Blockchain middlemen could be replaced by software, Martin Froehler, Morpher

What is your background briefly?

I am mathematician and I’ve spent the last decade in quantitative finance. I’ve created quantitative trading systems that managed north of USD 100m. I have built up a quantitative research firm in Zurich for which I’ve recruited and trained many quants. In 2014 I moved to Silicon Valley to build a decentralized quantitative hedge fund that traded Futures and operated in the US as registered Commodity Trading Advisor. In 2018 I started Morpher to fix finance via blockchain.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

I experienced the shortcomings of the trading industry first hand as manager of a quantitative hedge fund. Many of our 10k+ freelance quants shared my frustration. I’m building Morpher to fix trading and investing.

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

Morpher’s vision is to empower anyone to buy and sell any asset on the planet – instantly, 24/7, without fees, with as little as 10 Dollars, and without needing a counterparty.

Morpher issues a crypto token on the Ethereum blockchain that can morph into any other asset in the world by replicating its returns. Users stake Morpher tokens on a market and receive returns proportionally to the price change of that market. E.g. staking 100 token on the Apple stock returns 110 token if Apple gains 10% – without ever having to trade the stock itself.

Why did you get involved with this project?

Because the financial industry consists entirely of middlemen who charge obscene fees for bad service. Via blockchain middlemen can be replaced by software.

Why do you think it is such a powerful idea?

I think the most exciting aspects of Morpher are, that
1) Morpher reduces the barriers to entry for trading and investing to zero
2) empowers its users to trade without a counterparty and infinite liquidity
3) and that Morpher can easily offer new markets like bitcoin transaction costs, real estate prices, or corporate fundamentals

How can people find out more about you & your work?

You can check out morpher.com, follow us on Telegram t.me/morpher_io and mediumhttps://medium.com/morpher/fixing-finance-via-blockchain-455f7a8e840b

Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked?

Morpher received a USD 1.25m investment from Draper Associates, and operates out of Vienna, Austria. Morpher is alumnus of StartX, the accelerator of Stanford’s best founders.

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