Chinmay Malaviya was co-founder and Managing Director of foodpanda Singapore and Hong Kong and received the Forbes Under 30 in Asia honoree in 2016. He has been working with Daniele Izzo, CEO and Co-Founder of Amon, and decided to join the Amon revolution to bring his start- up knowledge.

We asked Chinmay what prompted him to join Amon and how he sees the future of crypto spending.

How do you see the Crypto spending niche growing?

Critics of Bitcoin point to limited usage by ordinary consumers and merchants, but that same criticism was leveled against PCs and the Internet at the same stage. Every day, more and more consumers and merchants are buying, using and selling Bitcoin, all around the world. The overall numbers are still small, but they are growing quickly. And ease of use for all participants is rapidly increasing as Bitcoin tools and technologies are improved, with Amon being one of them. Looking back it used to be technically challenging to even get on the Internet and now it’s not and I see the Bitcoin adoption and use in similar eyes.

The criticism that merchants will not accept Bitcoin because of its volatility is also incorrect. Bitcoin can be used entirely as a payment system; merchants do not need to hold any Bitcoin currency or be exposed to Bitcoin volatility at any time. Any consumer or merchant can trade in and out of Bitcoin and other currencies any time they want. Amon has a unique way to tackle just that by offering users the option to convert their cryptocurrency real-time into fiat and the merchant receives that fiat — that is, zero friction in merchant adoption.

2. What key ingredients do you find in all successful start-ups around us?

Market, Timing and Team are what I see as key to success in startups not just in the crypto world but overall. In my opinion, Amon has aced across all three of those categories which puts it with a strong probability of success.

3. What aspect of Amon appeals the most to you?

What excites me the most about Amon is its long term vision to offer users a way to manage their portfolio of cryptocurrencies personalised to their liquidity needs and risk profiles.

Amon can be seen as analogous to dynamic mutual funds where it can help users hold a mix of high risk and stable currencies through real-time currency swaps. Further at the point of payment, Amon can help users get liquidity from a currency of their choice based on their profile ie. if they want to hold long or realise maximum gain.

4. Your views on Amon’s potential for growth?

Simply put, Amon offers a cushion and a peace of mind from the craziness of rise and fall in the crypto prices and at the same time acts as a bridge to the real world be enabling use of cryptocurrency through instant payments.

What is key to note here is that Amon’s value proposition is independent of which currencies succeed and fail, and also doesn’t require development of any consumer applications or merchant acquisition to enable its use. That is why I strongly believe Amon will have a key presence in the crypto world and will play an important role in shaping the way we use and transact with cryptocurrency.

5. What roadblocks might the crypto train bump into?

I support the train of thought that views cryptocurrencies as a new asset class that enable decentralized applications. Decentralized applications enable services we already have today, like payments, storage, or computing, but without a central operator of those services. This software model is useful to people who need censorship resistance which tend to be people that are either off the grid or who want to be off the grid. But almost everyone else is better off using normal applications because they are 10x better on every other dimension, at least for now. Thus the long run sustainable use of cryptocurrency is yet to be proven and for now it is a bet on a strong hypothesis. In addition, the uncertainty around government regulations ( eg. recent ICO ban in China, Bulgarian government seizing crypto assets) adds another red flag for this decentralised and open system to succeed.

Amon though hedges the above risk of use and adoption by offering real-time conversion for users from crypto to fiat, giving them a path to easy, quick liquidity with the most favourable yields today and not distant future.

6. A bit about the team

Chinmay Malaviya with our CEO, Daniele Izzo

The Amon team has balanced skill-set across digital marketing, finance, IT and payment systems that makes them a safe team to bet on. While Cristian adds strong technical expertise, being a bitcoin miner himself; Valerio with his experience at Google adds the online marketing and business intelligence expertise, and finally Danielle, who I know from my university days, brings in strong management and operational skills with a deep passion for this business.