Described as the "oil of the 21st century", personal data has become more valuable than ever. Dr. Christian Lange, founder & CEO of Opiria, spoke to us about the PDATA Token - the currency that expresses the value of personal data and their goal to reach 30 Million USD for the crowdsale.

How would you describe the PDATA Token in a few words?

PDATA Token is the currency that expresses the value of personal data. With the Opiria Platform and the PDATA Token we are building a global decentralized marketplace for the secure and transparent buying and selling of personal data on the blockchain.

What inspired you to create data marketplace? How did it all start?

In my former company we developed and sold a measurement and analysis software with related sensors that allowed car manufacturers, their suppliers and research institutes worldwide to precisely understand driver behavior. The issue was that the participants had to wear many different sensors and were completely wired. Even worse, they had to come into a lab and only one subject at a time could be recorded and analyzed. The advantage was that the measurements and the results were very precise. But the feedback I always received was that this is all great but what they really need is a solution that allows them to gather data from thousands of subjects at a time remotely and the precision doesn’t necessarily have to be that high.

A few years ago there wasn’t a solution for this requirement since measuring data requires “sensors” and I had no idea how to distribute thousands and thousands of sensors worldwide. But with the rise of smartphones and smart devices, consumers started to wear and carry all those devices 24/7. In addition to that, those devices are also permanently connected to the Internet. After realizing this, it became clear to me that this is actually the solution for the “sensor problem”. We can simply use what’s already out there. So, right after the exit from my old company (Ed., Ergoneers Group), I started to develop the Opiria Platform which gathers all that data from “sensors” worldwide and makes data and results available to companies globally.

With the PDATA Tokem consumers (re-)gain control over their personal data. What kind of data exactly? How can consumers decide which data they want to provide businesses with?

Consumers can sell any kind of personal data they produce every day anyway. This includes subjective feedback & opinions about how they use and like certain products and services but also their opinion about different topics of interest for companies worldwide. They can also sell data from many important objective channels such as for example web browsing, eye tracking, emotions, data from wearables and smart devices, smartphone usage, online shopping and more.

Consumers can fully control what kind of data they want to share and whom they share it with. When signing up for the Opiria Platform, consumers can select what kind of data they want to provide to the platform. If a company is interested in personal data from a consumer the consumer receives a so-called “data request” and can see which company wants to purchase the data, what kind of data they want and how they want to use it. This really puts consumers in control of their data! Additionally, building all of this on the blockchain allows us to be fully compliant with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The PDATA Token has been mentioned by Strategic Coin as “featured coin”, putting it in the top 5% of tokens. In what ways has this helped you stand out from the crowd?

We are really very happy that Strategic Coin decided to work with us since they are very selective and only consider working with you if you are referred to them by a reputable fund. The due diligence process took about 6 weeks and Strategic Coin really “took us apart”. We had to open our financial books, they interviewed our team and our advisors, they even spoke with some of our customers and looked at our existing product as well as its source code and our existing user base. In addition to that, they reviewed our token economics, our white paper, and our future strategy.

All their findings and results are documented in an extensive due diligence report that we can share with potential contributors in our ICO. They were really impressed by the results so that they even decided to make our PDATA Token one their featured coins. This is actually great for us since that means they introduce us to their network of advisors and funds and even market PDATA on their social media channels. In total, this really helps us to stand out as it shows that PDATA is a very legit and solid ICO and helps us to build trust in our community.

You’re currently hosting your private ICO crowdsale: What are your experiences so far? What is the result you are aiming for?

The private crowdsale phase is a really interesting and beneficial part of my personal life. I’ve been traveling all over the world meeting funds, exchanges and marketers in Europe, the US, Asia, and even Dubai. It was a great experience to meet so many new people and learn so many new things during that time so I definitely wouldn’t want to miss that. The results are very good so far. We are close to reaching our goal of 5 Million USD for the private presale round which makes me very confident to also reach our goal of 30 Million USD for the crowdsale.

You describe personal data as the “oil of the 21st century”. In what ways does this affect us? How do you think the upcoming GDPR will help to regulate this situation?

Today, 70-80% of all product innovations fail, which leads to investment losses of more than 12 billion USD per year. This is why companies worldwide desperately need personal data from the consumer to better understand their needs and requirements and to design the right products and services. This makes personal data so valuable. The annual trading volume of personal data is 250 billion USD per year – and today data brokers make that revenue. With the Opiria Platform and the PDATA Token, we give the power and control to consumers worldwide and enable them to make money by selling their personal data to companies. We estimate that a consumer can earn up to 5,000 USD per year by selling his or her personal data.

With Opiria, you have a working product and existing customers. What role does it play for the PDATA Token?

I think this is a very important point that we can’t stress enough. Having already shown that the team is able to build a “serial product”, that is used by Fortune500 companies worldwide, proves its technical and entrepreneurial capabilities. I think this is very important for the contributors of our ICO because this almost ensures that we will also be able to build what we propose in our white paper.

Besides that, the PDATA Token is the logical next step as it allows us to solve challenges we couldn’t solve otherwise. First, it allows companies to pay consumers worldwide – from different countries and with different local currencies – with one single currency that expresses the value of personal data. By interfacing with exchanges, we allow consumers to easily cash out and receive FIAT payments directly into their bank accounts. If we would use FIAT currencies for payment then we would have to deal with all possible different currencies worldwide and we would have to exchange between all those different currencies on our platform. Having our own token elegantly solves this issue. Second, our own token makes us independent of the blockchain we use. Currently, we are building on top of the Ethereum blockchain but we design our platform in a way that if Ethereum crashes or changes the direction, we can easily migrate to a different blockchain such as NEO, for example, that also supports smart contracts.

What’s next for the PDATA Token & Opiria?

The next big step for Opiria is our 2.0 release at the end of Q3. This will revolutionize how companies can get behavioral data from consumers. We will integrate eye-tracking and emotion recognition in the browser. This will, for example, allow companies to understand how someone browses a website, what the person sees and if this causes positive or negative emotions. Companies will be able to ask participants to watch an advertisement video and will know exactly how this video affects their target audience. On the other side, consumers can participate in those studies at home and by doing so create a nice additional income stream.

Christian, you are an experienced entrepreneur and bootstrapped the Ergoneers Group from $0 to a $5+ million in revenue. What’s the best piece of advice you can give to fellow founders?

There is a saying from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that says “Success has three letter: TUN” whereby “TUN” means “do it”. I think this is very important because if you don’t do it you will never find out if your idea works. After you’ve done it the next important thing is to “never give up”. I remember when I was 25 and tried to sell my first product to the automotive industry I got kicked out easily fifty times and was told many times they will never buy this. But one day, BMW suddenly decided to buy it and in the following months, all the other big automotive companies came on board as customers as well. My final piece of advice is to stay focused and not to chase every possible opportunity. I learned that it’s very important that you have the capability to say “no” to almost 95% of the opportunities that show up.

And besides all that, it’s important to enjoy being an entrepreneur because there’s no other “job” in the world that allows you to do what you like every day and work on your own company’s vision and goals.

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