
with all the ETFs, with the, you know,
making it part of IRAs and Roth IRAs and stuff like that,
so you know, if you want grandma and grandpa
to play in crypto and make it mainstream,
you gotta abide by some rules, right,
I mean, it doesn't have to be the same rules
as the dollar, as the Fed goes by,
but there's gotta be a good framework for rules,
so that's just my soapbox on that.
Now, that being said, getting to our app,
right now our app is in production stage,
it should be launched very soon here
for a Droid and for iOS,
it is going to be, at first, a light app,
so what that is, is a place where you can deposit,
you know, fiat for crypto,
you can buy, sell, do quick swaps,
and you can see all the markets that are available to you,
and you can, there's a rewards, earning rewards spot too.
As we build out, we're looking at a quarter to two timeframe
to add in charts, to add in more advanced trading tools,
but really, we're calling it a light app for now,
so it's gonna be really easy on the go
if you wanna make quick swaps for your tokens,
or if you see a token's pumping and you get notified
and you wanna just go on there and sell it,
you log in, you sell real quick,
and you can be on your way,
so it's not a fully, fully, I guess,
featured out, I should say, app,
even though it's, of course,
fully functional and fully developed,
but we do look, like I said,
this year to quarter two to add more features to it,
but we should be getting that out the door,
obviously, since it's almost March,
we should be getting that out this first part of March
and getting it out to our user base.
I love that, I love it,
and the only reason why I went on that small little tangent
is because these guys, you know,
I was mentioning this seminar it was at,
and we had people from Accenture.
These are people that are advising the EU
on creating the digital euro.
These are people that were calling DeFi and Bitcoin
and crypto a scam straight to our faces,
and these are, like, we have receipts,
we have recordings of this,
so it is a little disconcerting,
but it's sort of, it's like you said,
you know, with more rules and regulations and compliance,
everybody will just see this emerging technology
for what it is and not be scared of it
and not call it names anymore,
and maybe we'll get our grandmas and grandpas on-boarded.
Yeah, I mean, there's some people,
like Gensler and Elizabeth Warren,
I'm not holding my breath, right?
But I mean, the vast majority of people understand
that it's a new financial asset class.
I mean, you know, my dad's our CFO
and part of our chief legal counseling,
73 and he loves crypto, right?
I mean, he's been in it since 2015.
So, you know, he bought us,
I think he bought GNT into like 2015 or 2016
was his first buy.
So, you know, it's not,
it really does vary by who buys,
or who was kind of acclimated to it
and who assimilated into it early, right?
It doesn't matter regardless of age.
He's got a whole group of friends in their 50s, 60s, 70s
that all started trading at least five years ago, right?
And got into crypto early.
So it really is more kind of mindset,
but now, like I said, with this age of legitimacy,
it's less about mindset and more about understanding
that it's been the fastest appreciating asset class
of all time.
And I think a lot of people see that as a way
to make more fiat at the end of the day.
And they're getting into things like ETFs
and that's kind of a gateway into crypto
at some point for a lot of older people, right?
We're still gonna have all of us
that are gonna trade crypto and understand that
buying crypto and not the derivative product
is the best way forward.
But, you know, the more massive adoption we get,
the more people, the more eyes on it
and the more places we need for people to trade
that are safe, secure and compliant.
Yeah, that's great.
And I love the fact that, well,
perhaps your father is more into finance
because my father is an engineer
and when I talk to him about DeFi,
he falls asleep in his armchair still, you know,
when I've been at this for a long while.
But anyway, we had some requests from people to come up.
So I've brought up a couple of people.
I'll throw it over to them for a question or two
and then I have a couple of more on my end.
I think Rahmat was first.
Rahmat, do you have a question
or anything you wanna ask of Joe here?
Go for it, sir.
Yeah, thank you.
I've been listening in, I have a few questions.
Okay, I was thinking,
how does Mandela Exchange integrate with Oracles
to facilitate external data imports onto the exchange?
I mean, to ensure the reliability
and timeliness of the price feeds.
Sure, so we integrate with a very large liquidity provider
as our primary liquidity provider
to provide pricing and order books.
They are one of EU's largest liquidity providers.
So we're never in a liquidity crunch.
They provide books for many of the top exchanges
and it's, you know, Oracles are typically used a lot
for, you know, for decentralized exchanges, of course,
and AMMs, but this is really more
of like a traditional market maker role
where they are, you know, pulling in the average price
or the, you know, the base price,
list price, whatever you wanna call it
from a bunch of different exchanges,
averaging it like a market maker would
and bringing it to our order books
and bringing all 300 tokens.
They have over, I think, 1,500 or 1,600 tokens
at their disposal.
So like I said, we will be building out
as we build the exchange out and get more requests
from our community for different tokens to trade,
but they have all the books, they have all the liquidity
and all the order, you know, order book depth
and security and scalability that we need.
So good question.
Got it, got it.
Okay, does the interface support API integration
for maybe algorithmic trading or third party trading bot
and what level of control do users have
over API permissions?
Sure does.
We have a very user friendly API.
It's a very developed, very built out and time tested API.
It's not a new per se API.
So it's been developed for a while
by the developers that built it.
And it can be integrated with many third party integrations
including bot trading, grid bot type trading, you know,
API call trading, whatever you'd like to do.
So it is a very usable, very user friendly
and very face forward API.
You can find it on our site and, you know,
play around with it if you're a developer.
Got it, got it.
Okay, I'm also interested in understanding
the management of the user's fund.
Has it changed with any updates or revamping
or the funds are still managed by third party
which is a verified or regulated custodian?
Sure, good question.
So when we launched this upgrade,
what we did and users know this is we just mapped
all the funds that were already on exchange.
They stayed under our custody.
They are with a very fully licensed built out,
you know, very secure custodian.
Of course, in partnership with our liquidity provider
they also do custodial services
and they are licensed globally
in many different locales and jurisdictions.
So funds are super safe with them in terms of,
you know, regulatory and compliance, you know,
standing, let's put it that way.
So what we did was we just mapped the,
we mapped all the user accounts when we did the upgrade
and we launched and all the users had to do
was kind of log in, set up a new password
and they could go to town trading
with the assets they had before.
You also talked about audiobook provider service.
I was wondering what you have in place
to maybe minimize the latency
and ensure the timely audit book
and updates for traders all around the world.
You know, the exchange that's been built
has been tested and been used by,
this is not the first project this development team has built.
It's been used by other major exchanges
and they've never had latency problems.
This is industry leading in terms of latency
and in terms of downtime.
They have, you know, the exchange they've built
has been up more than 99.99% of the time.
And also we actually do provide, which is nice,
a market overview section in our,
on our platform where you can see
if there's a specific chain or specific token
that's either congested, network congested
or is down for maintenance or anything like that.
You know, obviously we see with,
you know, I'm gonna do a dog on Solana for a minute.
Every, you know, six months
it goes down for a day or two, right?
So you can check there and see if it's under maintenance
or if it's down or if it's running properly.
So, you know, there's very, very, very minimal downtime
and there's really, really, really low latency.
Okay, final thing for me.
I also came across information that the exchange
has added new trading tools and charts
to help users make a well informed decision.
So I was wondering, are there any plans
to maybe integrate AI or machine learning tools
for the purpose of maybe improving the user experience
and expanding the capabilities of the exchange in future?
Sure, I mean, you know, listen,
we're always open to innovation
and of course our team understands that AI
is a critical part of, you know, crypto innovation
and blockchain innovation on a more broad scale.
So as we move forward with different pieces
and integrating different pieces into this exchange
because, you know, we're very pleased with what we've launched
but of course the work's never done
and we always wanna offer more features
and more options to our traders.
You know, we will definitely evaluate the use of AI
and simplifying that process
and bringing it to a final stage and launch
for our user base, absolutely.
Great, great.
Thanks so much for your time.
It's been really nice talking to you.
Over to you, Aktik.
Thank you, thanks for the questions.
Thank you, thank you for the questions,
that's my other one.
I'll pass it over to Captain Levi.
Captain Levi, if you have a question for Joseph here,
go for it, sir.
Yeah, thanks, Aktik.
Hi, Joseph.
You did mention a lot of things.
First off, I'd like to, you know,
see some clarification in some of the statements
that you made.
Please, I'm no investigative journalist,
please feel free to, you know,
feel free to, you know,
I just want some clarification of opinion.
You did make mention of the fact
that you're gonna be rolling out some new
and future features.
And, you know, we, I think BTC today
was at more than $7,000
based on, you know, the hype and the news
going around.
One setting point of the features features
is the fact that it actually, you know,
goes about based on news.
In fact, a lot of news is what controls
future trading.
This could actually make a lot of plans go awfully wrong,
but, you know, you already made mention of the fact
that the liquidity providers, you know,
the best of the best.
Is there any specific way that integration of ETFs,
for example, with the Bitcoin ETFs
and rumors around the Ethereum ETFs as well?
Is there any way it's going to be affecting
these new upgrades that are coming up?
I mean, I don't think so because remember
when you're trading futures,
your crypto futures on a centralized exchange rate,
you're trading against USDT pairs, typically.
You know, sometimes we're trading as BTC pairs as well,
but typically it's all based in USDT.
So it really is a different type of derivative product
than the ETFs, which is basically a paper product, right?
You buy shares in USD, you settle in USD
and you're never actually holding
any of the crypto you're trading, right?
This is a little different because you're actually
holding the USDT, it's still crypto, it's a stable coin.
It still settles in, you know, much the same way
when you sell your trade at a profit or a loss,
whatever you want to sell it at,
you settle in that USDT and it settles out of your account.
You know, it's something I'm pretty, not obviously,
I'm pretty familiar with it.
I've been trading futures since 2015,
since BitMEX was only basically Bitcoin and Ethereum.
So I'm familiar with futures trading and crypto,
but you know, it's a different type of product
and if you are gonna trade on the exchange,
I will say word of warning, please learn,
you know, the nomenclature for trading,
whether you're trading in isolated position or cross position
or what leverage you're trading
and how that affects your margin, all that good stuff,
please understand that.
I don't want anybody getting rekt as a trader.
That's the last thing I want.
And I want everybody to make good profitable trades
and make money with us, this bull cycle.
But in terms of ETFs, I think what it does
is it brings visibility to the industry.
It brings that, you know,
brings that almost like an accountability
to the industry as well,
where like I was talking about before,
people have to be cautious about where they're trading
on the more regulated and compliant exchanges
because those are the ones that are gonna be around.
And a lot of those that aren't regulated and compliant
right now will have to be so by the end of 2024
in line with these regulatory processes.
But I think bringing more eyes to crypto
and more legitimacy to crypto,
it definitely extends to futures trading
on the uncentralized exchanges as well
because people feel safer going there and doing it.
And they kind of equate it more to trading
on like a fidelity or an uphold or a, you know,
a typical, you know, regular forex exchange
and they see the similarities and they feel safe doing it
and they understand that USDT isn't going anywhere
or USDC isn't going anywhere
and they can have that one to one value for the dollar.
And it's going to be, you know,
it's time tested and time proven
that it's withstood the test of time so far.
So yeah, it's a good question,
but that's kind of the way I see it.
That's a really impressive insight.
Speaking of regulation, my next question is centered around
that you did speak for a couple of minutes
for with darling KYC, KYC for, you know,
centralized exchanges.
Of course, I'm actually also a fan of accountability
but of course based on, you know, the human nature
on both sides, it's privacy and privacy oriented enterprises.
So to speak, it happens to,
it starts off as a friendly conversation
and it ends up becoming a very heated chicken and egg issue
because those on the privacy side say
we do not want government interference.
But of course, some accountability has to be held
in one way or the other.
Now, following compliance policies
and which is to remain safe,
well, of course, in normal human instincts,
we actually go for where they can actually
put someone accountable for.
But then with issues regarding, you know,
banks taking people's money
and of course, banks shutting down completely
with people's phone still inside,
people wish to take out centralized exchanges,
which has less strict KYC procedures.
What's the big one?
How do you think the end of 2024 would be like?
Because this compliance measure of course has to be taken
but those who are privacy oriented
may not want to actually go for it.
Do you think that there's a big,
I generally would suggest some kind of zero knowledge
of verification and authentication,
but what's your tip on this overall?
Sure, I think I talked about it before.
But I think that you're gonna see a shift
and you've already seen this shift
away from DeFi and privacy
and to harsher regulations against it, right?
I mean, look at what's already happened last year
and look what's happening now.
It wasn't a mistake
that Binance delisted Monero the other day.
It wasn't a mistake, Monero's, you know,
and we've all used Monero and traded Monero for years.
I have nothing against Monero,
I love the premise, I love the development
and I love the chain.
I've been using it forever
since it came out and trading it forever mostly.
But look, there's just a global shift away from privacy
and towards tougher regulations against privacy tokens
and DeFi protocols and mixers.
We saw what happened with tornado cash.
We're gonna see more of that this year.
And there's an attempt to kind of guardrail the industry
for new users.
And yes, there is some, of course,
self-driven motivation behind it for regulators
because I should say regulatory agencies
like the IRS and the US,
they want a piece of the action, right?
They don't want hundreds of thousands if not millions
of crypto traders not reporting anything, right?
I mean, I've always warned my friends.
I have plenty of friends
that have done very well in crypto
but they'll sit there and buy a house and two cars
and report, you know, 20K in income.
And I'm like, you can't do that, right?
One look at you and people know you didn't make 20K last year
because you bought a $70,000 Mercedes
and then a $100,000 Ford Raptor, whatever.
One of those things where regulation is catching up,
it will catch up.
It's gonna be there in the next couple of years
if not already.
And people just have to be ready for the shift, right?
There's reporting requirements.
There's safety and compliance requirements.
That's just why we changed our KYC policies
to conform with global standards.
And those who don't do it are just,
they're asking for unnecessary trouble.
And look, I've been in crypto since 10 plus years.
I love the spirit of crypto.
I love the spirit of blockchain development.
And God, I love developers in this industry.
They're freaking brilliant, right?
And this is me on my soapbox for 30 seconds.
I want them to keep developing.
I want them to have a safe space
and a sandbox to develop it.
I don't want overregulation.
No one wants that.
I think it's awful.
And I've tried to work with legislators in the U.S.
and continue to do so, including Tom Emmer in Minnesota
and Governor Polis in Colorado and others.
You guys don't know.
I sit on the board of Minnesota Blockchain Initiative.
I lived up there for a few years.
And I also sit on the board of directors for Colorado
and Blockchain where I'm still technically a resident.
And it's hard to move against institutional norms
like the Federal Reserve.
It's very hard.
It's very slow.
They're so entrenched.
They're so deep rooted
that you're fighting against powers that be.
And it's a good fight and I'm all for it.
But there's also got to be accountability.
There can't be people getting in the industry
en masse this crypto cycle
and then 500 million multiple billion dollar hacks
happening on DeFi protocols
is going to really destroy what we've built up.
So there's a balancing act.
Hopefully that makes sense.
It does make sense.
Regarding the purchases of exotic lifestyle adultery,
it was starting to go back to what's called e-mail something.
But then let's talk about you just made a budget statement
regarding institutional norms.
10 years ago, a couple of years ago,
the principal was actually still in very early stages
and institutional norms and traditional methods
were not really friendly
because it was new.
It was seemed underdeveloped.
But then, working to the future,
the time-wrapping situation,
the next thing we have ETFs
and looking deeply into these ETFs,
you're going to see that
those so-called regulators
and institutional norms
are changing their rules and policies
so that Bitcoin and blockchain technology
and financial enterprises
could also be integrated or fused into the system.
I think that privacy-oriented enterprises
will also have a shot at this scrutiny
and flexible laws that also fuse them
into the cycle, so to speak.
So I think the question is,
what do I see coming from institutions and enterprises?
Is that correct?
Well, I think we've covered it.
I think we see what's happening, right?
We see the black rocks of the world.
We see the major institutions of fidelity.
I mean, for some reason, Vanguard's not.
I don't understand.
But, you know, most of them are,
understand where the money is,
understand that crypto is primarily driven
by the next generation 20 and 30-something year olds, right?
I feel old at 41 in crypto, which is ridiculous.
And I'm a young 41.
It's driven by that.
This is what, you know,
this generation's growing up with.
This is what this generation's used to.
And a real conversation for most people in this generation
is, do I buy, you know,
Bitcoin or Ethereum or my favorite token
or meme token or whatever,
or do I put a few bucks away in something
and not see any return from it, right?
It's not typically talked about stocks and bonds.
It's not it anymore.
It's crypto.
So I think the institutions have caught on,
the major financial enterprises have caught on,
and then that's where they're going with it.
So, you know, it's,
it's only one way, which is mass adoption.
That's the way it's moving this cycle.
If we could, after now,
these questions,
can I go through a few of the questions
that our users have posed to us?
I don't know if you have that list.
If not, if our team could send it to you,
I could start, though, going through them
because we have a lot of good community questions
and I'd like to hear.
Certainly.
Thank you, Captain and Rahmat for coming up.
I don't have the list in front of me.
Let me check on my telegram,
but if you do have it, certainly.
Let's jump into some of those questions.
And I will start here with a very popular question
in our community.
When will CMC and CoinGecko track our token
and our exchange, guys, by the way?
We have finished the applications
for CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko,
and we are in the process of waiting.
Basically, there is a timeframe for new listings,
which they unfortunately consider us
because we've built a new platform
with a new API and new everything, right?
We are, of course, not a new exchange.
We've been around four and a half, four years.
But, you know, in their eyes,
we are new because we have a new build.
So there is a timeframe
where we're going to have a waiting game here,
first for the exchange, then the token.
The token will be a shorter waiting time period
once we get the exchange listed
because obviously it'll be tracking the trades
of our token on exchange as well.
And it's just going to be a period of probably
a couple months, I would say, unfortunately.
That's what they got back to us with,
and that's what we're looking at right now.
We'll do everything we can to shorten that.
We've reached out to our connections that we have,
especially at CMC.
But, you know, with the just sheer multitude
of tokens and exchanges that get listed these days,
it's a lot of work for the developers
over there and the listing experts
or listing people over there.
So they can only list so much at a time,
you know, because they can only work
so many hours a day.
So that's where that is.
That's a good question.
But we're in a holding pattern there,
and we've already applied.
I guess it doesn't matter how big or small you are,
people are still going to ask when CMC, right?
Yeah, of course.
And it's always the first question.
And that's okay.
It's a good question.
It's just a process,
and the process has changed a lot
throughout the years, right?
I mean, when I was working with some of the first tokens
I worked with,
the listing process was about two seconds.
One of the first projects I worked with,
Divi, an old, old token.
I was one of their first lawyers.
It took about 20 minutes to get in contact
with CMC as it was in its current state
before it was acquired by Binance
and get it up there, right?
It took no time.
We submitted a couple of documents
and it was done.
Now it's a process because you're getting,
you know, insert meme coin name here
and about 10,000 of them applying a day
to be listed.
So it's a waiting game, unfortunately.
Let's see.
Other good question that goes along with that.
Is it a problem in the long run
to have MDX instead of MDXT?
First to be listed on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko
than for communication because both are exchanges.
Yes, it is true that MDX is the tokenized,
on Binance at least,
of another exchange, MidX, right?
However, our contract,
our token contract is MDX, not MDXT.
Always has been MDX and we only changed to MDXT
so that Binance could have a distinction
between products because MidX was one of their products
and Mandala exchanged one of their products.
Now that we're clear of that,
we've gone back to the MDX token.
There's no confusion because obviously
when you trade tokens and you look on an exchange,
there is a little token ticker in a symbol next to it.
We're very careful when you look at the symbol, of course.
Right now, obviously, we're trading on our exchange
and the focus is on building out our exchange
and bringing users and retaining users on our exchange.
For now, token will be listed on our exchange primarily.
That doesn't mean we won't build out in the future,
but for right now, the focus is bringing people in
and growing our community on our exchange.
Always look for the ticker.
Always make sure you're checking prices
for the right Mandala token.
We do have a nice token bot that displays the price
that one of our users has built for us
in recent days with the new just released API.
I'm very appreciative of that, so thank you.
It's MDX and it's going to be MDX for the foreseeable future
unless something catastrophic happens,
which we don't plan on.
There will be further pairs against MDX.
There will eventually be an MDX market
on the exchange to trade against other tokens.
Same question posed a couple different ways, no problem.
At this point, we're keeping it against USDT.
It's pretty industry standard.
Also, we don't want to spread liquidity too thin.
We want one pair that's trading at a decent volume
rather than two pairs that split market cap
and split volume and doesn't really give a true sense
of what's going on with the Mandala token.
We don't want a user to come on and see Mandala paired
against, let's say, BTC, and then there'll be $20 worth
of trading at a minuscule amount
and have this minuscule cap
and give our community the wrong impression.
We're keeping it against USDT for now, ERC20 for now.
We may expand to other networks and whatnot in the future.
We've actually gone through the CERTEC procedure
for other networks as well,
but we're just keeping that in our back pocket
for now and not utilizing it.
Yeah, go ahead.
I was going to ask, if people do have feedback
or featured requests or these kind of questions,
what's the best way to sort of post it or ask it?
Do they just go on Twitter?
Should they go under socials?
Do you have a dedicated email account for this sort of stuff?
Yeah, social is always best.
In Discord, we have an AMA questions chat,
and periodically, we pop in there.
We have a lot of AMAs going on, obviously, this week and next week,
where we're going to try to hit different swaths
of these questions and really make sure they're covered.
Obviously, I don't want to do too many repeats,
but the main ones will hit on a lot of these AMAs.
But if there's other questions,
feel free to pop in our Discord and ask,
especially on the AMA questions chat channel,
we have a lot of community members that are intimately familiar with
at least the outer workings of Mandala
and can answer questions about the exchange on your behalf as well.
Another good one.
Will you support more Layer 2 networks
or less popular networks like Cosmos or Dot-based networks?
Yeah, we already do support.
Like I said, there's 127 blockchains now
in this latest upgrade that are supported.
So there's a lot of that,
and a lot of native chains supported.
Yes, a lot of them are Layer 1s or EVM type chains.
But yeah, as we expand out and we expand our ecosystem,
we definitely want to look at more L2s,
want to look at more subchains from different ecosystems
and onboard projects that are interesting to our community.
So we're definitely going to do that as we build out.
That won't be a problem.
Time frame on the app, we talked about that.
Should be in the next couple of weeks here,
beginning to the middle of March.
We should have that all out the door in users' hands, no problem.
Will there be other languages supported on the exchange site?
For now, we did English.
We do have the option to add other languages,
and we will look at expanding that based on where our users are from
and try to do that as we move forward.
We just wanted to make sure our exchange got out
and was fully integrated in English first
so that we'd have a baseline to start from.
But yeah, that's one of the things we're going to look at
as we expand out our offerings is other languages as well.
Somebody asked when CERTIC in 2018,
and then again in 2020 when we moved over to version 3 of our token.
We've had CERTIC certification for our token since 2020
for this current version,
and we had that before we ever launched on Binance Cloud.
So there's no need to recertify it for any reason.
And like I said, we also went and got our token certified
on a different chain.
Should we want to use that in the future?
We have it in our back pocket.
So we're certified on two chains, actually.
Are there any planned use cases for the MDX token
that we can speak to?
Yes and no.
I don't want to give it all away.
I want my marketing team to have something to discuss
and right now, obviously, we've added the rewards
as the main driver and additional use case,
but it's not going to be the only one.
We will be adding more use cases,
especially for those who are 300k Club,
who have been around for a long time
and stuck with us for a long time
and held throughout these years, many of them.
And we're going to add a few little perks for them
where they're going to have a little more hands-on approach
to how we operate with this new exchange
because we have more flexibility now than we've ever had,
and we have more, I guess, more hands-on control
than we used to have.
Remember, when we were with Binance, Binance Control,
the lot of what we did on the backend had to,
because it was their proprietary software and infrastructure,
and it's different now.
So we have more control,
so we're going to implement a few more features,
especially for our larger token holders.
We'll be more, and no, I'm not giving it away.
Will earning rewards dynamically adjust the amount
of exchange volume generated so that it potentially
increases over time?
If we get more and more exchange volume,
as I was talking about before,
those rewards pools will be a combination
of team pools that are holding
and some buybacks from fees earned on the exchange.
So yes, the more trading volume,
typically the more you will see in those pools,
and we will be adding them on a continual basis
after we add the initial pool.
So just so everybody knows,
right now we're doing a one-month promotional
for launching the exchange.
So everybody in there is earning on the one-month pool,
and then after that we're going to do rolling pools
with different pools of liquidity coming,
or different pools of MDX coming in for the rewards.
Let's see.
With regulatory compliance,
the four-fundament-dollar strategy,
will the exchange be partnered with API support
for any established tax reporting tools?
Yes, I definitely want to get that done.
Since we launched at a really bad time
for tax reporting for 2023,
the goal is to do that for next year.
I mean, since we upgraded, I should say,
and we have a new API,
we are going to definitely work with a few different protocols
here that do tax reporting on a global scale,
and try to get those implemented for 2024.
I'm in contact with two or three of them right now,
and we're going to definitely pick a partner
and probably do some AMAs on that as we move forward.
Good question.
You know, it's definitely up my alley,
as well as a tax lawyer and a compliance lawyer.
Let's see.
I think that's a lot of them.
I think that's a lot of them.
That's most of the questions that we got in,
actually, that were kind of unique to our build
and how we're growing out.
So, is there anything else you have?
I mean, speaking of building and growing,
you must have something on your roadmap
that you are most excited about.
You know, I don't mean to pry too much,
but maybe give us a little bit of alpha.
What's something that you're super excited,
you know, coming into 2024, maybe early or late 2024,
anything like that?
What we're excited about?
I mean, we're not done building, right?
I don't want to give it away.
I think right now with launching futures
and launching the rewards systems for our exchange,
those are two pretty major milestones we hit
that we've wanted to launch for a long time,
and we're very excited about that for our community.
But, you know, one of the other things we're excited about
is going to be listings in 2024.
We're really excited to bring new communities onto our exchange,
have them come see, you know, what we've built,
and come have them interact with our community.
You know, we have a lot of fun in our Discord.
We have a lot of really great characters
that I like to talk to every day,
and I say characters in a very loving way.
You know, these guys are a part of guys and girls
who are a part of my life, right?
Just like they might be with any founder's life.
You know, the community is the lifeblood of our exchange,
and we really enjoy interacting with them on a daily basis
and kind of seeing where their head's at,
getting suggestions from them,
and even just, you know, hanging out and talking about,
I mean, we got guys who post food recipes.
We got, you know, we got all kinds of stuff going on
in our Discord, so we want to bring to our community members
as much, you know, as much utility as we can,
and part of that's going to be some combination,
and I might have given a little away with the token
and with new listings and with new communities coming in.
So, you know, it's going to be beneficial
to hold our token in that regard,
but really we're excited for the new listings
that are going to come in,
give them a place that they can safely interact,
give them a place where they can, you know,
operate on a centralized protocol
like some of these other big exchanges, you know,
charging six figures plus to get listed.
It's not like that with us,
and we don't want it to be like that.
We want it to be a fun experience
and an affordable experience
and something that it's going to build out,
you know, whether it's a new ecosystem
that's bringing a bunch of tokens over
or whether it's a project
that wants their first exchange listing.
So, you know, that's definitely our long-term vision
right there for 2024.
Yeah, builders will keep building, you know.
It's lovely to see.
We've been, you know, full disclosure
with Moby Media and everything.
We've been friends and partners with the Mandela
for quite some time now, and they're great.
You know, we've had people that sometimes think
that talking to some of these exchanges
because they are sort of A tier
and, you know, sort of out there
and have a name and sort of like a nice popularity to them.
They think they're sort of unapproachable
or anything like that, but like Joe mentioned,
if you do know someone, if you are a project maker,
if you are somebody that has a favorite token
that wants to be onboarded to Mandela,
it's something as easy as DMing someone in the team,
something as easy as filling out a form.
It's not, you know, I like Joe saying,
don't look at it as something that's completely out of reach.
It's probably a lot easier than most people think.
I think that I might have missed or anything
that you feel is important to highlight
or maybe a call to action here for our community
before I let you go, because this has been great.
You know, we've been going on for about an hour here.
We like to keep things high level, by the way, guys.
So I know some questions were related to the APIs
and, you know, maybe you're out there
trying to build some trading bots or anything like that.
And that's cool, you know,
so maybe defer to some of the documentation,
maybe defer to some of the people in the community,
join the Discord, get involved,
and you'll get all your answers there.
But I want to pass it over back to you, Joe,
for some closing thoughts or maybe a call to action
or something that maybe we've missed
and you want to bring to our attention to the audience here.
I mean, I don't think we've missed too much.
I think I've tried to cover everything
as much as humanly possible, right?
And at the end of the day,
we'd love you guys to come check out the exchange.
Like you said, trade.mandala.exchange
or mandala.exchange, it'll reroute you, same thing.
And, you know, come check out our site.
It's really sleek.
It's reformatted, easy to use, easy layout.
And there's just a lot of options
and things to trade on there as well
for anybody from a novice to a very experienced trader.
And come join our community as well.
Come join our Discord and our Telegram community.
It's pretty vibrant.
There's always somebody talking about something in there.
And it's not just one dollar related.
It's other crypto related too, you know.
And we have a lot of fun in there.
You'll always catch our team in there if you have questions.
You know, we'll answer you pretty,
as long as it's an appropriate question,
we'll answer you very, very quickly.
And, or our community members will answer you as well.
Because we've a lot of them, like I said, have been a long time.
So, you know, please come check out our new exchange.
Come trade with us.
We'd love to have you.
And we look forward to, you know,
onboarding some new users and adding to our community.
Lovely, lovely.
Thank you, Joe, once again, for being here with us.
Again, Joe, if any time you want to jump on our platform,
you're more than welcome.
Joe's been a tremendous supporter of our weekly show as well.
When we were getting started with our aquarium show every Wednesday,
4 p.m. UTC.
Joe was there, you know,
dropping some legal knowledge,
even from the beginning about a year and a half ago, you know,
it was just Joe, Noah,
and a couple of other lawyers, you know,
just dashing it out on the stage.
And well, we're going to have a space tomorrow.
And it's related to the BTC and how the cycle is different all this.
So you're more than welcome.
Yeah, I'll be there.
I'll be there.
I'll be up on the stage.
It'll be fun.
You know, I haven't been I haven't been up in a couple of weeks.
I miss it.
Oh, yeah, I'll be there.
Well, we're there every week.
That's the beauty of it.
Anytime you feel like it, just jump on.
And that goes for everybody in the audience as well.
Thank you, everyone, for tuning in.
Thank you for participating.
Thank you for the people that came on stage and asked some questions.
Great questions from your community as well.
And it's always a pleasure to talk to people that are building cool products
for everyone to engage with.
And like Joe mentioned, the official website,
Mandala that exchange, there's a lot of information there.
Check out the blog.
Check out the community.
Get on board into this energy exchange.
You know, and if you want to learn how to trade and do all this sort of stuff.
Well, you know, the Internet is vast and wide.
And there's a lot of YouTube videos out there.
So if you want to get a little bit more educated and learn how to even use some
of those pesky futures contracts and all that sort of, you know, more things,
you know, just hop on over to the Discord, engage with the community.
And you'll see that everyone's a lot friendlier, you know, especially during
the start of a new bull run.
You know, people are a lot friendlier.
And it's like Joe said, it's nice to make some money,
but it's better when you do it with friends and you do it together.
So with that said, thank you so much, Joe, for being here.
You know, it's been a blast.
We'll see you tomorrow.
And thank you, everyone, for tuning in.
Sounds good.
And thank you, everybody, for showing up.
And thank you for the questions.
Appreciate it, guys.
Thanks for your time.
Cheers, everyone.
Remember, everything you hear on this broadcast is meant for educational
purposes only.
We don't provide any financial advice.
But like I mentioned, we can provide you with some links.
So, Mandal that Exchange, check it out if you haven't already.
Some pretty cool stuff there.
Some pretty cool people in the community.
And we'll see you all tomorrow for PM UTC.
Take care, everyone.
Be safe out there.