This IIT Bombay alumni founded cryptocurrency trading exchange platform aims to help people invest in cryptocurrency using top algorithms made by professional traders.
Doubtlessly, automation is the future of trading. Still, surprisingly, most users don’t have access to even simple tools and trading infrastructure. Cryptocurrency is the fastest growing asset class in the world at a US$2+ trillion market cap.
Markets that are open 24/7, 365 days a year, with global access and availability of numerous exchanges and assets make it next to impossible to trade manually. Users and investors, who have worked and traded manually on different markets, have identified this as a challenge and need a single entry and exit point.
Mudrex, backed by Y Combinator, democratizes access to an automated trading infrastructure and simultaneously makes seamless investment products that work. They also provide a trading exchange platform that helps people invest in cryptocurrency using top algorithms made by professional traders.
Edul Patel
The Tech Panda spoke to Edul Patel, CEO and Co-founder of Mudrex about their growth story and future plans.
Our platform eases the process of cryptocurrency investment just like a hedge fund does
“Our platform eases the process of cryptocurrency investment just like a hedge fund does. Mudrex builds a portfolio bundle using top-performing algorithms for different risk-reward profiles. An investor simply has to choose a portfolio based on their risk-reward expectations,” he explains.
The Mudrex Way
The Mudrex approach is threefold: research, prepare a blueprint of the algorithm, and deploy them on crypto exchanges via Mudrex. Algorithmic trading on the platform is done through trading bots that are automated computer codes with the ability to generate and execute, buy and sell, signals in financial markets.
Users can easily build their own trading bot using Mudrex Strategy Builder. Traders can do so without having to enter a single line of code. It can be created using simple ‘blocks’ to define conditions and connection. One can then define entry-exit conditions and combine them with blocks to generate their strategies.
If you don’t know how to build an algorithm, you can just pick one from Mudrex Invest and allocate funds to it
All of this might sound too complex for the average investor, which is why the platform has built Mudrex Invest, which is a marketplace of top algorithms created by pro traders.
“If you don’t know how to build an algorithm, you can just pick one from Mudrex Invest and allocate funds to it,” says Patel, who has over ten years of experience deep-rooted in finance, entrepreneurship, and building tech-driven applications.
Algorithms on Mudrex Invest are backed with data of real trades and live performance. Each algorithm goes through a 20-step review process that the Mudrex team does to ensure proper risk management.
Origin & Inspiration
Mudrex was co-founded by five IIT Bombay alumni in 2018.
“We all have a background in finance and tech, and when we decided to start a company, we wanted to ensure that what we had to offer would disrupt the space. My Co-founders and I have been tracking the crypto market for a very long time now and have been studying its growth pattern,” Patel recalls.
They originally started with building a cryptocurrency exchange for India in January 2018. However, two weeks before the launch RBI banned crypto trading in India. This led to an overnight removal of their entire potential market.
Eventually, what inspired them to continue building Mudrex were three factors that they recognized over time.
Firstly, crypto was a global asset class, it had a global audience and global users.
“So, we decided to no longer focus only on India as a market and instead build a global product,” he says.
The second factor they realized was that, over time, exchanges will become commoditized and crypto being the global asset class that it is, will destroy moats.
“Hence, businesses will have low defeasibility unless they were working on a massive scale,” says the IIT-Bombay alumnus.
Thirdly, automation was the only way one could trade and scale investing in crypto. But no one was building the infrastructure or tools to enable this for a user.
“We saw a huge greenfield opportunity to build everything on top of the exchange, right from asset management to prime brokerage, hence, we pivoted towards this direction,” he adds.
USP
Exchanges today only allow users to trade manually. Their business model is centered around users trading and not around users making money. Mudrex wants to change that.
“We believe that historically, the reason why retail traders suffer is because they don’t have access to the right tools, data and process to make informed decisions,” Patel says.
We believe that historically, the reason why retail traders suffer is because they don’t have access to the right tools, data and process to make informed decisions
Mudrex is democratizing trading and investing by providing all the tools that a hedge fund has and more to the average retail trader for free.
“This is incredibly empowering as it helps traders take better decisions and invest in a way that actually helps them grow their wealth. This approach today has helped Mudrex create the world’s largest algo trading marketplace that over 20k investors have added ~US$12 million and counting,” he elaborates.
Growth Story
Boasting of users from over 70 different countries, Mudrex´s month on month growth percentage has been 40% straight for the past 11 months, showing 10x growth in the last six months. Their total AUM and growth since inception stands at US$10 million; it is anticipated to double by the end of 2021.
They have crossed US$1 billion worth of trading volume as of April 2021, breaking even since February 2021, hitting US$1 million ARR in March 2021. Their projected growth numbers stand at US$100 million AUM, US$10 million ARR by March 2022.
For us, the first step of success came when we were able to build a product that was solving a problem and helping a large community of traders as well as investors. From there on, there was no looking back
“For us, the first step of success came when we were able to build a product that was solving a problem and helping a large community of traders as well as investors. From there on, there was no looking back,” Patel reminisces.
“When we launched our product, we noticed a high amount of interest not only from the trading community but also from the investors who wanted access to trader strategies and invest using them. Our biggest success so far has been that we broke even in February 2021 and have been working towards keeping that an on-going process from here on,” he adds.
Future Plans
The platform intends to grow 20X in the next 12 months, for which, it has planned four major and exciting facets to work on.
Mudrex Exchange
This comprises building their retail focused property, a full-fledged end-to-end crypto trading and investing platform.
“Users will be able to buy crypto from fiat, store it, trade it and invest it. We will work on a mobile app. While broker integration with Binance is done and was launched in February ’21, we are still perfecting it,” Patel informs.
Mudrex Capital focused on Institutions
The platform will provide bespoke services to 250k USD> clients. Institutional investors focused on the asset management desk providing bespoke products to HNIs, funds, and institutions. The minimum check size for this is 250k.
Investment as a Service
They have plans to work with liquidity gatekeepers as channel partners, providing investment options directly to exchanges, wallets, and liquidity sources as a service to let their users invest.
Five integrations have already been confirmed and 13 more are in the pipeline.
‘Shopify for Traders’
They will work with product gatekeepers as channel partners. They will repackage the Mudrex billing, subscription and payments infrastructure in a service that traders use to run their own subscription business and community. The pilot for this is already running. Product launch for the same is slated for September 2021.
“We want to build strong distribution pipes and complementary products to create lasting moats,” he says proudly.
Crypto Adoption in India
While the uncertain legal status of crypto trading in India was a challenge for the co-founders when starting Mudrex, Patel also recalls the challenge of convincing Indian investors to consider it as a part of their investment portfolio.
What needs to be considered is that in the last two decades ITES solutions have majorly contributed towards the nation’s economic growth, and if we aim to reach a US$5 trillion economy, we cannot ignore the US$2 trillion market that exists for cryptocurrencies
“On a global scale, the concept of crypto trading already existed, so our focus was to build trust amongst users about the ease of use of our platform, while at the same time create a space for traders to practice and test trading methods,” he says.
Today, he believes that cryptocurrency as an asset class is going to thrive in the long run.
Read more: {Crypto watch: NGRAVE} The ´coldest wallet´ that is unplugged and never connects to the Internet
“From the Indian market perspective, I am hopeful that the government will take steps in the right direction, whether to take the Aatmanirbhar route or be a part of the global investment trend. What needs to be considered is that in the last two decades ITES solutions have majorly contributed towards the nation’s economic growth, and if we aim to reach a US$5 trillion economy, we cannot ignore the US$2 trillion market that exists for cryptocurrencies,” he adds.
In Patel´s opinion, a progressive policy can significantly help build and improve not only our financial infrastructure, bridge gaps within the current fintech landscape, strengthen our monetary policy, but on a micro level, it can also lead to creating more jobs and retaining tech talent, helping India become a global powerhouse.
