In Conversation With Joe Jowett, CEO of StrikeX, on Online Retail Trading

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By Joe Jowett, CEO of StrikeX

What is StrikeX?

StrikeX is the result of a group of experienced traders who were dissatisfied with the retail trading landscape. Together, we have harnessed blockchain technology to develop a completely new multi-asset trading platform based on transparency and ease of use, with the goal of democratising the market and putting the interests of retail investors first.

What inspired you to start StrikeX?

A key trigger was the GameStop saga in January 2021. Young online investors created a short squeeze by buying out GameStop stocks, purchasing enough shares for short sellers to close with massive losses. As a result, many platforms restricted transactions of GameStop stocks, which led many in the retail trading community to believe the system was unfair and intentionally designed to work against them.

This was the catalyst for us to start StrikeX. Platforms had taken the power away from investors, and we wanted to bring it back. Alongside this, we were fueled by the inadequacy of current trading platforms to meet the needs of retail investors, and the lack of interest from big players in addressing such necessities.

How do you see the online retail trading market developing?

The market boom was very much influenced by the economic uncertainty of the pandemic. We are in a similar situation today, with inflation a pressing concern. It is likely that more people will see the benefits of investing and online trading, which creates an appetite for crypto and other assets to be more accessible.

But online retail traders are demanding platforms to not only be accessible but also secure and, more importantly, transparent. Young traders have already been burned once, and exchanges need to rebuild trust with their users. I see retail investors as the future of online trading and platforms that can meet their needs will thrive as the market develops.

Your online platform TradeStrike will be released this year – what makes it different to other trading platforms or crypto exchanges?

Utilising tokenisation, Tradestrike will offer a diverse and accessible asset range, from crypto and stocks initially, to a myriad of other real-world & digital assets in the near future. This removes the need for multiple accounts on various platforms and allows for more diverse portfolios without added effort or costs.

Transparency is reflected in our ethos – StrikeX is for the people, and it is important for us to listen to what users want. We follow a user-first design, keeping very close relationships with our investors and community. We know many are new to investing, so the vast majority of our resources go towards making our products easy to use yet feature-rich; achieving a balance that is hard to find with existing platforms. This is vital to assist and empower investors to trade responsibly, while attracting and retaining users.

Why is the tokenisation of real world assets important?

Tokenisation is one of the most important technological developments on the blockchain, with vast untapped potential. The ability to fractionalise ownership of any real asset and make it trade-able on chain via a liquidity pool is all but one of the exciting advantages tokenisation brings.

You recently celebrated your first anniversary – what does this mean to you?

Making it past our first year is a huge accomplishment. Tech startups have the highest rate of failure at 63% with one in five of all startups failing in their first year. As part of our efforts to be transparent, we have shared our roadmap with our userbase. We are of course ambitious and plan to break new ground in the coming months, and will expand our core team as necessary to do so.

We are extremely proud of how much we have accomplished during these first 12 months; launching our decentralized exchange TradeStrike Lite and being the first cryptocurrency to be launched into space. Given we are just about to release our very own crypto wallet, our second year as a company is looking even more exciting!

What can we expect to see from StrikeX in future?

Our immediate priority is the release of our StrikeX DeFi Wallet, which will launch in the coming weeks. The Wallet will allow users to on/off ramp with fiat currencies, store and swap crypto from multiple

Chains, and track their overall portfolios from a single App.

We are also replacing our current decentralized exchange with the highly anticipated TradeX DEX. We remain hard at work on our flagship product, the TradeStrike platform, which we are hoping to unveil by way of demo in the coming month.

[1] https://www.embroker.com/blog/startup-statistics/

[2] https://www.failory.com/blog/startup-failure-rate