The global financial market is a market ripe for disruption due to the sheer number of inefficiencies and unfair practices in the industry.

For instance, customers often little to no knowledge at all of what goes on behind financial processes which leave them clueless as to whether they’re being served fairly or not.

To add to the lack of transparency, institutions often impose high transaction fees which makes no sense as the same institutions take days or even weeks to complete transactions—what’s the high charge for if transactions take so long to complete?

An industry where these challenges can be seen is in the derivatives market where several issues still exist that harm the integrity and efficiency of the industry. For instance, peer-to-peer trades are non-existent as everything has to go through brokers or counterparties which makes transactions longer and more expensive due to broker fees.

Customers may not even know if brokers are executing trades that will benefit them or not!

Even if trades go well for customers, liquidity problems in the market, as well as poor regulation of brokers, may cause the customer to not receive any money at all from their trades.

All of these problems are real, existing problems affecting customers in the derivatives market currently and it calls for an extensive solution to deliver and finally establish a market where all parties get what they want fairly and efficiently.

That is exactly what ThinkCoin, a revolutionary blockchain startup, is aiming for.

Introducing ThinkCoin

ThinkCoin is a blockchain startup that aims to disrupt the industry and remove brokers or any intermediaries in trades by using the TradeConnect network, the company’s proprietary platform to enable direct trading of financial instruments between two or more trade participants.

The TradeConnect network is a multi-asset trading platform and was specifically designed to allow individuals and institutions to directly trade with one another which dramatically reduces costs and improves the speed of transactions to be executed instantly.

As the network is powered by the blockchain, transparency will be at an all-time high as all data is recorded publicly and none of it can be removed or edited which removes the chances of fraud and shady practices from happening.

The network will allow the trading of numerous assets such as equities, forex, commodities, and even cryptocurrencies as well as implementing several cutting-edge features that will be the first of its kind in the industry.

TradeConnect will first focus on the retail trading sector and as the platform grows, the scope will be expanded to institutional and corporate sectors before finally allowing the trade of any financial product to happen between parties.

The network is led by co-founders Nauman Anees and Faizan Anees, who are also the company’s CEO and director respectively. Together, they will lead the TradeConnect team to deliver on its goals and establish itself as the world’s biggest multi-asset blockchain-based trading network.

How does TradeConnect work?

As mentioned earlier, TradeConnect is a platform and individuals and institutions to directly trade financial products between each other without the need for a broker or middleman.

The platform’s cryptocurrency which is known as the ThinkCoin (TCO) token is used to access the platform’s features and to trade between users.

Thanks to smart contracts, trades are automatically created and completed according to pre-defined terms which means that trades always stay true to what is agreed between the two parties hence eliminating fraud.

The two main participants in the work can be both individuals or institutions; instead of separating users by their statuses, TradeConnect divides its users into two categories: Makers and Takers.

Makers are responsible for creating the terms of a smart contract whenever they want to trade a financial product in the network. These contracts are then offered to the market to be taken up by Takers who can then accept these offers and thus complete the trade successfully.

Due to the team’s strong technical background, AI and deep-learning technologies are used to match offers to Takers which ensures that the right offers to go to the right people hence reducing inefficiencies in the market.

All of the terms of a trade will be stored in smart contracts called the TradeConnect Contract which also holds and locks the ThinkCoin tokens used in a trade.

Unlike other platforms, transaction fees are negligible and minimal in TradeConnect. Instead, traders pay a very small fee to the network with each trade for the platform’s Connect Fee.

The amount to be paid to the Connect Fee depends on the size of the trade. What makes the Connect Fee different is that a certain amount of the total amount collected by the network will be re-distributed back to Makers.

By doing so, Makers are rewarded for making offers on the market which encourages liquidity as well as allowing Makers to earn rebates and save even more fees on trades.

In terms of how the trading process is executed in TradeConnect, it couldn’t be more straightforward than what the network is doing right now which is best described via an example use case.

An example TradeConnect use case

Let’s say that John wants to buy stock in Google; in current systems, John would have to pay excessive transaction fees and wait for a frustrating amount of time for his trade to actually happen.

With TradeConnect, the process has been made extremely simple and efficient. All John has to do is to open an account with TradeConnect (a process that takes only a short amount of time to be completed.)

John can then use the network’s integrated crypto wallet to convert his fiat currency or cash into TCO which are then used to place trade orders for whatever financial product he’s interested in.

Going with the Google stock example, John wants to buy a certain amount of Google stock but he does not have enough money to buy full shares as he only has a small budget to work with.

John would be out of luck in traditional systems but he won’t have problems with TradeConnect as the network allows fractions of equity shares to be bought instead, which are known as Micro Shares.

John’s trade order is then automatically placed on the market and fulfilled by the network’s algorithms at the best available price. This trade works as sellers can also sell their shares in fractions instead of selling it as a whole.

Thanks to the blockchain, John’s trade is instantly executed and he receives his shares without having to pay excessive transaction fees. As his trade size is small, John’s Connect Fee is insignificant and much, much lower than what he’d pay on other platforms.

Of course, there are other efficient processes in place to serve multiple traders or institutions; all of these are presented clearly in the whitepaper should readers decide to learn more about how trades in TradeConnect work.

TradeConnect Personas

Traditional trade platforms have always suffered from the problem of not being able to offer retail investors the best price on the market.

Because of that, retail investors often overpay when making transactions and they also do not receive the best outcomes compared to large corporations or institutions for instance.

With TradeConnect, all of that will change thanks to the network’s AI technologies as well as the team’s experience in the industry in serving tens of thousands of customers for years.

The solution to this issue is achieved by using Digital Personas, which is essentially a model that gives each network subscriber a score that helps Makers and Takers to be matched with each other more accurately.

Personas are assigned from the network’s algorithm which learns and understands each user’s interaction on the network. This data is then used to connect the right offers to the right users at the best price possible.

Personas will develop and become more effective over time as the platform grows and more users register and trade on the network.

The ThinkCoin token sale

ThinkCoin will be holding a token sale for the ThinkCoin (TCO) token which will be used to power transactions in the TradeConnect network.

Here are the details of the upcoming ThinkCoin token sale:

Token name: TCO

Token base: Ethereum

Token supply: 500,000,000

Token sale duration: 15th May, 2018 – 25th May, 2018

Token sale target: $30,000,000 (hard cap)

Token exchange rate: TBA

ThinkCoin’s Website

ThinkCoin’s Whitepaper