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Kung hei fat choy!

It’s the Lunar New Year here in Hong Kong so the city’s usual lightning pace has slowed to a crawl, but that hasn’t stopped the CoinFi team from having a busy week!

Here’s some of what we’ve been up to since our last update:

Securing New Office Space

As our team grows, so does our need for bigger workspace. So of course, Tim, Han, and I were out hunting for a new space that reflects our growing needs. We’re building a culture that values performance and substance over form and style, so we needed a space that reflected this.

While a workspace should be a place we can gain inspiration, at the end of the day an office is just one place where work happens. We’ve worked in offices, we’ve worked from home, we’ve worked in coffee shops, we’ve worked in coworking spaces. We’ve worked at the beach and we’ve worked in cubicles, and what we’ve learned is that at the end of the day – it’s the people that really matter, not the space.

These days it feels like the ICO world is all about lambos and rocket ships, but our team still prides itself on being capital efficient. We believe a great space should foster collaboration and spark creativity, but it doesn’t need to be too flashy.

After narrowing down our list of potential offices down to 2, on Friday we put an offer in for an office space in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district. We expect to sign the lease after the New Year weekend is over.

Hiring Update

Filling key roles within our team was one of the biggest priorities of the week. Here is where we stand with some of these roles, as well as some announcements for new job openings:

Head of Data Science

In our quest to bring a more data driven approach to crypto research & analysis, we’re excited to announce that we have a shortlist of extremely qualified candidates to lead the data science department at CoinFi.

The head of data science will be charged with staffing the data science department. They’ll work with our engineering team to develop the data warehouse, uncover data insights that will influence product development, build a suite of data driven products, and they will take the many hypothesis and assumptions held by the crypto community and put them to the test against the data. These findings will be shared with the CoinFi community through case studies and data visualizations to help all of us become better crypto investors.

Senior Trader

While our cofounder and CEO Timothy Tam is an experienced trader in both equities and crypto, being the head of a fledging startup means his plate is pretty full these days. He certainly will have less time to spend creating content and trading his own crypto portfolio. We needed someone with Tim’s skill set who can work with our product and editorial teams on a day to day basis.

Through Tim’s personal network, we’re in talks with a shortlist of qualified candidates in Hong Kong to fill our senior trader role. This role is important to the company – we believe having an extremely strong background in both finance and crypto is one of our team’s core competencies and we want to continue to expand our capacity here.

The senior trader will offer their trading insights to guide both our in-house editorial team and product development team. Having everyone filter their work through the lens of a senior trader ensures that we maintain a high quality standard and stay true to our mission of bringing Wall Street caliber trading intelligence to the blockchain.

New Job Postings

While we’re filling several senior roles through our own networks, we also have roles where we’re actively looking for qualified candidates. If you are in Hong Kong (or are willing to relocate) and you’re interested in a role at CoinFi, take a look at the postings below.

We also have several other roles we’re working to fill that we’ll be announcing over the next 1-2 weeks, be sure to bookmark our new careers page if you’re interested.

Continued Product Development

And of course, no weekly update is complete without discussing product development.

This week was relatively uneventful with the founders focused on recruiting high level team members who will play a crucial role in shaping the company’s future. However, progress continued on all product development fronts.

In particular, Han and the engineering team are hard at work pushing out a backend system to accept and process crowdsourced research and analysis. As mentioned in last week’s update, the goal is to start accepting contributor submissions by the end of the month, and it looks like we’re still on track to hit that timeline.

As always, thanks for all of your support, especially to those of you who believe in the long term success of the CoinFi project. None of us at CoinFi take your support for granted and we work hard everyday to ensure we deliver what you expect of us!