Recap AMA with Monty Metzger CEO of LCX
tehMoonwalkeR
Great, again thanks for being here!
please tell us about the progress u guys have made so far, 2020 has been quite the run for LCX
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
I’m Monty Metzger, CEO, and Founder of LCX. I’m excited to be part of this community AMA today. LCX is a financial services company that focuses on the tokenization of assets, security token offerings, and advanced trading tools. 2020 had been a fantastic year for LCX so far. We will continue to stay focused to deliver on our vision, investing in our product and services, expanding our tokenization pipeline.
With that, let’s open the AMA and start with questions.
🚀🚀🚀
2020 had been fantastic for LCX. We used the downturn to grow. I wrote about our strategy at “Winning In Uncertain Times” at https://www.lcx.com/winning-in-uncertain-times-montys-company-update/
Now we are focusing on Execution and getting sh*t done! https://www.lcx.com/mastering-the-art-of-execution-montys-company-update/
For everybody in this channel. Let me introduce LCX quickly
LCX is a financial services company that focuses on the tokenization of assets, security token offerings, and advanced trading tools.
LCX Terminal is a sophisticated crypto trading platform to manage your portfolio across all major cryptocurrency exchanges on one single user-interface.
LCX STO Launchpad will be the new issuing platform for security tokens, while LCX Exchange aims to become the preferred marketplace for compliant digital assets. LCX is headquartered in Liechtenstein and is operating by the new Blockchain laws and regulations.
This is our website https://www.LCX.com
Here you’ll find us on twitter www.Twitter.com/LCX
Please join our official announcement channel https://t.me/LCXNews and our telegram community at https://t.me/JoinLCX.
Ray
Ray from team WeOwn here. I have 2 small questions:
1. What protocol are you building your platform on?
2. I read about secondary markets for securities on LCX, will these be P2P?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Good to have you here as well. We need to strengthen the Liechtenstein ecosystem and build more success stories. So important.
We are protocol agnostic. That’s why we do work with ICON Foundation, exploring how we can work together. See https://www.lcx.com/partners/
E S
What about the 7/10 licences ?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
The L in LCX stands for Liechtenstein, our company home and headquarter. Liechtenstein is probably the most exciting jurisdiction for blockchain technology at the moment. The Blockchain Laws are regulating the whole token economy — not just one piece of the puzzle. Enabling LCX to build a tokenization engine.
tehMoonwalkeR
ok guys lets first talk about the LCX platform
STO questions come later
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
In line with the Liechtenstein Blockchain Act, all entities dealing with crypto assets will now have to be regulated and licensed by the FMA > this also applies for LCX AG.
FMA = Financial Market Authority in Liechtenstein.
But let’s talk about the product first.
I highly recommend to check out our product and register at https://accounts.lcx.com/register
tehMoonwalkeR
where is the status of the lcx terminal now, and what will be implemented later?
From what i have seen it will be one complete ecosystem with many branches
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Yes, LCX Terminal is growing rapidly.
LCX Terminal is A Multi-Exchange Crypto Trading Platform to trade on all major crypto exchanges within a single interface. Connecting up to 15 Exchanges, Trading across more than 5’000 trading pairs, Price Alerts, News Desk and detailed portfolio analysis.
LCX Smart Order is an automated smart order routing system for cryptocurrency trading. Advanced algorithms compare prices across crypto exchanges in real-time and execute trades at the best price.
LCX Smart Order is part of LCX Terminal, and also free to use — part of the free plan.
And we launched LCX Cryptocurrency Reference Price Service, which provides a credible reference price to the marketplace and enhances market participants’ risk management of digital assets. We provide daily reference prices of the U.S. dollar price and Euro price of one bitcoin and one ethereum.
Achintha
CZ’s tweet really affected LCX reputation. What are your plans to get the remaining 3 licenses including any timeline to make the reputation?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
It actually helped us!
The company was incorporated in April 2018, since then we invested more than 2.5 Million USD into legal setup and our technology platform. We also learnt a few lessons early, as we partnered with an international cryptocurrency exchange (you know who…) — where we wanted to help setting up a regulated and compliant business. This failed, and we lost a lot of money and time. We pivoted the company in early 2019 and focused on building our own proprietary technology infrastructure, fully compliant and in accordance with the new blockchain laws. This path immediately turned out to be very successful.
tehMoonwalkeR
I had the pleasure to test the platform and its truly amazing, specially the speed
what about the integration of bots and trading tools?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
LCX Terminal will be expanded with more functionality and new cool features.
We have announced a partnership with Peter Sokolow and System9 — currently developing some smart bots for arbitrage and market making.
In detail, we are deploying AI-driven algorithmic trading methods to enable our users to trade more efficiently. We are working with Peter and his team to develop several smart algorithmic trading solutions to be implemented at LCX Terminal, LCX’s smart trading and portfolio management solution.
But we also work with some other incredible advisors, such as Don Tapscott or Jimmy Wales — the founder of Wikipedia. We work closely with leading industry players, like ICON Foundation, Animoca Brands and engage at the World Economic Forum with regard to Central Bank Digital Currencies.
LCX Terminal currently supports more than 5'000 trading pairs accross 16 exchanges.
LCX Terminal brings together real-time data the major crypto asset markets, instant trading across all platforms, news services and powerful analytics and reporting — combined in one platform.
We are also working to implement social signals directly at LCX Terminal. That’s part of our partnership with LunarCrush.
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
I see that people are asking why Liechtenstein. Let me give you some background about myself first.
I am an entrepreneur by heart. I found my first internet company back in 1998 at the age of 18 when I was still at school. I graduated from Switzerland and Germany in Business Administration and Electronic Marketing with additional executive programs at Harvard Business School HBS in Boston, USA.
Early 2000 I worked at the BMW Group as an Innovation Manager, where I was responsible for the introduction of “BMW webTV” and BMW’s first mobile marketing activities. In 2003, I co-founded a future technology consultancy and market research company headquartered in New York, with offices in Beijing, Tokyo and Munich. I sold my shares and exited the company in 2008 and started as a business angel and investor.
In 2012 I co-founded Digital Leaders (www.DigitalLeaders.co) as a global network of some of the most influential leaders in the technology industry. The team at Digital Leaders are offering customized learning journeys and executive programs for CEO’s, high-level managers, corporate groups and government delegations, curating agenda’s at technology hubs such as Silicon Valley, Stockholm, London, Tel Aviv, Beijing, or Tokyo.
In 2014 I co-founded an Alternative Investment Fund, called Digital Leaders Ventures (www.D-L-V.com), in Luxembourg where I served as General Partner responsible for the sourcing, evaluation and management of the investment portfolio. At DLV we also wanted to invest in crypto, but the regulatory framework had been missing.
In early 2017 I resigned as General Partner at DLV to start LCX.
Now at LCX I am building a Blockchain Company For The New Financial World — including a next generation digital assets exchange and a “tokenization engine” to digitize any asset and turn it into a tradeable crypto asset.
The journey with LCX has been super exciting, while the best is yet to come.
You can check out my private blog at https://blog.monty.de/about/ or follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/montymetzger
Before deciding on Liechtenstein, we screened the globe for the best jurisdiction. We looked at USA, Hong Kong, Malta, Singapore, Germany, Gibraltar and Zug Switzerland. The result of our analysis was clear. Liechtenstein will be leading the way.
Liechtenstein is probably the most exciting jurisdiction for blockchain technology at the moment. The Blockchain Laws are regulating the whole token economy — not just one piece of the puzzle.
It’s part of EEA with access to whole Europe and Switzerland. It’s a small country with a super high reputation. AAA rating at Standard and Poor’s
tehMoonwalkeR
blockchain is indeed a brilliant way for small but well connected countries to grow their business impact
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Here are some of the advantages of Liechtenstein https://www.liechtenstein-business.li/en/economic-area/advantages
As a small country, we know most people at the Financial Regulator personally and frequently engage with them. Sometimes we even reflect on business ideas early to get their feedback. This is incredible helpful.
You can read about the Blockchain Laws here https://impuls-liechtenstein.li/en/blockchain-act-liechtenstein/
In line with the Liechtenstein Blockchain Act, all entities dealing with crypto assets will now have to be regulated and licensed by the FMA > this also applies for LCX AG.
As per Articles 2 of the Liechtenstein Blockchain Act LCX provides the following services:
TT Exchange Service Provider
TT Token Depositary
Token Generator
Physical Validator
TT Key Depositary
TT Price Service Provider
TT Token Issuer
These are the 7 licenses out of the Blockchain Act. The other 3 are not relevant for us. There are 10 in total.
One new service in accordance with the new laws are our reference price services.
https://www.lcx.com/Cryptocurrency-Reference-Price-Services/
Somebody referred to CME Group in this chat. We know the management and had some meetings in February this year in Chicago. CME launched the Bitcoin Reference Rates BRR before they started their Bitcoin Futures. At Liechtenstein Laws the reference price is a key foundation to build other services.
So we are building a kind of “official price services”, some call it price oracle, which will be used for many other services we will provide
tehMoonwalkeR
I think this brings us to the topic of tokenization?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Tokenization. Yes, our key focus.
Let’s quickly explain, why we started LCX Terminal first and how we plan to grow.
LCX is innovating capital markets with blockchain technology.
We have built solutions for compliant digital assets and security tokens.
Combination of a tokenization platform and a legal infrastructure.
Our market entry strategy is based on three growth phases.
1) Build a product for crypto investors, a product which traders love and use regularly. This is LCX Terminal and LCX Smart Order.
2) Roll out compliant security token offerings and other regulated services, which deliver legal certainty and investor protection. This is LCX STO Launchpad and LCX Price Services.
3) Establish a compliant marketplace and exchange for digital assets and security tokens.
In more casual words. If you are building a nasdaq for crypto, you’ll need traders who are actively investing (that’s what we have already built with more than 58’000 pro traders). Second you’ll need attractive assets to invest in (that’s what we are starting now, by launching compliant STOs worth hundreds of millions of dollars). And the third step, the marketplace, then comes organically on top of that.
We are in phase 2 now, and will launch a variety of security tokens.
tehMoonwalkeR
so one could say, LCX aims to be the nasdaq of crypto?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Well, I’ve heard the comparision before.
But this comes back to our market entry and growth strategy.
We have seen security token exchanges beeing started — which did not have much assets, very low liquidity and trading volume.
It’s a chicken / egg problem.
tehMoonwalkeR
this is my experience also, how come LCX doesnt have those issues?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
So we decided to first start and roll-out many exciting security tokens. All offerings, and everything we do, are in compliance with regulation
We waited until the blockchain laws have been passed and started. the new regulatory framework which had been passed on October 3rd 2019. It took longer than expected, but the laws are now in full force since January 1st, 2020.
The company was incorporated in April 2018, since then we invested more than 2.5 Million USD into legal setup and our technology platform.
The technology platform and the legal structure do go hand in hand.
For example, we started to work with a hollywood production studio to tokenize several movies in fall last year. The process took longer than expected. But now we are only weeks away from launching the first Security Token Offering, a 25 Million USD tokenization of a Movie Production Studio “Daywalker Movie Assets”
For this STO we will use our STO Launchpad
tehMoonwalkeR
one can almost understand why so many are hesitant, it sounds almost too amazing to be true.
Any details you can share with us? how would it work?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
LCX STO Launchpad is an
end to end tokenization platform combining a technology solution with key compliance and legal aspects.
It’s complex, involved a lot of hard work and is still costly. We invested a lot of money in legal fees to get everything sorted out. More than we initially planed.
But now, we have something what we call a “legal tool” kit and our pro proprietary technology plaform.
Thus we will be able to speed up the whole process and reduce costs dramatically.
tehMoonwalkeR
so we can expect alot more such STOs joining and a much more fluid process?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
We can’t disclose details until we have final confirmation. But it feels like running a marathon and finally seeing the finish line. In our case the finish line, is the start of another exciting marathon….. starting the whole STO in public.
tehMoonwalkeR
what other industries might be interest in these STOs apart from movies?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
As a financial player we have also obtained LEI numbers early. We have explained the importance here https://www.lcx.com/the-importance-of-legal-identifier-for-the-blockchain-industry/
In this process we did search for other blockchain companies at the official LEI Search: https://search.gleif.org/
Not many blockchain entities or exchanges are listed.
If you search for LCX
you’ll find LCX AG but also our new Daywalker entity which will be official issuer of the Daywalker Movie Assets DMA token.
Besides that we also obtained ISIN, Valor numbers and International Token Identification Number (ITIN)
tehMoonwalkeR
doesn’t get more complient than this, congrats thats amazing
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
What is so exciting about Tokenization is that we will enable everybody to be part of investment, which previously had been only avaialbe for the “accredited investor”, wealthy and rich family offices or institutional investors.
In a way Tokenization will be democratizing financial markets.
I wrote about this.
Businesses are leveraging a variety of social media channels, twitter, telegram chats and slack channels to communicate directly with their audience. Blockchain technology and new regulatory frameworks enable tokenization of assets and turn online communities or social media followers into true stakeholders. As a result Stakeholder Capitalism is not a theoretical concept any longer, but, due to fintech companies like LCX, turned into new business opportunities.
…. aka. It’s all about the community.
We have also seen many Real Estate tokenization projects being announced. Harbor in the US for example. Unfortunately they could not deliver… it just costs a lot of money to advertise for these security tokens.
While I believe that real estate tokenization is interesting, I believe this will come much later and needs more time. More time to educate the people and more time to build the infrastructure
tehMoonwalkeR
I’m always wondering when it comes to real estate, how do you handle the rights to live in?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Rights to live could be combined with a dedicated utility token. Possible under the Liechtenstein laws. Or you rent it out, and distribute the profits / returns to the token holders, similar to fractional ownership
For Real Estate we are evaluating some ideas. But again — it needs to be a good investment at the end of the day.
If you tokenize an ugly painting or a house in the middle of nowhere, nobody wants to spend or invest fiat money. crypto doesnt help here
We believe in tokenization of assets where there is a strong community and a large audience already.
That’s why the whole entertainment industry is great for LCX. We are looking to tokenize different assets, which had not been available to invest before… and which has a fan-base with millions of people globally.
I always wanted to invest in the next hollywood blockbuster, but how?
You can buy Disney stock or so… but this doesn’t give you access to the movie proceed directly.
Also look a other entertainment sectors, music-rights or games. All assets which are highly emotional, at the same time they may return high ROI’s. And it was almost not possible to invest as a individual in the past.
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
I also want to give some background information on our LCX Token.
The LCX Token is a utility Token which may be used to pay all fees associated with the services offered by LCX AG. The LCX Token can be used as a voucher to pay fees, such as fees for LCX Terminal subscription; fees for custodian solutions LCX Vault; fees for exchange transactions for all crypto assets; exchange fees for fiat-crypto-fiat transactions; processing fees; and other fees within the LCX ecosystem.
We often get asked what does this mean? What can I do with it?
First, users can pay the subscription of LCX Terminal with it. LCX Terminl Pro is 290 USD, but if you pay with LCX Token you pay 2'900 LCX Token.
this is due to the Minimum Utility Value of 0.10 USD.
For example, in the case of the minimum value (0.10 USD), if you pay for services at LCX.com valued 10 USD, you have to pay a maximum of 100 LCX.
Second, there are withdrawal fees and transaction fee’s on our platform. These fees are also paid in LCX Token already.
And Third, there will be more utility-cases coming. E.g. for all security token offerings, there will be a subscription fee to cover our KYC processes etc. These fees will be also paid with LCX Token.
tehMoonwalkeR
is there also a benefit for lcx if you buy STOs?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
We are following a multi-token strategy: The LCX Token will be involved in everything we do.
The security tokens will tokenized financial products — therefore securities.
The LCX token is imporant for us to incentivise the community and also grow internationally. A lot of new users are buying the LCX token first, and then exploring our products and services … and many are using our token already.
We are burning all LCX Tokens used to pay for fees within LCX’s ecosystem. We do this every quarter
Since we announced the STO Launchpad we have received many applications and suggestion. That’s fantastic.
More concrete we have filled our pipeline with STOs worth more than 100 Million USD already.
We also work hard to make the benefits of security tokens a reality.
We explained key benefits here
We need to explore and learn what does work and what the community wants. Everybody would like to own a Lambo or another nice car, but would you buy a 100th piece of that lambo as a token? You can’t drive in your token 🤣
We’ve noticed that people want to support initiatives they love or get the opportunity to get high returns -> maybe even both together.
For the initial project we launch, we are closely involved with every detail as we want to get things right and want to learn. That’s the goal of 2020. In 2021 and onwards we will scale this.
Dan Don
Is it a non custodial exchange? — sorry if I missed This information but cannot find an information about these
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
At the moment LCX Terminal is connecting to your accounnts at other exchanges. How would you call this? Hybrid-Custodial…. Basically your assets are not with LCX, but at the other exchanges. But you can trade on 16 Crypto Exchanges from a single account and manage hundreds of trading pairs via our sophisticated trading terminal.
When you log in at https://accounts.lcx.com/ you can also see dedicated LCX wallets already. We offer these custodial wallets to all our users by default.
You can currently use these wallets to buy LCX Token directly at our platform. But these wallets will also play a key role for LCX Smart Order 2.0 (as Prime Broker) and LCX STO Launchpad (to pay for Security tokens).
LCX Accounts also give you a glimpse of our adminstrative backend and user management. All key elements for our tokenization platform and STO Launchpad. E.g. we will manage a real-time cap-table for STO’s with this system.
G D
How far is the progress for terminal to be once the only application to need for trading on all exchanges with one account.
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
LCX’s goal is to become one of the world’s first licensed and supervised security token exchanges. The LCX Terminal already shows our capabilities of handling an exchange. We partly already operate a “mini-exchange”, as we allow users to exchange ETH and BTC to LCX Token. But we will launch LCX Exchange and we plan to add more tokens to be listed and available to the users of our exchange services.
Satoshi one
Is the system9 work now
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
We started to work with System9 on market making first. They are monitoring our LCX Trading pairs and are doing active market making on some exchanges already. The team is very credible and has decades of trading experience.
As a second step in this partnership we are developing smart bots… as pointed out before.
Kamsai
Is there a possibility to have system where you don’t need to make separate accounts to all 16 exchanges in order to trade between them, but only make one in LCX platform and be able to trade. It would be a gamechanger
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Yes, that’s the idea of LCX Smart Order 2.0. You only deposit once and then we execute on several exchanges and participate in security token offering > and security token trading. In the futrue we plan to obtain additional license as an investment broker (aka. Prime Broker) in Liechtenstein and expand our services to include investment products and tokenized securities, to be offered to our users.
Superted
Hi Monty! Long term van and investor. You mentioned a painting before; that could be something… Partially owning a Van Gogh!
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Yes, why not? But as explained before, we would watch critically what we tokenize. For a painting, we would prefer something which will increase in value and is a save investment.
Venjamin
Will there be a STO where we can buy a part of the LCX AG?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Considering.
Satoshi one
You montioned in the last AMA that lcx will listing on 1 tier exchange any news about that
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Tier 1 exchange is planned and on our roadmap. Our core investment are going into our platform, our new STOs and customer success — as you know from our company culture. Customers First.
We are carefully considering some offers. We don’t believe in blindy paying huge listing fees. We rather work with the exchanges togethr and are building a strategic collaboration or negotiated special terms.
For US citizens there will be a trading venue coming very soon.
Venjamin
Thank you! In the Lcx channel they said that if someone pays the monthly fees in USD you will buy and burn the equal amount of lcx…i didn‘t read this in the Whitepaper. Can you confirm this? :)
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Yes, that’s correct. LCX will burn 100% of all LCX Tokens used to pay for fees within LCX’s ecosystem.
Latest burn is here
https://www.lcx.com/lcx-token-burn-q2-2020/
Steven Toast
What is the significance of the location/jurisdiction of an asset in regards to LCX being able to tokenize it?
Do you expect that there will be new type of index funds consisting of security tokens/digitized assets?
How does insurance fit in to this system of assets which are partly owned by so many individuals?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
In short. Legal clarity.
Investor protection for any token buyers and investors. Token holders have legally enforceable rights.
For Security Token Projects they also have clear rules and regulation to follow. They know what is allowed and what they can do. Also they have to stick to many disclosure requirements — all good for transparency of the industry
Do you expect that there will be new type of index funds consisting of security tokens/digitized assets?- Yes, I expect this happen. we don’t have this in our roadmap yet. But we have been approached by some fund managers, who are very interested in this.
How does insurance fit in to this system of assets which are partly owned by so many individuals? — Insurance in the blockchain industry is currently mainly used to protect the assets against hacks. So crypto custodian providers can insure the assets they are holding.
But there won’t be insurances for bad investments. With more legal clarity all token issuers, wether utility token or security token, will be required to disclose all risk factors and many operational details > at least in Liechtenstein.
Our goal is to provide clever investment with huge potentials, but at the end of the day there are always risks involved which we can’t influence. E.g. the markets are not developing as planned, the business model is not working or the clients are buying the “product”.
The key difference is now, that LCX and all our security token projects will be very transparent and are required to disclose a lot of things. Giving investors more security and clarity. In the backend we have to fullfill many compliance requirements. We are not hiding anything.
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
I heard that some other players do not even have a real office, an official entity where they register their operations, comply with legal requirements or pay taxes. I believe this will be a thing of the past soon.
The full STO exchange will come once demand, liquidty and assets have grown. See my explantion on our market entry strategy and growth.
We will launch with security token offerings first.
Satoshi one
i read that you have an office in india and you have some core team from this country why dont try to list @lcx on some exchanges from india like Dcx
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
love the idea.
G D
What is the difference between the full sto exchange and the offerings?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
So we launch with exciting assets first
But with every strategy. “A vision and strategy aren’t enough. The long-term key to success is execution. Each day. Every day.”
Lucky
Monty, in terms of the DMA — How will the public be able to participate in the security token offering? For example, will US citizens be able to participate? Or is this due to be performed on a case by case basis?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
Great questions. All details will be released soon. This includes a dedicated landing page. A approved and authorized security prospectus which lists all benefits and risks. It will also include who will be able to participate.
Bobby
Can we buy any security tokens now or will they be available after launch?
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
soon — stay tuned.
tehMoonwalkeR
ok guys this has been 2 hours packed with info and knowledge
AMAZING stuff @montymetzger
true dedication
thank you for ur time and energy my man
been a pleasure
Monty Metzger CEO LCX
this was fun.
Ah… but wait.
There was …. one more thing.
We have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) and a more detailed tokenization investment agreement to tokenize another movie project. So we’ll launch one more exciting security token offering.
Here are some details:
- Well known executive producers with a history of super successful films. A superb cast including well known Hollywood actors.
- The STO will be limited with a hard cap of 5 Million USD max.
- The security token investment terms are highly attractive, with a fixed yield and backed by the sales of the movie. We are enabling any fan to profit from the returns of this movie.
- We’ll aim to launch this within weeks, instead of months. But we need to wait until regulators feedback before announcing more details. Based on our experience from Daywalker, we are now accelerating the whole process. We aim to get this out fast!
- The movie has been filmed already and post production is in its final stage. It’s a hot topic, and the teaser trailer already resulted in hundreds of media coverage and TV interviews.
- The Movie is a new feature film, an American political legal drama movie, about a true story.
Media quote: “This is the most important movie to be made in our generation.”
With that I’d like to close this exciting AMA.
Thanks @tehMoonwalkeR for your expertise and sharing our story with your community.
Onwards and Upwards.
brought to you by
tehMoonwalkeR
