Redefining CEX landscape with M2’s strategic vision: AMA recap

Cointelegraph’s recent AMA revolved around , a full service crypto investment platform launched in Abu Dhabi this year. The platform, with licences in Abu Dhabi and the Bahamas, aims to become the investment bank of the future, similar to Goldman Sachs’ role in TradFi.

Bijan Alizadeh, co-founder of M2, Phoenix Group and Cypher Capital, decided to launch M2 after witnessing the demise of the FTX and the lack of legislation, with the aim of creating a regulated crypto investment platform to protect user funds. “The market needed a regulated platform that people could easily use,” he said.

“Unlike a lot of startups, we’ve already started with multiple products,” added Stefan Kimmel, CEO of M2. “We have pulled it all off in just over a year, which has been the real challenge.”

The company’s team includes highly experienced fintech and crypto professionals who have held senior positions at Deutsche Back, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, PwC, IBM, with Kimmel previously serving as Chief Commercial Officer at Kraken MENA.

M2 offers its clients high annual yields on BTC and ETH, up to 10.5%, made possible by the diversified strategies the company implements. One of them is Bitcoin mining by M2’s major shareholder Phoenix, one of the largest mining groups in the world. Kimmel also credited other sources such as lending, staking and trading. “We’re doing overcollateralized lending on the platform, completely on the platform, so we’re not taking any counterparty risk or market risk on that. To put all that together, we’ve built a nice portfolio that’s a little bit hedged for different purposes, for different durations, because we also have to manage liquidity,” he said.

Both speakers acknowledged that M2 has undergone extensive security audits. “As a best practice, we keep most client assets in cold storage so they’re not exposed to cyber attacks. We also have multiple layers to control internal and external access,” Kimmel emphasized. “In my opinion, if we look at the biggest incidents, hackers are not usually targeting CEXs, but rather less centralized ones, or using phishing attacks, or going after the weaknesses of individual users. That is why we pay attention to educating our users so that they do not fall prey to mistakes and various attacks.”

Alizadeh also explained the special role of M2’s native token, MMX: “In addition to all the regular things like fee discounts or boosting earn plans, M2 plans to roll out that 10% of the exchange profit will be distributed to token holders on a quarterly basis. We are also working on layer-2 and other projects where you can use the token as well.”

As for other plans, Kimmel added: “We will also be launching a payment card. We’ll also be rolling out investment vaults with different institutional investment strategies that customers can invest in as part of those vaults.”

M2 Exchange AMA: Decoding the Future of Crypto Investment https://t.co/dASDbwX2vX

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) November 22, 2023

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