The Future is Now: Changelly’s Interview with Adam Todd, CEO Digitex Futures

At Changelly we are keeping our course to the moon along with the other outstanding projects of the crypto era and its creators. So, today we have something really special for you. Please welcome our new guest at “Crypto Talks on Changelly” — Adam Todd, Founder & CEO at Digitex Futures — a zero-fee, non-custodial futures exchange with its own base currency, the DGTX token.

Hello Adam! Big thanks for interviewing with Changelly. Digitex Futures seems to be a break-through option for traders as it offers a zero-fee exchange, unlike “traditional” crypto exchanges. How did you come up with the idea of creating this project and what is the primary purpose of it?

As a very short term scalper in the futures pits of London I was acutely aware of how much commissions can add up. Commissions often turned marginally profitable trading days into losing days and I dreamed of somehow trading without any transaction fees. Commission-free trading was more of a pipe dream than anything else for years, but when I discovered Ethereum it all clicked. The ability to create your own cryptocurrency was amazing and I figured that if you gave that currency a real-world utility as a vehicle through which you can trade futures with no trading fees then it would gain value, and if we could capture that value we could eliminate the need to charge transaction fees. Being able to trade with no trading fees will be a game changer for the huge number of competent, disciplined traders who despite their best efforts are just short of that threshold of profitability because of commissions. Removing the mechanical edge of commissions could unleash a flurry of trading activity that creates massively liquid markets.

One of the main Digitex advantages is the absence of fees. What role does the DGTX token play in it?

Unlike many other tokens that are tacked onto a project as an afterthought as a fundraising tool, the DGTX token is an integral part of what makes commission-free trading possible. As the base currency of the Digitex Futures Exchange in which your account balance and your trading profits and losses are denominated, traders must own DGTX tokens to participate. This creates demand for DGTX from large numbers of traders who are attracted to our commission-free, non-custodial, highly liquid futures markets. This demand allows the community of DGTX owners to create a small number of new tokens each year and sell them in a transparent, public token sale to cover the ongoing operational costs of the exchange. This token issuance revenue model eliminates the need to charge transaction fees on trades. The DGTX token really is an essential part of the system that makes everything possible, giving it a real-world utility that will, in turn, drive real and sustainable demand for the token.

Why do you prefer the ERC-223 standard to the more familiar ERC-20?

In a practical sense, there’s virtually no difference between the two types. ERC-223 has some safeguards that protect people from losing them in unsupported wallets and gas costs are also cheaper in decentralized transactions. Apart from that, they are very similar.

Are there any mechanisms to prevent DGTX token from inflation in case the market gets oversaturated with it in the future?

The DGTX token and its token issuance system is controlled democratically by DGTX owners through Decentralized Governance by Blockchain; 1DGTX = 1 vote. This means that all token issuance events must be submitted for a vote and must be approved by a majority of the voting participants. Therefore, if at any given time the DGTX community collectively feels the market is oversaturated they will not approve any proposals to create new tokens. However, if demand and price are rising they will likely approve some token issuance events in order to fund the ongoing operations of the exchange which will, in turn, create increased demand for the token.

Is it necessary to have DGTX tokens for trading on https://digitexfutures.com?

Yes. The DGTX token is the base currency of the Digitex Futures Exchange and its use is compulsory on the platform. Your trading account balance is denominated in DGTX, and so are your trading profits and losses, meaning that you must have a balance of DGTX to use the exchange. This gives the token real-world utility which will drive real and sustainable demand from traders who are attracted to our commission-free, highly liquid futures markets.

Now, let’s discuss a bit the industry well-being in general. It becomes more and more popular to compare the recent situation on the market to the bubble of dot-coms in the late 1990s. Do you agree with such a comparison? Also, should we expect that some crypto-giants will survive while others will go to zero?

I suppose the comparison is fair because it concerns the introduction of a very new and disruptive technology, with all the frenetic activity and euphoria and despair that surrounds markets like that where very few market participants actually understand what’s going on. But just look at what the internet went and did to the world since the dot com crash! It changed everything it touched in a significant way, completely destroying many industries and spawning entirely new ones and touching our everyday lives today in ways that you could never have imagined 20 years ago. Crypto will do the same thing in the next 20 years, and the effects are unimaginable to us today. The current bloodbath in crypto is unfortunate because it will starve many decent projects of funding for a while, but ultimately its just a bump in the road on the way towards crypto massively disrupting the world as we know it.

Every bear market has its limits, or at least it should have. Do you believe there’s the lowest Bitcoin price that still can be suitable for the whole market? If so, where is the point of no return?

It doesn’t matter how low the price of Bitcoin goes because it will recover and go on to make new highs, regardless of how low the price goes now. Crypto is so fundamentally strong and useful that it’s worldwide mass adoption is inevitable. You can’t put the internet of money back in the bottle, and as difficult and bleak as things look today the crypto markets will recover.

Let’s do an interview with Changelly! Whether you are a founder of a crypto project or a crypto blogger — contact us at [email protected] and share your thoughts on the hottest topics in the wonderful crypto space!