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As banks, institutional investors, hedge funds, and larger markets continue to grow positive on the digital currency that was originally viewed with disdain, it appears that cryptocurrencies have a bright future. As of 2021, there are around 4,000 cryptocurrencies in the digital infrastructure, a significant rise from the sprinkling of digital coins in 2013. Despite initial doubts and mistrust, cryptocurrencies have become a global phenomenon, attracting a large number of traders from all over the world.
Speaking with Analytics Insight, Edul Patel, CEO & Co-founder, Mudrex, provides insight into how the company enables safe and secure crypto investments, in a risk-regulated environment by providing access to strategies created by successful traders. The entire infrastructure of Mudrex is built to provide tried and tested strategies for simplified and effortless crypto trading.
One of the world's fastest-growing global crypto investing platforms, Mudrex was launched in 2018 by four IIT graduates and seasoned entrepreneurs in India. The platform has a global presence, a user base in over 90 different countries; it is headquartered in San Francisco and has operations in Bengaluru, India. Backed by Y Combinator, the company is run by founders who have strong backgrounds in finance and tech. Originally, the company was started to build a cryptocurrency exchange for India in January 2018. However, two weeks before the launch, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) banned crypto trading in India. This led to an overnight removal of their entire potential market. The market cap of cryptocurrencies stands at $ 2 Billion + and is an asset class that is globally recognized. This made the founders realize that the platform need not be restricted to the Indian markets and they started working towards creating a universal platform for the global markets. Two years later, Mudrex is a trusted platform among seasoned crypto traders in India and manages an AUM of US$15 million and counting.
As a holistic crypto trading platform, it enables safe and secure crypto investments, in a risk-regulated environment by providing access to strategies created by successful traders. The entire infrastructure of Mudrex is built to provide tried and tested strategies for simplified and effortless crypto trading.
Mudrex Invest: The mission through this service is to democratize access to investment opportunities in financial markets. It does so by unlocking access to trading strategies earlier available to only high net worth individuals. The idea is to ease out the process of cryptocurrency investment just like a hedge fund does. The platform builds a portfolio bundle using top-performing algorithms for different risk-reward profiles. An investor simply chooses a portfolio based on their risk-reward expectations.
Mudrex Build: The service helps assist crypto traders to automate trading strategies without writing a single line of code. The approach is threefold: research, prepare a blueprint of the algorithm, and deploy them on crypto exchanges. This coherent action can be performed by traders who use simple 'blocks'. Blocks are intended to define conditions and connections in the platform. Later, blocks can be combined with entry-exit conditions to generate the strategies of the traders. The whole process is automated with minimal involvement of traders.
A strong team of 10 people, the founding members include Edul Patel (31), Rohit Goyal (31), and Alankar Saxena (29) from IIT Bombay, and Prince Arora (31) from IIT Kanpur. The founding team's love for finance and vast knowledge in the field of technology has influenced them to make Mudrex one of the fast-growing enterprises. The overarching aim is to create an investor-friendly environment in India and overseas.
Edul Patel, CEO & Co-founder of the company, brings with him over 10 years of deep-rooted experience in finance, entrepreneurship, and building tech-driven applications. His domain expertise lies in product & risk management. Having previously founded 'Nifler'- a US$1 Million funded startup by SAIF partner (that eventually got acquired by Tapzo) his understanding of running a tech startup has helped him scale Mudrex to its full potential. From executing daily operations to ideating and building new products for the platform, he contributes to every domain within the company.
Being a holistic destination for all crypto trading requirements remains the biggest USP. Unlike other cryptocurrency exchanges in India, the platform is hassle-free, easy to use, and equally supports trading and investing communities to test out strategies and grow wealth consistently.
Another major differentiator is the no coder feature offered to seasoned traders. This was introduced as the team realized that global exchanges that are open 24*7 do not provide accessible tools and proper infrastructure to trade. On the other hand, only 1-2% of the retail investor base holds knowledge about crypto trading. Mudrex built an infrastructure to address both of these issues. For traders, they created Mudrex Build; a no-coder interface that helps to create algorithms with a simple drag and drop tool. With the help of Mudrex's Strategy Builder, one can easily create their trading bot on Mudrex. These bots are tested on the exchanges using dummy money and go through scrutiny and security checks. Post successful beta testing, and studying the data derived, Mudrex only lists top-performing algorithms for retail investors. This is to ensure their investment is done in a risk-adjusted environment.
At Mudrex, the security of user accounts is taken very seriously. Hence, they have enabled 2-factor authentication as an important step towards data protection.
As mentioned earlier, there are two different products introduced by Mudrex to cater to investors as well as the trading community. 'Mudrex Build' is made for seasoned traders and it offers the following core features:
Additionally, for the retail investors and novice traders, 'Mudrex Invest' was created to assist with investment processes that can often be complicated and difficult to understand.
Currently, the platform hosts a 95-97% investor base with a 3-5% creator base that has grown organically.
The biggest challenge faced was right before the launch of the platform in 2018. The team had assembled the entire infrastructure of a cryptocurrency exchange for India, including the order matching engines and custody wallets. A Mudrex website and mobile application were also ready for launch. Through a community that was built during research and dipstick on discord, they had successfully onboarded their first 100 customers. But just before going live, the RBI's single unilateral decision robbed them of their entire market. On 8th April, the RBI decided to ban crypto trading in India which led to a massive setback for the Mudrex team.
The team, however, had complete faith in the platform that they had built and therefore started working towards finding a solution. The mission, since day one, was to create a holistic crypto trading platform that helps solve a problem that was not addressed before. Hence, they created strategies from scratch.
The following observations came through after reworking on the strategy to launch Mudrex as a holistic global crypto trading platform:
1. Crypto is a global asset class, with a global audience and a global user base. The focus was no longer on tapping the Indian market, instead, the team set its sights on building a global product.
2. Over time, exchanges will become commoditized and crypto being the global asset class that will destroy moats. Hence, the team created a platform where crypto trading strategies are accessible to everyone, increasing the option of diversification of investments
3. Automation was the only way one could trade and scale investing in crypto. But no one was building the infrastructure or tools where one's investments were automatically managed and rebalanced. This gave the team the idea of creating Mudrex Invest, where bots would rebalance portfolios based on market movements.
Mudrex has achieved a monthly growth percentage of 40% straight for the past 11 months. Substantially, since its inception, the company's AUM has grown to US$15 Million. These figures are expected to double by the end of 2021. As of April 2021, Mudrex has crossed US$1 Billion worth of trading volume. The revenue generated has hit US$1 Million ARR in March 2021. The projected growth numbers will stand at US$100 Million AUM and $10 Million ARR by Mar 2022. Currently, the platform has users from over 70 different countries.
Mudrex intends to grow 20X in the next 12 months by building strong distribution pipes and complementary products to create lasting moats.
In the future, the idea is to build products to cater to four major aspects :
1. Mudrex Exchange
2. Mudrex Capital (focused on institutions)
3. Investment as a service
4.'Shopify For traders'
Blockchain technology will prove to be a secure and reliable method of transaction in the near future. Blockchain technology is far superior even when compared to Bitcoin. The independence and decentralized system of blockchain could make things more efficient, secure and adaptable. With this technology, the industry is expected to become robust in a short period in the near future. When deployed at the grassroots level, it will act as an alternative way to the centralized sources of the system.
Blockchain holds data at different places and is hence easily accessible to everyone – this is called a shared database. It will increase trust and integrity among networks in the industry. The integrity of the data and faster transactions through Blockchain will make it very easy and inexpensive as far as an infrastructure model is concerned.
