Why is IBEx not FTX?

We created IBEx(1) for ourselves, when we faced technical and legal complexity in 2021 when issuing the "POWER" utility token, which was intended to fund Civicpower, a voting blockchain project that used our layer 2 technology.

At the time, easy money, “meme coins” and other “degen” stuff are surfing on the new possibilities offered by DeFi and Ethereum “killers”, fruits of technological disruptions based on decentralization. The regulators are then of course late, leaving the field free for all kinds of characters to take advantage of the naivety and lack of knowledge of the general public.

We managed to gather the necessary resources for the realization of our platform thanks to the trust of more than 4,000 people, by remaining pragmatic, realistic and concrete, without ever promising implausible returns and by telling the truth: to undertake is risky and a startup has 90% of risks to never find its market.

In an atmosphere of a promise of a 40% gain on a “staking” program(2)?and a general price increase of more than 10% on all tokens every week, it was not an easy task and we still thank all participants for their trust. Since September 2021, the Civicpower team is executing its development plan with all the usual twists and turns of “real life” startups.

At the same time, IBEx is growing rapidly in 2022 with a model that is resilient to the global economic crisis and other crypto-crashes for two simple reasons: 1) what we do is expected and useful for our customers, 2) the way we do it is safe.

The services provided by IBEx to their token issuer clients and investor users are the same as those of Civicpower in 2021: issue tokens and use these revolutionary technologies that allow liquidity of all assets, decentralized security of their circulation, a choice of their owner on the mode of custody (custodial or non-custodial), the agility of the support. All known equity mechanisms (cliff/vesting, good/bad leaver, drag along, tag along, preferences & asset classes) can thus be created relatively easily in IBEx while maintaining maximum liquidity on the assets..

Cases of application are infinite but also very concrete on a daily basis since?we have signed 17 contracts with future issuers of digital assets: these are technological startups that are just starting out, but also companies worth more than a billion in the service or real estate sectors, from Gustave Eiffel to Guerlain Chicherit, from cosmetic products to a workplace risk prevention platform, from Talk3 the web3 avatars to Toonpet a pet metaverse (wip), from predictive medicine to an NFT wine lovers’ club, from an online invoicing platform for craftsmen to a virtual soccer fans’ club, via a new social network for the stars of the millennials.

We do this in a safe way because these crypto-asset issuers pay us to carry out projects that they value with the full understanding of the decisive advantage that having a liquid asset backed by a community of investors will bring them.

Being paid by the asset issuers gives us great freedom in our relationship with our users. Unlike all the centralized exchanges I know, we don’t need to take a commission on asset transactions within the platform or use their funds (it seems so obvious to us!) to have leverage on something else, no need to list “shitcoins” or to do fake volume to maximize our fees, no need to issue exchange tokens to do “collateral” with leverage based on non-stable and non-existent counter-values (cf FTX).

Safely, because we only list tokens that have an underlying that we know how to explain the business model and whose service to its customers is not just to exist and sell him a token.

ALL IBEx Launchpad tokens have a pattern that sends cash flows back to investors in relation to their business.?No ponzi, no scam and no shitcoins without value.

This innovation that we bring to the centralized exchange model has real advantages for the users: an explorer with the entirety of the transactions carried out on our account book(3), an interest always aligned with our users(4), a presence of 100% of the circulating tokens on the wallets of the service used(5)?or the users. All this in a search for collaboration with the regulator (I admit it is not easy even to talk to them, but we do not give up) and without trying to escape our responsibilities to our customers and users.

The current crypto “scene” is under a double bind from which it will have to emerge quickly by gaining maturity?: it hates the idea of being regulated but wants a mass adoption allowing it to get richer. New money is needed all the time to serve returns never seen in the history of mankind, but at the expense of non-specialists who need this protection.

This speech is untenable in my opinion, we can’t condemn the 2023 newbies to lose their money on the order books of exchanges on the other side of the planet or because of automated market-making. Not everyone has the time or the intellectual capacity for #DYOR, it’s a bit easy to send people back to the mountains of effort and knowledge they don’t have: keeping 24 words safe to avoid losing their money is not for everyone, it’s as old as putting money “in the bank” and not “under the mattress”.

So yes, what we do is a “boomer” thing that is incompatible with quick and easy money. But we tell you the truth, based on more than twenty years of entrepreneurship: in the vast majority of cases, it takes time to build and requires efforts and failures and it is always less painful to be an actor of its own regulation believe in my experience of surviving the status of host(6)?and facing the GDPR regulation.(7).

I understand that this is not pleasant to hear, that some believing themselves smarter will continue to take a lottery ticket if possible escaping any form of taxation, but I hope that what is happening now will make those who continue to believe in magic money think.

We will do everything to be the first real world crypto asset exchange, European in scope, regulated in Europe and with all assets located in Europe, under full control of our European technology and teams, with managers identified and responsible in Europe, because we believe there is a place and a demand for it. We are not forcing anyone to follow us and we have nothing against those who take another path, even if we have to admit that the recent UST and FXT developments are going to make our life very difficult.

In the coming weeks we will communicate on our roadmap which aims to be ever more independent in our value chain and ever closer to the needs of investors in these difficult times.

C2

Original version here

IBEx service here

(1)?“inBlocks SAS” becomes “IBEx” in 2022 but it is only a name change. At the beginning inBlocks creates the smartcontract of POWER, OTCivic, the buy back & burn mechanism.

(2)?I had fun asking crypto “specialists” 10 times where the money that pays for stacking comes from and only Adli was able to answer me with confidence.

(3)?we talk about “Ledger” but nothing to do with the manufacturer of secure keys of our friend Pascal.

(4)?no shadow order, no advantage to market maker accounts, no leverage or liquidation, no structured products with “toxic” assets on our balance sheet resold at the expense of clients, etc.

(5)?staking, buy back, magic barn, SPOT, OTC

(6) The host?is defined by the French law of June 21, 2004 as a technical intermediary.?As such, it benefits from a reduced liability regime. Article 6-1-1 of the LCEN provides for the principle of the host’s civil and criminal irresponsibility with regard to the content of the hosted sites.

(7) https://www.cnil.fr/fr/reglement-europeen-protection-donnees