This summer Data Ninjas had the privilege of interviewing the wonderful Abed Ajraou, to discuss how AI is having a huge impact on yet another industry: Cryptocurrency. He is a Co-Founder of AIEVE, a project that has been recognised as 'One of the 5 Cryptocurreny projects to watch in the world'! Enjoy...

Abed great to meet you again! Could you please give our readers an introduction to yourself and your career so far?

Certainly! I am Abed Ajraou. I am the Chief Data Officer of Peculium and I am leading the delivery of AIEVE - the first real AI product in the blockchain available for everyone. I have 20 years’ experience in data and was recently nominated as a UK data leader for the second time, which is a huge honour!

I did my studies in France, Engineer Schools in Computer Science. I worked around Europe in Banks, Consulting companies, Public Sector and also in the Energy market. I am a highly experience data leader with a strong delivery focus, in Big Data, Analytics, and Machine Learning. I am also teaching Data at Kedge Business School in Bordeaux.

What encouraged you to pursue a career in data?

The business value! From my Engineering school, I found data is amazing to be able to drive the right strategy of a business. Data is a key enabler in this and now companies have started to realise that data could be used not just to optimise but also to drive a more efficient business strategy.

Can you give us an overview of AIEVE?

AIEVE is the first ever savings platform on top of the Blockchain. AIEVE is the AI engine powered by Peculium, who are the company which has launched this idea via an ICO (initial coin offering) back in November 2017. Peculium (or PCL) is a utility token, and you have to pay in PCL to use AIEVE products.

The product works utilising state of the art technology, where we are using a Big Data Platform which enables us to get the data in real time. We are using AI and NLP to allow us to predict a time series problem with the power to analyse the news accurately and the rumours in the market. Right now, our AI engine provides the most accurate predictions on 14 big coins and that will allow us to build the best savings platform ever. In our back testing we achieved a 350% increase in 4 months during the bear market! (From mid Jan to mid April).

So far we had delivered AskEve which the first version of our platform product. The first return of customers is fantastic! Already people are making money and the love the tool. Why do they love it? Because for a non-technical user, it is easy to use, understanding the future trend of cryptoassets will allow you to make a trade. For a technical user, who used to use graph analysis, sometimes AskEve contradicts graph analysis, and she's often right !!

How does AIEVE utilise Artificial Intelligence?

We collect data from the Blockchain, and also from the big exchange to understand the price, when people are buying and the exit points. We also collect data from Twitter and the news in real time because it has a big impact on the trust and emotional intelligence on the volume of trade.

We are using different various Machine Learning models to predict the trend of price of coins. We published an external article to explain what sort of model you can use for this kind of problem and with some results. The link is here: https://medium.com/@Peculium/aieve-a-lesson-to-predict-the-future-feccea9ec506

And the second part with the NLP component:

https://peculium.io/en/aieve-lesson-predict-future-part-2

What impact can data have on the Cryptocurrency industry?

I believe that data has a huge value in any industry. Most people are now considering the analytical value of the data, just by aggregating it and summarising it in order to highlight some hidden points and therefore make a better business decision. AI is a step ahead which enables the increasing value of the data by looking at the future and trying to get the best business outcomes.

What was it about AIEVE that attracted you to the opportunity? We met a year ago and this is a long way from what you were doing then!

You are right, but what the two roles have in common, is that they are both ‘data projects’. We just manipulate data, gathering, securing, modelling and the most important part is to enable value from the data. There is no difference between these two roles regarding the objective of a data leader. Where there is a difference is that in my previous role I was more focussed on the IT side and the delivery. So because you are not managing the end user, actually you are not able to see the value for the customer point of view. Which is frustrating.

So to build a team and gain customers for yourself, receive feedback, is very interesting and fascinating for me. That’s the most enjoyable thing for me. We don’t have a business department. I believe that the data team should be completely part of the business team. Every time we should be wearing 2 hats. And that is what I enjoy, every day we are working on the project, but we are also working with and for the customers.

How many users do you have at the moment?

We have more than 2800 registrations at the moment. But we cannot measure the success of a project like just but by counting the number of customers. It is a little be more complicated in Cryptocurrency. There are 2 aspects of the business model of a utility token. The token has 2 values. The first is speculation value by just looking at the offer and the demand.

The second value is the project and the value proposition of the money raised during the ICO. What project is the token supporting? If the project is on time, doing what it promised in the roadmap, it gains trust and people invest.

PCL is a utility token so you have to use them to use AIEVE. The reason it is complicated is because to have a stable token you need to have a good spread of people who have the token. So, just imagine everyone who had tokens will spend all of them using AIEVE products? We don’t want a situation where someone owns more than 10% of the total supply - it will be healthier. We need to have a balance. People who keep the token for speculation, and people who use the token for the products.

And that’s why when people say ‘you need more customers’, the response is actually ‘probably not’.

I believe that with the next 2 versions of AIEVE we will get more and more customers. We will also next year target corporate customers and help companies to be able to get better value of their savings and even countries.

You mentioned that you are constantly analysing the feedback on Twitter and the news, are you starting to see a shift in believes around Cryptocurrency? Are more people understanding it, but also trusting it as well?

For me, it has improved in the last year. We saw a lot of new people start their journey with Cryptocurrency in 2017. From my point of view, the issue came from the January crash, and all the new joiners in this market had lost a lot of money. And they probably think ‘they don’t trust this industry anymore’ which is hard. The market was upsetting.

In December last year Bitcoin reached $20,000, now it is worth around $6000. It has dropped over 50% which is crazy. This year is a very difficult year for Cryptocurrency. But for us, the way to gain trust again from people is to have more product like our version of BELI-EVE (a product which will be released early next year). This version will allow everyone to get better savings without having to understand the Cryptocurrency industry; it will be completely automatic.

Do you think then, that enough is being done to educate the wider population on what Cryptocurrency is?

I don’t think so. Quite a few people in this industry have realised it is messy and not very attractive. It is complicated. It seems like a tool for geeks, it is not built for a classical end user. But that is improving thanks to the help of companies such as Revolut.

There is not a lot of education being done in this industry. I was once invited to talk about a product during an adult training course on how to utilise Cryptocurreny. And the training was over several days! It’s crazy. Why do you need training to buy something? When you want to buy some dollars, you know where to go! You don’t need training for that. So why do we need training to buy cryptocurrencies? And most of the people who are in this market don’t see the problem. However, most of the people outside this industry are less curious.

It can surely be made simpler. And that is what we hope we are doing, thanks to our data visualisation on our platform, it is very easy to interpret.

You are quite busy with releases this year. July is the release of ASKEVE 4.0, and August in MYEVE, what will the major updates be?

We are indeed! AskEve 4.0 will arrive soon, and this version will allow our customer to buy PCL directly and use AskEve via a credit card! That will contribute to getting the Cryptocurrency accessible to everyone.

Just after AskEve 4.0, we will launch MyEve which is the personalised version of AskEve. People could be alerted by email and popup when there is a good trend of coin and be able to trade more quickly without being on the screen 24 hours a day.

BeliEVE version will follow. It will be the first automated version that will allow us to create an automated savings platform to everyone.

How is the tech arena in Coventry and what impact has that had on your hiring?

We have been very good at recruiting so far. I actually received my first paper CV for a long time which was nice! I got a mail, with a letter cover, etc. But aside from that the real chance we have here is the University of Warwick, which is a reasonably big University in the UK and it has a really strong Data Science course. But it is hard because it is very well known, and a lot of the talent come out of there with jobs already secured.

The Data market is under pressure everywhere, so even if you have a good university next to you, we are not producing enough talent to keep up with the demand. I am actually teaching at a University in Bordeaux. And that is a chance for me to give back to our community.

How much do you enjoy the teaching side?

It is fantastic. Every time I get near my teaching time, I think, ‘Oh no, long commute, that will make me lose a precious time ...’. But every time I start, I remember how incredible it is, and get completely sad at the end! I teach Big Data and Mobile Analytics. The amazing thing for me is to make students enjoying playing with the data by using a simulated ‘fake’ company. And after the course, when I set the students the task of trying to improve the business of this company, I always get 1000 different responses! Which shows the power of data, they all interpret it in different ways, it is really special. I also teach the visualisation side because I think it gets missed too often. I do not teach a specific tool, it’s about how to design a dashboard that will allow my user to get the answer simply, and quickly.

Do you think we might see a dedicated academic route to work in Cryptocurrency?

Outside of the UK this already exists, there are a couple of dedicated lessons in some engineering schools in Paris, in Blockchain. And a few incubators that provide opportunities in Blockchain. I think it is coming in the UK, I know, Oxford, Cambridge and UCL are doing some initiatives on this. So I think we will see this more and more now which is great!

But in terms of the data side, the great thing is it is completely agnostic. Data skills-sets can be transferred from Fintech, to energy, to retail. If you understand the business problem, you can apply data techniques to support or solve this. So data is the area we need to tighten up, and that should have a positive impact on talent subsequently joining Cryptocurrency companies.

What are the fundamentals skills you think someone pursuing a career in data science should have?

Beside the IT and mathematics skills, I would say “Curiosity”, “Enjoying solving problems” and be a “Explorer”.

For me a very good Data Scientists should have the main skills of Christopher Columbus and Inspector Colombo. You will need to enjoy solving some complex situations, be very curious about your environment and be able to explore also new technic because Data Science didn’t stop and continues to progress. A lot of it is a mindset!

Can we see you speaking at any Conferences this year?

I will be at the Predict conference in October, it will actually be my first time speaking in Ireland, which I am really looking forward to! I have done 7 talks already so far this year, it has been especially busy on the event side which is great!

I was on the Future Tech Podcast a couple of weeks ago promoting AIEVE as the first Cryptocurrency Company on the show, and we have been highlighted recently by two different journalists as top 10 and top 5 AI projects in the Blockchain which is am