Why does IBEx have nothing to do with FTX?

At the time, easy money, “meme coins” and other “degen” stuff were taking advantage of the new possibilities offered by DeFi and Ethereum “killers”, fruits of technological disruptions based on decentralization. Regulators are of course lagging behind, allowing all sorts of characters to exploit 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” program² 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 Votelab 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 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 service provided by IBEx meets the expectations of our corporate clients, who have the same needs as Votelab 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.

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 an occupational risk prevention platform, from web3 avatars to an animal metaverse, from predictive medicine to an NFT circle of wine lovers, from an online invoicing platform for craftsmen to a virtual soccer fan club and a new social network for the stars of the millenials.

Our realization is safe because these crypto-asset issuers pay us to carry out projects to which they give their fair value with the full understanding of the decisive advantage that will bring them the fact of having a liquid asset supported by a community of investors.

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!), no need to list “shitcoins” nor to make fake volume, no need to issue exchange tokens to get “collateral” with leverage effects 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 book³, an interest always aligned with our users⁴, a presence of 100% of the circulating tokens on the wallets of the service used⁵ or the users. All this in a search for collaboration with the regulator (it is not easy to talk to them, but we do not give up) and without trying to escape our responsibilities to our customers and users.

Currently, the crypto “scene” is under a double constraint from which it will have to emerge quickly by gaining in 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 tools 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, construction takes time, effort and failure.

This is not necessarily pleasant to hear and some people who think they are smarter will continue to want to take a lottery ticket if possible while escaping any form of taxation, but I hope that what is happening right now will make those who continue to believe in magic money think again.

We are working hard to be the first real-world, European-wide crypto-asset exchange to be regulated in Europe and to have all of its assets located in Europe, under the full control of our European technology and teams, with managers identified and accountable in Europe, because we believe that there is a place and a demand for this, even though the recent UST and FXT developments will complicate the situation.

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.