KuBitX - First Truly Global Exchange

WHO WE ARE

The KuBitX team is composed of an extremely talented and experienced bunch of professionals with significant work experience from Fortune 500 companies and “Big Four” consultancy firms. Having gained substantial insights and expertise in our respective domains, it was natural for us to work in the development of the emerging markets from where we actually belong. The team has this innate quality of not only motivating each other constantly but to complement each other’s work. The go-getter attitude of the team has thus led to overcome all the obstacles that we have faced till date.

ISSUES REVOLVING AROUND INCLUSION IN THE EMERGING MARKETS

Traditional banks are still struggling to reach the unbanked across Africa. In 2014, a staggering 66% of Sub-Saharan Africans did not have bank accounts. The small size of national markets, a lack of financial literacy, low-income levels, political instability and weak judicial systems have created a constrained African banking system. And banks continue to rely on traditional banking models of branch networks, expensive technology, inadequate systems and a limited talent pool. As per the latest reports issued by the World Bank in August 2017, around 2 billion people were unbanked across the world.

Cryptocurrency can bridge the gap and play a vital role in the financial inclusion of people who are still unbanked. The global adoption rate of cryptocurrency is still below 3% implying that there is still a lot more room for growth and as more tokens are created, they will need to be listed in Exchanges. So there is still a demand vs. supply gap of cryptocurrency exchanges.

The market is ripe for Cryptocurrency as witnessed this past year. Exchanges such as Binance, Bittrex, and many others had to halt registration of new users because they could not handle the ever-increasing traffic with their current infrastructure.

More education still needs to be imparted to educate more people. KuBitX is committed to doing so by having structures in place such as having Country Ambassadors in various African countries who will create awareness as well as educate, they will conduct meet up’s for those activities.

The current population of Africa as a whole stands at 1.28 Billion1which has a growth rate of 2.52% yearly. This huge market serves as the target market for the Vision and Mission of KuBitX.

The traditionally unbanked of Africa are devoid of a strong financial footprint but the optimism shown towards cryptocurrency by these people promises a better future financially.

The cryptocurrency market currently has a market capitalization of $342 billion which is expected to rise up to $1 trillion2 by the end of 2018 as per market experts.

This not only shows the overall growth potential that the cryptocurrency market has, but also the role emerging African markets would play in contributing to this growth.

We aim to begin our journey by reaching out to people in the flagship countries of South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ghana, Angola and Uganda aiming to reach a market share of 1-10 million users in the first three years of operation.

Achieving such levels of mass adoption, we aim to provide access to financial services to a large section of the African population thus promoting the overall economic growth of the Continent which would thus lead to a better quality of life.

HOW THE IDEA OF KuBitX CAME TO LIFE

The idea to create a new cryptocurrency exchange came up when the founders identified some crucial shortcomings in the present Cryptocurrency exchange ecosystem. The founders had a strong belief that the cryptocurrency exchange ecosystem has more to offer.

Following are the biggest gaps which caught our attention:

1. Lack of a mature ecosystem -lack of regulations on the way trades operate on the exchange often allows “whales” to manipulate the prices of certain currencies which is against the interests of other traders. Despite the cryptocurrency space growing rapidly and currently having a market cap of about $300 billion the trading ecosystem is still premature. There are several exchanges which suffer from serious liquidity concerns and many charge high trade fees which are very expensive to many people around the globe.

2. Friction in dealing with fiat currencies – Often getting liquidity in fiat currencies against crypto assets is a hassle and leaves currency holders at the mercy of market volatility which often can lead to people losing out on money due to delayed processing either by the exchange or the banks.

3. Lack of good customer support –Traders often complain of bad user experience due to the non-responsive customer support provided by many exchanges. Often it is either the lack of management staff to handle the requests or a lack of will which leads to a poor customer support. We identified that most of the exchanges do not spend enough on customer support.

4. Security issues – the cryptocurrency space is often being bombarded by hackers who try to use the vulnerabilities present in the exchanges to their benefit. Many exchanges in the past have suffered cyber-attacks which has led to losses in the order of billions of dollars. Often, not following the industry standards and neglecting the basic rules of cyber security allow for such attacks to happen. Thus, exchanges do have a huge responsibility on their shoulders to protect the hard earned money of their customers.

5. Lack of awareness and education among the masses leading to a low adoption rate – Due to a lack of education and knowledge about the Blockchain and cryptocurrency space, people are reluctant to be a part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem which has led to the market being dominated by a select group of traders who are able to manipulate the market at will. This fluctuation and volatility further lowers the rate of adoption of cryptocurrency trading.

Thus, we got motivated by the idea that we can provide sustainable and progressive solutions to the above-stated problems through comprehensive planning and diligent work. Moreover, though Africa has the smallest share of the number of cryptocurrency exchanges when compared to the world (4% of the total exchanges) according to a study conducted by Cambridge University1 on cryptocurrency exchanges, the adoption rate is on the rise. This not only acts as a source of motivation but also puts a great deal of responsibility on our shoulders to deliver the best services to people belonging to developing and LDCs (Least Developed Countries). Website : http://www.kubitx.io/