I'm Joe Lee. Founder of Magnr. I left Investment Banking to make Bitcoin my life. Ask me Anything!

[Joe]

Hello Bitcoin.com Forum, I'm Joe, the Founder of Magnr. I discovered Bitcoin back in 2011 and in 2012 after running high volume trading bots was invited by Roger to visit the MtGox offices in Tokyo. I was inspired during my trip to quit my day job and pursue a full time career around the Bitcoin new ecosystem. I see Crypto as an emerging new field within the finance industry.

My work in the banking industry served to show me how inefficient and untrustworthy the industry was. Transparency has never been lower and Bitcoin promises big change. When I saw a chance for a more legitimate finance industry to exist for Bitcoin, I knew I wanted to be part of it. The most valuable thing I learnt while working for the industry is that the business of banking contrary to popular belief is not primarily about money, its about risk, money serves as the means to manage risk.

• I'm a Computer Science graduate.
• In 2007 I worked in Business Intelligence at Barclays Bank in London's Canary Wharf. During this time I learnt about the business of Retail Banking and got to experience key events that lead to the credit crunch. (I was there the day Lehman Brothers collapsed)
• In 2011 I worked in Financial Regulatory Reporting at Macquarie Group, an Australian Investment Bank based out of Sydney. I spent these years learning about how Investment Banks worked from a regulatory standpoint.
• In 2012 I ran a series of trading bots arbitraging multiple currency pairs and eventually performing algorithmic trading.
• In 2013 I launched BTC.sx, a Bitcoin Trading platform. The code behind my trading algorithms became the trade execution engine of BTC.sx. A few months later, we landed 500 BTC of investment from Coinsilium.
• In 2014 We rebranded to Magnr.com
• Today we've brokered over US $80 million in trades for thousands of clients

A technologist - In front of a screen is where I'm most comfortable
A gamer - PCMasterRace anyone?
A driver - Follower of the Japanese drift scene
Man of faith

Follow us on Twitter @Magnr
Follow me on Twitter @TweetJoeLee

[rogerver]

HI Joe,

It is always amazing to me when I hear about professionals like yourself jumping into bitcoin with both feet.
We are so lucky to have you!

1. What is your biggest hope for the future of Bitcoin?
2. What is your biggest hope for the future of your company Magnr?
3. Has your involvement with Bitcoin changed you as a person?


https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/664075873033654272

[kylekemper]

Hi Joe.

Thanks for doing this. Magnr looks very interesting. I think you guys are definitely filling a gap

1)You offer deposit interest. Do you also lend? If yes, at what rate do you lend? Do you do this on an account by account level or wholesale...eg, lend on BFX using a corporate account?
2) You say 100% reserves; is this necessary? What percentage of your coins don't move on a day2day basis?
3) Trading strategies. Do you allow people who want to trade but don;t know how to trade to invest in a managed trading product? Do you offer a fund option?
4)What does the name mean? ...Manager; how does it inspire trust?
5) Size wise, how much coin are you guys managing?

Thanks in advance,

Kyle Kemper
@kylekemper

[rabbijacobus]

Hey Joe,

Last year when withdrawals were manually accepted by your team before being sent, your team refused to cancel my request for "security reasons" and still knowingly sent the withdrawal anyway although they were told that the address given was not correct. I lost all of my coins this way.

Have you improved your customer service since?

[Joe]

HI Joe,

It is always amazing to me when I hear about professionals like yourself jumping into bitcoin with both feet.
We are so lucky to have you!

1. What is your biggest hope for the future of Bitcoin?
2. What is your biggest hope for the future of your company Magnr?
3. Has your involvement with Bitcoin changed you as a person?

https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/664075873033654272

Thanks Roger!

1. My biggest hope for Bitcoin is that, adoption continues to grow steadily. I'm a strong believer that we will reach a critical mass tipping point, adoption will explode. I think its inevitable because all that is required for adoption to continue, is more education. Its a pretty unique scenario when you think about it.
2. My vision for Magnr is to grow alongside Bitcoin's economy and to one day become a trusted Bitcoin based financial institution that can rival the strength of existing financial institutions across London's banking district. One key difference? We, unlike any financial institution in history will be fully accountable to the public ledger and to the clients we serve. This is the level of accountability I would like to see from every financial institution.
3. A lot. Being involved in both Bitcoin and Entrepreneurship have taught me a lot. I have started to question how the world of finance at the central banking level really works and as a result have started to study economics a lot more. I have to admit, there are some aspects of what I have learnt that scare me, especially when you see how politics and money start to mix outside of view of the public eye.

[Joe]

Hi Joe.

Thanks for doing this. Magnr looks very interesting. I think you guys are definitely filling a gap

1)You offer deposit interest. Do you also lend? If yes, at what rate do you lend? Do you do this on an account by account level or wholesale...eg, lend on BFX using a corporate account?
2) You say 100% reserves; is this necessary? What percentage of your coins don't move on a day2day basis?
3) Trading strategies. Do you allow people who want to trade but don;t know how to trade to invest in a managed trading product? Do you offer a fund option?
4)What does the name mean? ...Manager; how does it inspire trust?
5) Size wise, how much coin are you guys managing?

Thanks in advance,

Kyle Kemper
@kylekemper

Thanks Kyle,

1. & 2. We do not engage in public lending activity, nor do we trade bitfinex swaps. Our model requires us to have cash collateral on exchanges to allow trading to route through our platform. This is where we generate interest (from our leveraged trading positions). Prior to introducing our savings accounts, all bitcoin collateral was provided privately. Clients should be aware that 100% reserves refers to full cash collateral being held for all deposit amounts.

I won't say too much about this for competitive reasons but we have private arrangements with the companies we work with to ensure that counterparty risk for everyone can be minimised. (Protecting our clients during the MtGox fallout was not easy to say the least)
3. The thought has crossed my mind, especially when I used to run trading algorithms, perhaps if there is enough interest, we would think about a 'managed investment' type trading product. This is something which would carry a huge level of risk though!
4. Our name is inspired by the word "Magna" its the latin word for "Great".
5. I won't post that here but I will reveal that we'll soon be putting figures like AUM on our site to increase our transparency soon. Watch this space.

[TGBEX]

Hi Joe,

Did you see much fallout from Mt Gox in terms of interest in bitcoin in Japan and do you think interest has recovered to 2013 levels yet?

Do you think Macquarie will be keen to embrace the transparency of bitcoin? (they have been remarkably quiet on bitcoin/ blockchains to date)

Who are your main customers (which sector(s) do they come from)? ie are they mostly finance people, or others?

[Joe]

Hey Joe,

Last year when withdrawals were manually accepted by your team before being sent, your team refused to cancel my request for "security reasons" and still knowingly sent the withdrawal anyway although they were told that the address given was not correct. I lost all of my coins this way.

Have you improved your customer service since?

Hi rabbijacobus, I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I recall your issue coming up in our team meetings as we discuss customer support desk issues regularly.

In this case, I believe withdrawals had already occurred before we came across your ticket to cancel your request. A very unfortunate circumstance as our 24 hour process is designed to adhere to our strict security policies as opposed to giving functionality to clients to change withdrawal requests. Regardless, where we catch these requests, we will try and help. I know this won't come as much of a consolation but clients using Magnr should take any withdrawal request as set in stone once submitted.

[OgNasty]

Where does your interest for deposits come from? Do you ever engage in 3rd party audits or publicly post a wallet tx to confirm your reserves?

What does Bitcoin bring to the table to allow you to provide an evolved experience compared to the traditional system?

[Joe]

Hi Joe,

Did you see much fallout from Mt Gox in terms of interest in bitcoin in Japan and do you think interest has recovered to 2013 levels yet?

Do you think Macquarie will be keen to embrace the transparency of bitcoin? (they have been remarkably quiet on bitcoin/ blockchains to date)

Who are your main customers (which sector(s) do they come from)? ie are they mostly finance people, or others?

Hi TGBEX,

We saw fallout from the entire ecosystem after the MtGox collapse. That event was one of the single worse PR disasters that Bitcoin has faced in its history, I can't help but think the price hasn't recovered too well since 2013 although I think its only a matter of time before it does.

Before I left Macquarie, I sent the CEO, Nicholas Moore an email asking for his opinion on Bitcoin. I got no response so I quit. Australia and Australian companies in general are very reactive, whatever succeeds in Silicon Valley and across the world is what gets copied in Australia, a year or two later. They very rarely lead innovation.

We see a wide variety of customers, mostly from within the Bitcoin community. A handful of family offices (this is usually a type of money manager / trust) have approached us, and institutionals regularly ask us to explain the ecosystem to them.

[Joe]

Where does your interest for deposits come from? Do you ever engage in 3rd party audits or publicly post a wallet tx to confirm your reserves?

What does Bitcoin bring to the table to allow you to provide an evolved experience compared to the traditional system?

Interest comes from our traders paying fees on leveraged positions, think of it this way, traders borrow bitcoin for very short term trades, and pay interest for doing so. This is all managed internally.

Similar to your question about audits, no we do not do this yet, we are looking into it though. Bitcoin brings more transparency to the table as payments and money movements are more traceable with Bitcoin then they have ever been in fiat.