Exclusive Interview with Popo Chen: Founder/CEO of Cobinhood and the DEXON Project

Industry 5 min, 24 sec READ

by Ricardo Carrasco

Popo Chen, CEO and Founder of Cobinhood, talks about his crypto exchange platform and elaborates on his new Dapp platform, the DEXON Project.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Mr. Popo Chen, the 26-year-old CEO and founder of the zero-fee cryptocurrency exchange Cobinhood, as well as the DEXON dApp project. Mr. Chen holds a Master's in Electrical Engineering from the National Taiwan University and was previously known as the founder of “17 Live Streaming”, an online video streaming service catering to Asian users that managed to raise $10 million and to have up to 5 million active users per day.

In an exclusive interview for Bitrates.com, we addressed several topics relating to Mr. Chen’s cryptocurrency and blockchain initiatives, namely Cobinhood and its native COB Token, and the DEXON Project, a Dapp platform that promises infinite scalability through the use of a low-latency and energy-efficient blocklattice technology. Our team’s questions, as well as Mr. Chen’s responses, provided via email, are presented below without any edits.

Cobinhood’s 10x margin trading is fairly unique. Can you explain how this program works and what fees are involved?

Currently, Cobinhood’s Margin Trading is in Beta, and we’re providing P2P funding with 3X leverage - 10X is the goal. As for how the process works, trading loan interest is split by the users providing the collateral for margin trading (the P2P part) and the exchange. If the margin trader pays Cobinhood’s portion of the interest in COB, they will get a 50% discount. Also, our risk control system will automatically liquidate all margin accounts that fall below the maintenance threshold.

Cobinhood also offers ICO underwriting services, can you please elaborate on what these services bring to the table? Can you cite any successful projects that have stemmed from this initiative? What qualifies an ICO to get Cobinhood’s approval and what do you think is the value of the underwriting for the potential investor?

Firstly, although there are many similarities between Cobinhood’s ICO services and traditional underwriting for IPOs, there are some important technical differences - we’re the closest thing crypto has to underwriting, if you will.

In general, a lot of people right now only consider ICOs as a fundraising tool. As a result, many startups or established enterprises are issuing poorly designed and/or implemented tokens. Cobinhood can educate token issuers on the technical as well as economic aspects of ICOs, including consultation on business models, token economies, legal compliance, and marketing support.

We started these services because ICO investors are actively looking for opportunities to invest, but their biggest obstacle is not knowing which projects to trust. Our clients can leverage Cobinhood’s sterling reputation and credibility to put their minds at ease because as an exchange, we have a deep understanding of who the ICO issuers are. After all, Cobinhood successfully launched our own ICO - how many consultancies can say that? Also, the main portion of Cobinhood’s service fee is paid in our clients’ tokens; we only profit if our clients succeed! We’re also able to guarantee listing on our exchange after the ICO.

As for how we choose which ICOs to represent, Cobinhood has both qualitative and quantitative criteria. We pay close attention to the founding team and look for evidence of credibility and a successful track record. A brilliant new idea and business model is certainly important, but don’t get me wrong, a unique business model is not the only prerequisite for Cobinhood to take on a project. Helping ICO clients design a compelling business proposition that appeals to crypto investors is actually one of the areas in which Cobinhood can exert the greatest value through our deep insight into the cryptocurrency/blockchain market and investor audience.

Can you address the performance of the COB token from an investors point of view? What initiatives is Cobinhood pursuing to improve investor confidence in the COB Token and increase its value?

Cobinhood has steadfastly completed every feature on our original roadmap. There are currently several features that are appealing for COB holders, such as discounted rates for future ICO tokens backed by the Cobinhood exchange. Moreover, as previously mentioned, if a margin trader on Cobinhood pays the exchange’s portion of interest in COB, they will get a 50% discount. Furthermore, Cobinhood account holders can use COB tokens to pay for withdrawal fees, and these COBs will not be returned to circulation. Lastly, future airdrops from Cobinhood can only be received by COB holders.

Alongside Cobinhood, you are also the founder of the DEXON project. As a dApp platform, how does DEXON compare to Ethereum, EOS, IOTA? What innovations does it bring to the table?

In short, DEXON will be the fastest blockchain, period. DEXON is infinitely scalable, so it supports tons of DApps running on the same time without any performance degradation. Unlike traditional blockchain technology systems that build encrypted blocks linearly, DEXON’s blocklattice features multiple blockchain systems that work together in parallel, making it easier to scale automatically and energy-efficiently. Also, DEXON will exclusively feature asset exchange protocols so that all transactions and assets on other blockchain networks can be bridged onto DEXON and benefit from DEXON’s high-frequency asset trading.

Can you tell us how the Cobinhood and DEXON projects are related? What is next for Cobinhood and DEXON in the short term?

Striving to be a fully decentralized exchange has always been a part of Cobinhood’s roadmap. DEXON will allow that, and thus forms the cornerstone of our entire ecosystem.

Also, Cobinhood is the exclusive ICO services partner of the DEXON Foundation. We are happy to share that the DEXON Foundation has a plethora of VC-backed DApps on board (all with millions of DAU). All these DApps will be able to be built on top of DEXON knowing that all the problems found on existing blockchains have been solved — this means that no DApp will have to suffer from lack of scalability, low transaction latency, or high transaction costs. DEXON will make all of these big DApps possible, and Cobinhood will service their ICOs. COB holders will then get to enjoy the benefits, at a significantly lower price, of these massive DApps’ ICOs.

Bitrates.com would like to thank Mr. Popo Chen and his team for taking the time to respond to our questions.