On the 5th of March 2021, the WeBlock Community (A full service blockchain accelerator) hosted the Co-founders of VRM Andrei Grachev and Vladimir Demin.
A brief break down on what VRM is:
VRM, a high-frequency trading company, trades AI-based quantitative high-frequency strategies on the crypto market, and also provides exchanges with proper market-making solutions. VRM works across major trading platforms including BitMEX, OKEx, Huobi, Binance and Bithumb.
VRM now has average daily trading volumes of $15 billion to $20 billion as its influence in the crypto market grows.
Black Ocean, one of VRM’s newest innovation, is inspired by traditional markets to fulfil the new opportunities on crypto market.
The main idea of BLACK OCEAN is to provide a proper solutions for liquidity provision and orders
Execution with the best market price while the market depth is sufficient for large orders.
BLACK OCEAN has two different venues: Dark Pool and Liquidity Pool.
The Ask Me Anything (AMA) started at exactly 11:00AM UTC. On the show, there where chats with our guests about the recent updates of VRM and the VRM token-FLy, as well as its future plans.
The Co-founders took Andrew and Vladimir to the AMA section, by welcoming all in attendance. Vladimir Demin speaking of his encounter with the crypto word, explains how both of the (Co-founders) came into the crypto sphere from the traditional finance world in 2014, to make this world easier.
“Hi guys!” (Co-founder Andrew takes the stage) “Thanks for the intro and your attention!)
“So, we have started VRM in December 2018, and grew up from 9m$ a day to 15b$ a day in a trading volume on the crypto market. Since August 2020, we have started a development of our Black Ocean project and right now the test net is live and Fly token will be run soon. Well, my personal story in crypto started in 2016, we were miners, ICO investors, traders, that was a long way.
Speaking about the uniqueness of VRM, persons in the audience where directed to visit VRM.trade so as to get more details on VRM different projects in crypto such as the top trader, incubation fund, miner, and consulting.”
Before the long awaited question and answer section commenced, Aina the CM at WeBlock took it upon herself, to post links leading up to “know more” of two Co-Founders.
Here is the full bio of Andrew
Host Q&A Session
Question 1:
[from Aina]
After reading the recent published article about VRM in Cointelegraph, I have grown a lot of interest in VRM and the story behind it. Could you briefly tell us the story of VRM and where the idea of Black Ocean comes from? The Dark Pool and Liquidity Pool services of Black Ocean do look like great features.
Here is the recent published article about VRM in Cointelegraph
Answer:
Both Co-founders took turns to reply as follows,
[From Vladimir Demin]
Black Ocean is an opportunity to fulfill the growing demand from traditional finances (banks, funds, and corps) to enter into crypto. But there is a big difference in what the whale want. They play with huge amounts and also care a lot about safety of funds. So we developed a venue exactly for them after BO is life big players may buy/sell large chunks of crypto without touching the market price.
[From Vladimir Demin]
Dark pool is not a brand new idea. We borrowed it form the classical market and figured out that this market is not covered yet. So BO will be the first true dark pool on the market.
[From Andrew G]
So, how we mentioned before, we came from the traditional markets. We were trying to implement our experience a lot of times on the crypto market and in 2018 we found the solution — HF trading. Well, VRM was created. Following years, we were working on our systems, relationships with exchanges and we broke a lot of walls on our way.
So, a sunshine of VRM was 2020, when we grew rapidly from 3 trading venues to 12, and increased our volumes x few times.
In august 2020, we have seen a huge further demand of Institutional and started Black Ocean. Since August, we spent a lot of time to create and run the matching engine and test net. Well, this is a short story.
[From Vladimir Demin]
This demand simply did not exist couple of years ago and became real only at the end of 2020. Thanks to famous Elon Mask
Question 2.
[From Aina]
As you mentioned that 2020 was a bright year for VRM. I would like to ask
“What are the four keywords you would use to summarize VRM’s performance in 2020? Could you explain the four keywords one by one?”
Answer:
[From Vladimir Demin]
Profitability. The year was very successful as we stroke 3-digit profitability using own funds only. Any similar results have never been possible in entire my life.
[From Andrew G]
Passion — without passion to achievements, you are not able to do anything big. Our passion is our work and brilliant achievements, we would like to be #1 everywhere
Professionalism — you should do thing properly and make proper decisions, otherwise it will be actions before you fall. So, we are in the educations process every day.
[From Vladimir Demin]
Diversification. We entered into all markets where there is good liquidity and significantly expanded our products.
Question 3.
[From Aina]
As VRM has achieved a great result in 2020, VRM is certainly going to have another fruitful year in 2021. In order to better connect all parties of VRM eco-system, VRM has decided to launch its own token. Here is my question:
What is the tokenomics of Fly and how can Fly token help to connect all parties of VRM eco-system?
Answer:
[From Andrew G]
If you have Fly token, you can enjoy special benefits on Black Ocean — additional trading rebates, access to the platform, etc. + you can get additional part of profit with VRM Research (VRM Research provides third party traders with funds for trading)
Of course, you also can pay fees on Black Ocean and VRM services and get discounts.
For supporting price and create a deflation, we decided to implement a burn mechanism — VRM ecosystem will spend from 10 to 25% of monthly profits to buy back token on the market and burn the
[From Vladimir Demin]
Eco-system is the key for any global business nowadays. So as long as we incubate young teams and invest into matured ones we need a token to make settlements among us to make the work easier and to expand the opportunities to trade. Thus we give significant discount for all services inside this eco-system if they are paid in Fly token, we provide working cap in Fly tokens, etc. So the goal is to make trader to fly with Fly.
Question 4.
[From Aina]
Thanks for the explanation! The Fly token whitepaper mentioned that one of the roles of the $Fly token is to provide traders with rebates. What rebates are you referring to and to what extent/volume of trades must a person make to fully avail these rebates? Are there any T&C’s.? I do want a chance to fly with Fly.
Answer:
[From Andrew G]
Yeah, we will! Look, following a practice from traditional market — payment for an order flow, Black Ocean pays rebates to customers, who provide us with it. For example, if an exchange is connected to Black Ocean liquidity pool and its customers’ orders are executed on Black Ocean, Black Ocean pay % for the whole volume from this exchange. This is a rebate policy
[From Vladimir Demin]
This is easy. The opportunity window is still open wide.
[From Andrew G]
Just trade and get rebates for trading, someone provide customers with ZERO fees, but we provide customers with rebates =) easy.
Question 5.
[From Aina]
Sounds cool! Seeing the emergence of Black Ocean and Fly, I think VRM will have a lot great moves in 2021! So, what are VRM’s priorities in 2021? As we are in the bullish phase of the crypto market, are there any exciting initiatives that you’re planning in the pipeline that you can share with us.
Answer:
[From Vladimir Demin]
Another quite exiting initiative is the investment fund that will invest into equity of different super-effective trading teams all around the world. After working on acceleration of few of them (to be honest we have worked with more than 30 team by now) we understand how to rise their effectiveness even bigger. So now we need the fund to invest in equity to build a big trading body with great results.
[From Andrew G]
Yeah, let me explain a bit:
VRM — we are going to run option trading, our goal is to be in top3 of market markers on the crypto option market by the end of this year. And we will definitely be there =) + we are working to improve our trading side, so we should increase maker volumes in 2–4 time + run more aggressive configs. It should increase PNL in around 2 times
Black Ocean — we are going to run a Liquidity pool and dark pool for top50 crypto assets, run a decentralized dark pool and shift to the Polkadot ecosystem. So, we are also working to design a proper dark pool for crypto options. Regarding volumes, we plan to achieve around 200–700m$/daily trading volume on Black Ocean by the end of this year.
[From Andrew G]
Fly token — it is going to be implemented into the whole ecosystem + listed on 10–15 exchanges around the world. So, we would like to be on TOP20 CMC by the end of this year, let’s see, how we can manage it =) it seems possible, just need to work on it =).
Community Live Questions
- Do you have any Coin Burn / BuyBack systems or any $Token Burn plans to increase the value of Token & attract Investors to invest?
- [From Andrew G]
- Yes, VRM ecosystem, which is included VRM Market making, Research and Black Ocean (liquidity and dark pools) will spend from 10% to 25% (depends on a product) each month to buy back tokens on secondary markets and burn them on the public wallet
[From Vladimir Demin]
The key factors we looking for is the liquidity and number of active users. In trading it is vital to have the volume so to be able to trade with some counterpart. It looks like we entered to all big markets already but we see now how other markets emerge onto a global market and wish to be there.
2. What are the key factors that you consider when expanding the business?
[From Vladimir Demin]
The key factors we looking for is the liquidity and number of active users. In trading it is vital to have the volume so to be able to trade with some counter part. It looks like we entered to all big markets already but we see now how other markets emerge onto a global market and wish to be there.
[From Andrew G]
We are always looking for proper and valued ones around the world for creating local markets and getting an adoption and. influence there. We have decided our investors carefully, there are only valued VC and companies, from the whole world, who bring more value and support of a market development to us
3. What results do you want to see at the end of 2021?
[From Andrew G]
Ambitions are our passion =)
VRM — 11%+ market share, top1 MM on the market
FLY — TOP10 CMC
Black Ocean — 2billion of a trading volume / day
And these are in 2021!
Will keep you posted
4. Are you planning to promote your project in countries / regions where English is not good? Do you have a local community for them to better understand your project?
[From Vladimir Demin]
Yes, we are and will be present nearly in all markets. We have got some non-English speaking staff and also looking for local partners who are able to promote locally. Even negotiating with investors we put as the top priority not money to invest but ability to help us promoting the project in the world. We believe in people energy to create something much better than to pay and wait for dividends.
Andrew in reply to those asking about DEFI, gave this reply” And just for those [people, who is asking about DeFi — we are working on a decentralized non-custodial version on a dark pool, it will be live this summer + will shift it to Polkadot by the end of this year (2021).
5. Tell us a little bit about security? Have you done an audit of the platform? Are the smart contracts error-free? What are the test results?
[From Vladimir Demin]
The smart-contract audit is done already and you can check it on the web site of FLy HERE.
Find out more about VRM, Black Oean and VRM’s token-FLy in
?VRM: https://vrm.trade
?FLY token info: https://fly.vrm.trade
?Block Ocean: https://bo.market
