Q&A with Daniele Izzo, Founder & CEO at AMON
What drove the idea behind founding Amon?
The idea behind Amon came from real life experience. Just like everyone, when we entered into crypto currencies we started with a small investment. Few months later, we caught ourselves in a situation where we wanted to be able to spend our crypto currencies and soon realized how hard it was to do that for everyday purchases. It involved steps like: Converting the crypto into Bitcoin, then to fiat , then load the fiat onto a debit card, and then finally use the card for the purchase. Then there is also the evolving face of crypto ecosystem where currencies other than Bitcoin have also found traction. Altcoins now form a major part of any person’s crypto portfolio. With this, there is an unmet need of a simpler way to spend alternative cryptos in everyday life.
We also came across immense volatility like everybody else. It seemed like a double edged sword. It became a pain point when spending crypto. Which currency would give us the max value at the time of purchase? Which cryptocurrency is outperforming others and so on. We wanted to make sense of the volatility and figure out a way of not only mitigating it but actually using it to our advantage. This lead us to the Artificial Intelligence path. Which we later solidified by joining hands with Cognition Box.
How did you build the core team and how do you keep them motivated?
One of the greatest things about blockchain is its vibrant community. We travelled extensively over the last few months and met great minds in the blockchain community. Several of our team members were found this way.
The belief in the revolutionary nature of the product is what keeps the team so motivated. This belief in Amon is shared across Amon. There is also a general enthusiasm around blockchain tech that helps keep people energized and self-motivated without us having to spur them on too much.
What needs do other existing Crypto cards don’t cater to that Amon will?
Our main value propositions are:
(1) enabling spending of every crypto (not just the major ones)
(2) Help mitigate crypto volatility with our AI system.
Many cards in the market only allow bitcoin spending. But that’s not enough. The market wants more. The need is un met. People’s crypto portfolios are becoming more and more diversified. With such diverse portfolios, the market needs a card that caters to all cryptocurrencies when it comes to being able to use them for everyday purchases.
The other unmet need arises from crypto volatility. Crypto holders and especially those who use crypto for daily purchases are affected badly by high volatility. Amon helps them mitigate crypto volatility through a powerful AI system to make it easier for people to use their best performing cryptos in making purchases and hence deriving the maximum value at the time of purchase. It doesn’t stop here. Amon also lets users to spend their Fiat. Indeed, the AI system will be also able to suggest to spend a fiat currency in case spending fiat will give the user the max value. All in all, Amon is the ONLY platform that makes it easy for people to spend their cryptos in daily life.
Can you tell us a bit more about the AI system that Amon is developing?
The AI system has the goal to support users decisions at the time of spending. It will have different releases with each release making the AI progressively advanced. In the first release, Amon’s AI will suggest the user’s best performing crypto to use while making the purchase.
Someone of you might wonder, but what if the user wants to keep the best performing crypto because he feels that will actually increase its price more over the next weeks?
Well, this is the reason why the AI will have other releases that will add variables such as: risk profile of the user, historical price of each crypto, volatility of each crypto, news on the market related to each crypto, etc.
All these variables will represent more information that the AI system will consider while suggesting the most value-maximising crypto conversion.
It is also important to remind here, that users can also decide to not use the AI system and simply choose the option to spend always a specific cryptocurrency every time at the moment of the purchase.
Do you think the Crypto Card niche might soon be saturated?
I frankly think that at the moment we can consider crypto card as a niche market but it is growing exponentially as more and more crypto holders feel the need to spend their cryptos in daily life and are after a simpler way to do it. It’s in growth phase as several unmet needs of the market are yet to be catered to. The gap that Amon intends to fill. The market is growing so fast in both users and transactions that I believe there is still space for more companies even after our entrance in the market.
We definitely have great competitors but we focus on a different value proposition, we want to help users to spend crypto efficiently and as consequence our users will also be able to save money while most of the cards are merely competing on fees. We bring many incremental features to the table as well. But I do like to think that all the crypto cards competitors are shaping the same revolution even if they compete between each other.
With the recent success at the exchanges of Crypto Card related tokens, How will AMN token fair? (Supply, launch price, Marketing)
Anyone that has joined Monaco, TokenCard or TenX token sale enjoyed a huge benefit out of the growth of these tokens. Depending on our price point and token supply its anybody’s educated guess what our AMN tokens will be priced in the market after X amount of time. It’s not our policy predict specific price actions. Historically Crypto Cards ICOs have had great success and also tokens grew rapidly in price. As an investor, I would not miss another Crypto Card ICO.
Who are you partnering with?
Security and development of our Artificial Intelligence system was key right from the outset. We partnered with the best of the best in these two areas.
Our partner Ixonn is a top notch IT security company that is already working for the Reserve of Australia and is supporting our IT team by screening the codes and building IT Frameworks, part of them also shared in our Whitepaper.
CognitionBox is an Algorithm trading company with extremely talented people that over the past years have developed different machine learning and algorithmic trading systems. They will support in the development of the AI Amon system.
We have also partnered with Daneel which is an interesting AI company working on trustworthy news which also affect the crypto market (sentiment Analysis).