The CEO and founder of Hybrid Betting, Emanuele Frisa, agreed to do an interview with Mary Ann to talk about his ICO and the presale of Hybrid Betting.

Mary Ann Mahoney: Hey Emanuele, great to be talking with you today. I know things have been pretty busy with Hybrid Betting lately…

Emanuele Frisa: Hello, Mary Ann! Yes, busy days in the last week, but here we are! The Presale is finally live. Thank you very much. I’m pleased to talk with you.

MAM: How has the beta gone so far?

EF: The beta started in December with the Bounty Program, and the users are happy to approach betting in a brand-new way. Well, this game is very different and at first sight can seem weird. The core idea was born by mixing up poker, betting and finance! Our community is growing; we count 600 users, 4500 followers on twitter and the telegram group is around 1000 people.

We recently had a very good rating from IcoBench.com, one of the most important websites in the world for ICO listing.

MAM: What kind of problem, market deficiency or opportunity inspired you to launch your project?

EF: Well, the basic problem P2P betting wants to solve is to offer a fair environment where there is more money for players that play against the others. I think this is great, but in my version of the game there are some big differences. I added the handicap and the leverage to bets… I think that’s really interesting! The leverage grows your reward if you win the bet and the risk if you lose. The Handicap is a kind of brake; you don’t play on that specific bet and take a smaller negative score in order to reduce risk!

Well, I love trading. Money management and risk management are very important in that business: I’m trying to create a bridge between two different universes. I could say, ‘Bet like a trader!’ I chose the word Hybrid to represent this concept.

In trading systems development, the Profit Factor is used to measure the results with the percentage of winning trades: the PF is calculated by dividing gains with losses. A PF between 1.5 and 2 suggests a good trading system, so basically, I earn more money when I have a gain compared to when I have a loss. Mix that with the percentage of positive results you have and you can evaluate your system quality. With Hybrid Betting, I want to see if some users will be able to win steadily, because they know how to apply proper risk management on every single bet and having a positive return. Some football matches are unpredictable just like many days on financial markets! We noticed that our user’s scores definitely go down with big surprises on the match result!

MAM: How does Hybrid Betting address this problem, market deficiency or opportunity in a unique way?

EF: We offer a fair Betting Environment for sure but many others offers that!

The Hybrid Betting unique feature is about the score calculation we use to fine the table winner and the risk reward management on every single bet that composes the table. Think about a table; you are betting against other people and you feel sure about a result and not sure about another. You can push the first one with the leverage and reduce risk on the second with a lower leverage or using the handicap. We see many users win a table with a negative score. I think this is really amazing! I have to admit that I’m a kind of nerd when talking about risk management!

MAM: Cryptocurrency can be a little bit scary to people who don’t know anything about it or aren’t that computer-savvy. Is Hybrid Betting user-friendly and easy to understand?

EF: The platform is super simple, we’ve done a basic version just to let people understand the basic game rules. We expect to grow that with more table styles and sports. About cryptocurrencies: what I strongly suggest to people is to study the matter and take confidence with them using the test networks before move to real network money. As I do with my trading activity: study, study study!! Stay tuned and keep your approach fresh and updated!

MAM: What makes Hybrid Betting stand out from its competitors?

EF: As I said before, the game itself is different. Considering the first results, we see that it’s tricky and has hidden peculiarities not visible at first use. You have to have a little patience and go a little bit deeper. The platform can be used to create tables on sports, but on E-sports, chess and financial market as well. Think about binary options, for example we can create a table on Nasdaq100 and see who has the best view for the next hour, day or week, making questions like, “Do you think that in the next hour the Nasdaq Future will be over or under $6170?” I have more features in mind, just like the Poker Style Tournaments where you will have to win a qualify table in order to go to the next one. This fits perfectly with football tournaments like the Champions League or World Cup. I’m thinking about offering users the chance to bet on other players in order to create a table on the table. I won’t bet directly on the sport/finance table but on the player. I’d prefer this as it is possible to do in blackjack, for example.

MAM: You recently announced an important testimonial and advisor, right?

EF: Yes! On March 26th we announced Andrei Kanchelskis as testimonial. Of course, we are happy and proud to have such an important person with us! Andrei played for Manchester United under Alex Fergusson from 1991 to 1995 and for the USSR and Russian National teams from 1989 to 1998. He also played for Everton, Fiorentina, Glasgow Rangers, Manchester City and several Soviet and Russian teams. He was absolutely a top player!

The merit for Andrei Kanchelskis’ involvement is thanks to Andrei Zhezlov the PR and Marketing head for the project. In this tweet, Andrei Kanchelskis and Andrei Zhezlov are at the Moscow meeting on March 26th:

https://twitter.com/HybridBetting/status/978247548908470273

MAM:Why is it such a long ICO?

EF: This is another technical answer. As I tweeted on 21st December 2017 with bitcoins at $15500-16000:

https://twitter.com/TradingEF/status/943878310936895488

We are in a bear market for crypto! I would like to eventually see the HYB token listed. After that, the bear market is over. Running an ICO in a bear market is more difficult, but the profits opportunity can grow exponentially if you are in a possible bottom and you face an upcoming bull market. By the way, the first thing I’m looking to do is being listed with the lowest possible price in cryptocurrencies in order to have less room for our token to go down. This is a risk reducing strategy. Just like stocks, cryptocurrencies are affected by overall market conditions.

MAM: What are you planning on doing with the proceeds from the Hybrid Betting ICO?

EF: We have a fund allocation schema:

Development — 35%

PR, marketing and advertising — 35%

Legal expenses — 15%

Administration and management — 15%

MAM: So, what’s the next step after the ICO?

EF: We just started the presale. Let’s see how we’ll evolve. Now that many basic tasks have been completed, we can focus on the platform and the community growing.

MAM: What can you tell us about the presale?

EF: Presale Round A is a kind of Seed for the project. The people who are joining, are investing in a very early stage, just like the Project development stage.

MAM: What are the benefits of investing in the presale?

EF: During the Project development stage, the biggest benefit are price conditions. The higher the risk, the lower the price is in this case. In presale Round A, we are offering the lowest price ever on HYB tokens and the biggest bonus as well. That’s 50% (valid on first half of the token for sale).

MAM: Can you elaborate on the Hybrid Betting bounty programme for our readers?

EF: Yes, for sure. The bounty program is about community building and project marketing. We offer a big reward in Hybrid Tokens (1,200,000 HYB) to the people are helping us to spread new of the project. We reward Twitter uses for shares and retweets, Bitcointalk signatures, Telegram community growing, and most importantly, we reward beta testers. The table winners will be rewarded with many Hybrid tokens. We will grow these prices as we go forward with the ICO, following the Champions League final phase and the upcoming biggest event for this year… the World Cup in Russia!

MAM: When does the presale end?

EF: The presale has started yesterday April 3rd and will last until 14th June 2018

MAM: Can you tell us a little about the crowdsale?

EF: The crowdsale will begin in June with the World Cup start and will last until August. Yes, it’s a quite long ICO. We would think about accelerating it only if cryptocurrency prices will give a clear signal that a bull market is coming. At the moment, I don’t have anything similar in my “radar”, but I’m always ready to change my mind. After 16 years in the trading industry, I’m used to this.

MAM: What is the greatest challenge you have faced so far?

EF: Well, I remember 3 different situations. My first year in Accenture as developer, first period as self employed in 2010/2011, and right now: trying to create a project backed by an ICO. In addition to these three situations, well, every day on the Financial Markets is a big challenge Sometimes I feel like a Roman gladiator in the Colosseum, fighting every day! The challenge in the financial markets is big and just number talks.

This kind of performance is complicated. It’s a mix of knowledge, technical and willpower. Another big challenge I face every day is keeping my emotions under control. In trading, it is really easy to feel excited after good days and depressed after bad ones. Well, the answer is to be able to keep a good balance in any situation. It took me years to learn that in order to survive in this kind of business, you need a good Emotional Intelligence (EI), also known as Emotional Quotient (EQ). I had to work hard in order to improve mine!

MAM: What can you tell us about the Hybrid Betting team? How did they get involved?

EF: There is a lot of quality, and I think there is the good diversification as well. We have a group of technicians from various parts of the world, from the Philippines to Europe, UK and Canada! The internet today offers many ways to communicate and it makes it possible to manage things this way, even if members are far away. This is absolutely fantastic! We only have the small issue of being on different time zones.

MAM: Can you tell our readers about your HYB tokens?

EF: The token is a very basic and simple ERC20 token born on the Ethereum protocol. We want to keep things as simple as possible in order to reduce the possibility of bugs.

MAM: Where do you see Hybrid Betting being in five years’ time? Do you plan on expanding?

EF: Nice question! We want to incorporate in the UK as soon as possible in order to start from that country. It offers a great environment to place a start up. We will consider expanding outside of the UK at a later stage. The betting industry is quite complicated; you need to implement an appropriate structure

MAM:Thank you for talking to me today. I hope all goes well with the ICO.

EF: Thank you very much, Mary Ann. It’s been a pleasure!

You can join the Hybrid Betting beta now and join the presale.

Full disclosure: Hammy Havoc, CEO of Previous Magazine, is a member of the Hybrid Betting team, acting as Chief Technology Officer. Bryan Desrosiers, Assignment Editor of Previous Magazine is also a member of the Hybrid Betting team.