Tongtong Gong on blockchain data and analytics for crypto trading

0:01i am ashton addison from block west capital for investment pitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have tong tong gong co-founder and ceo of amber data tong tong welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time thanks for having me ashton you're very welcome let's dive into the world of blockchain data there's so much different data on chain and off chain as

0:23well to take and somehow put into information that can be used and hopefully take advantage of to make decisions or to move forward with the kind of projects and all different ways we can use this information but it really needs to be captured organized analyzed and everything else and i know that your team is working on some great solutions that can do just

0:47that so let's kick off our conversation with just a little bit about what you and your team are working at at amber data and on that front and then we'll dive into everything blockchain data yeah so amber data we are funded in 2017 we actually just celebrated our five year birthday and it's it's been a long journey right in crypto years that's like dog years

1:13it's like 50 years a lot happened so we are a digital asset data infrastructure company we provide data and analytics and insights for blockchain networks for all the you know spot under deleted market and as well as all the default activities so we provide a single uniformed data platform for financial institutions

1:41to do research and back testings and risk management and tax and accounting and compliance all the use cases they need to have clean trustworthy data and we're here to provide that very cool and since 2017 there have been a lot of innovations defy itself nfts never mind all the other different blockchains that have popped up

2:08using different programming languages and different speeds and costs i can imagine that amber data has sort of been growing along with the industry as new innovations come out new types of data comes out all of a sudden that needs to be analyzed and added into the pot absolutely absolutely it's been a exciting journey you know thinking back i did a lot of you know retrospective

2:31thinking this week as we celebrate our birthday right and when we first started company all we wanted to do is bring transparency and operational telemetry into this you know blockchain world right if you think about a digital asset they're in general two different type of assets one there are native blockchain network coins like ether like bitcoin there are

2:58coins that's built on a certain blockchain network protocols right and there's other type of tokens if you will there are generated based on smart contract also bit on top of blockchain network right so other tokens we know today like nft that's a token right some of the erc20 tokens so all of these it's born and operate and runs on top of blockchain so without

3:25the data supporting it you wouldn't be able to understand the fundamentals essentially and how to value these coins or tokens what is the you know hash rates what is the difficulty what's insurance what's the supply what is the transaction right and fast and fast moving into today d5 is driving a lot of the innovation on chain and they're all

3:52Decentralized smart contract transactions that need to be a that you need to interpret index and aggregate to understand exactly what's happening right if you participate in a liquidity pool what is impermanent loss what is the position how is that what is other people's position how is that changing over time all this information it's disjointed today it's available but

4:19it's disjointed you need to have someone help you to aggregate and normalize and clean and present and so that you can have that information make decision very interesting there's just so many different categories of ways that you could use this information and i've seen through amber data that you try and categorize it a little bit into the front office the

4:44mid office and the back office and first of all i want to focus on the front office sort of where trading and research and you know how can we use this data to make good trading decisions and often people think about blockchain data one of the first things they think about is if i knew more about bitcoin or ethereum i could have a better estimate of where the price is

5:07going to be or you know what's going to happen tomorrow and you mentioned there that you're focused on institutional clients is this one of their goals or what around trading is sort of the main goals that your clients are taking away from the information that you're providing through the data yeah we have a lot of institutional front office customers today and the one thing that i

5:32would say separate us from other people that providing data insights in the space is that we're not just a long-term data company we're not just a ranking company we're not just a market company we actually combine all of these data into a single uniform api we you know not only will support 10 different blockchain fundamental datas and all the tokens that's based on these

5:58blockchains with supports as well we connect to all the top centralized exchange for spot features and options so we have tip by tick order book event update data goes all the way back in the history and as well as you know trade data and open highlight close and we derive a lot of the cross exchange aggregations there as well so from a front office use

6:26case as you know doing research or back testing we give you the information for you to understand what exactly happened right where the liquidity is where's the price movements and is there opportunity to arbitrage across the centralized exchanges and how deep is the water book right some of the institutions they want to dip their toe into

6:51crypto they're big firms their toe is pretty big so when they dip their toe into this you know crypto trading world is really gonna have liquidity to support those kind of participation right so those are the questions that before people start doing things they need to understand and we are really the only provider here give you the insights into both worlds

7:16very cool i love it and i wanted to ask you about you know obviously pricing is something that's at the top of people's mind but with reward also comes risk and i'm curious on analyzing data to learn more information about the risks associated with the investments and if that is a category that institutions see as a priority and if so how are you

7:44helping learn more about risks through the data analysis there's so many different things when it comes to risk analytics there are so many things that you need to look at i can give you an example it's not going to be an exhaustive you know by any means for instance a lot of crypto trading today it's based with stable coins right usdc and usdt and with the terror

8:13issue and everybody need to understand that hey i don't understand stablecoin you know how does the packet be maintained so you need to have insights real-time insights and analytics on the price pack variance and as well as the supplies and smart counter activities as the pac being adjusted how you got to have like real real-time insights into this

8:38information right so that's for stable coin that's one of them and another one is liquidity risk in crypto because the liquidity is limited as compared to traditional markets most times you're really trading you're playing with your counterparties so be able to have transparency understanding how the counterparty's move movements is moving especially in

9:04d5 are you one percent in a liquidity pool or are you 80 liquidity pool those things are very important so that's something that you need to understand as well definitely and great perspective on that and i feel like institutions think about risk a lot more than traditional retail investors they often have their eyes on the prize and i think it's very important to

9:30also look at the risk factors as well and now as amber data continues to grow not only is there you know tick by tick on the exchange and new people joining getting new wallets in the blockchain and also new blockchains coming out how do you focus on where to expand where to you know what categories of data to start collecting to bring even

9:58more value to amber data and to the clients of your platform so on the centralized exchange side we focus on the exchanges with the top liquidity right and probability and then also reputable as well that they don't list so-called you know coins and it was just a it's a term in crypto that it's kind of a real term in crypto unfortunately so you know we

10:26focus on the reputable exchanges and they also need to have good apis and documentations and you know stable platform per se right because we aggregate the data from the exchange if the exchange constantly goes down because their infrastructure couldn't support the institutional customer we can integrate with that and so really based on the liquidity the reputation and also

10:54institutional customers demand and on the blockchain and different defect protocols perspective we really focus on the traction again what's the total value locked what's the activities and what is the participation we don't have the bandwidth to support every protocol every blockchain is out there right and it's really focused on we're laser focused on

11:20serving our institution customer and what they care about and that's what definitely and speaking of that and you know avoiding the coins and finding valuable data what is the threshold and how you determine you know which coins are which blocked chains to follow you know if there's a new blockchain you know at certain at a certain point when solana

11:43and cosmos started everything sort of starts at zero you know at what point does it become valid enough that amber data says hey this looks like it's valuable data that we should start adding into our pot so today we're really focused on some of the d5 and lending you know decks and lending activities i would say when it's a soft standards right but

12:08we'll say if you have a total value log around 500 million that means you have a real traction and then we'll you know double click and add the support there and also based on again customer right if i we are so fortunate to have the list of customers we have today and we have very constant check-ins and touch base with our customer on a bi-weekly basis

12:36right if a customer say hey this protocol is very interesting we're interested in these and that will get prioritized good to know and is there a way for retail investors or new traders to try and take advantage of this information or do you provide it solely to institutional clients today we're very institutional focused

13:04and because our product is really an api we don't have retail focused chartings and things like that but that's something we're looking to produce like market intelligence and analytics and risk management dashboards but today most our data is very technical it's deliverable api where we have also have like bulk downloads capability for full

13:32historical datas so yeah unfortunately today it's merely an institution customer and again we are working with some of the smartest you know people in the industry in the tri-fi space and moving to and the d5 space and just very grateful for our customer yeah and speaking of more institutions coming in

14:00and you your team work working mainly with institutional clients can you give any insight onto the growth of amber data and the growth of institutions into cryptocurrency despite you know the market conditions of 2022 in the crypto world yeah absolutely we didn't stop at all as a matter of fact i think bear markets are for builders you probably

14:26heard this one before but we grew from a team of like 10 people last year to now over 50. so 5x our entire team and we and the difference between the last crypto winter if you will in 2019 to this one is that i think last time people were still talking about the legitimacy of crypto assets right it's like it's after

14:54the ico bubble and people say oh this is still a scam cryptos you know it's all scamming illicit activities but this time around with the bear market i think people are much more they're generally accepting cryptos here to stay they're not questioning the legitimacy of the crypto crypto anymore it's more of what is stable coin how do i understand this and mitigate this and

15:22not having to be so next time i will know something like this will happen right like how do i understand this better right and if you know talk about the three arrow you know problem it's it's our liquidity is our risk management issue so then this is like the institution it's now asking questions about okay all the issues that caused this time the crash

15:48it's things that tri-fi firms has been dealing with for as long as traditional finances being around right risk management and every time you have a peg something's going to challenge it you know those things are not strangers for them you need data you need access to tooling you need platforms to help you to manage risk financial markets is all about

16:11managing risk right so i think this time around the demand from our customer or prospects is even higher because they realize men this is great opportunity this is a lot of return to crypto but also there's a lot of risk associated with it as it should be and how do we understand this better and operate better with better insights great way to top it off tong tong thank

16:35you for that and for the viewers and institutions and companies that are interested in learning more about data analysis and amber data what is the best way for them to learn more come to our website amada.io and we have a lot of resources we'll have a few ebooks you can download and to understand the basics of digital assets and the basics the device we just

17:00released a d5 primer ebook that's very informational requests for demo talk to us and we'll happy to you know show you what we have sounds great thank you so much for your insights into blockchain data all the best with the growth of institutional clients and collecting more valuable data to make important decisions in blockchain all the best to your team moving forward

17:27and let's follow up in the near future thank you ashton you