Thanks a lot for actively participating in the Giottus AMA held on 22nd October 2020 at the Game of Bitcoins Channel. We really appreciate all your support. This post is a recap of the entire session held with Giottus

We have with us Arjun Vijay and Vikram Subburaj

Vikram - So, I am Vikram Subburaj co-founder and CEO of Giottus cryptocurrency exchanges. We are India focussed exchange offering 40+ coins and 100 + pairs to trade with. We have been in the Indian market for almost 3 years now and going strong.

Arjun - This is Arjun, the other co-founder 😊

Bit about founders : I and Arjun are both IIM Calcutta Alumni's and also have rich industry experience from Top notch companies like Amazon, Vodafone and ITC. We wish to bring all the best practices we have noticed in our earlier professional life to the crypto industry

Gary - Awesome! Great to the see such strong credentials

Also, the past 3 years have been challenging more so due to Indian regulations - Cheers on surviving that.. hopefully good times ahead 👍

Vikram - Yes. In a way that has defined what Giottus is for the Indian Customers. We stood the tougher times and kept serving.

We launched the exchange one week after the RBI circular :)

Q1. Most new projects are just copies of existing ones, they are just useless. So, what’s unique about your project & what makes Giottus trustable as a long term project for users and investors?

As Arjun just pointed out. We launched just a week after the RBI restrictions came in to India. Giottus cannot be seen as just a project, but as someone who has been forged during the tough times of market and did not have even a single day where we stopped trading services.

We ensured that cryptocurrency trading keeps going on in India whatever may be the circumstances. We survived the market when there were no profits to be made. We were one of the very few players who did not leave the market during tough times. Giottus also has a very clear distinction of acquiring customers majorly through word of mouth.

You can copy technology but not attitude or commitment or the culture. This is where Giottus largely differs from many players.

We haven't rushed to launch our own IEO for the same reason. We want to do this in a slow and steady manner. We are here for the long term

Q2. Exchanges have been attacked and users KYC information has been Stolen or leaked. This situation worries users. So Question is how is KYC information protected in your Server’s? Is it possible to seize or leak KYC information?

We have been very particular about data security since our beginning and we follow military grade security that is followed by top financial organizations.

But, we are in a crypto world and all the explanation only matters for the time period you have survived.

It has been almost 3 years since we have been in operations and we have been successful in not having any incidents of data breach. That ideally should be the comfort more than any other explanation we can give.

Q3. Many platforms are not at all intuitive when making transactions, but Giottus does offer this quality. How do you guide the user through any process? What tools do you use to avoid errors?

We began as traders in the cryptocurrency industry and very much understand what pain points users have when they trade.

Further, our experience working in Customer centric organizations like Amazon and Vodafone has helped us develop acumen for understanding requirements of customers. And the tool we use to avoid errors is having sharp ears !

At Giottus we take a great care in onboarding our customers.. by providing support through multiple channels

We listen to customers and we take all our feedback seriously. As a matter of fact customers have been the Product managers of Giottus. It is all the feedbacks we have received from customers over the past 3 years that has shaped both our products and thought process. I think there can be no better tool than this !

Q4. The pairs in Giottus are only with INR? Will it be possible to trade as in other exchanges using stable coins such as USDT?

True that. That is a customer pain point we will be addressing soon.

Though we have been offering non-INR trade pairs, these have been liquidity sourced only from the Giottus customers. We understand this might not be best solution for customers. We have already began our integrations with international exchanges and we will be coming soon with some big announcements that could be a great value add for the Indian traders.

Giottus will soon become “only place to have best trades for sablecoins”

Q5. I really don't think that ALL users have reported positive and excellent comments about Giottus, right? What have been some of the inconveniences that users who use Giottus have reported more?

The most common complaint we hear is listing of new coins

This question will have different answers at different point of time over the years we have been in operation. When we began, we have lot of customer dissatisfaction over liquidity, but that is not the case now. Now it is more about listing coins, Crypto to crypto liquidity provided by international exchanges.

Q6. Features are the most vital thing in building project growth, a product will not develop without good features and promotion, whatever is good. So, how about Giottus? Can you provide a list of killer features that scare your competitors over your project?

True. But we should look even deeper into this question

We are in a space that tech and products will get easily copied.

If Giottus is offering a product that is attracting customers, then competition can also copy the tech and launch it in few months. But there are certain things that cannot be easily copied which is more than tech. It is about the culture and it is about the attitude towards customers.

At Giottus we are proud of being the most responsive exchange in the world. Most customers still talk we are the most responsive and multi-lingual customer support we have.

We are a bunch of humans who care for our customers a lot. This makes us more than tech and gets us close to our customers and builds trust. This is something competition cannot quickly copy.

Q7. Will Giottus focus exclusively on India or will you expand your horizons to other countries? Why did you decide to start with India with so many restrictions that it has?

We cannot treat India like any other country. Our sheer size and market potential is a point of envy for many countries.

Consider an example in parallel world of traditional equity markets: Zerodha is only India focussed but is the largest in the world considering number of transaction per day.

That is the potential of India and there is lot of work to be done here for adoption of cryptocurrency in India

Once, we are comfortable with the work we have done in the India market we will start focussing on the International markets as well.

Q8. How does Giottus evaluate the importance of the user community? In the near future, Does Giottus have any special plans to attract and expand the community?

If you had noticed, Giottus had done the least marketing out of all major exchanges. We got bulk of our customers only through word of mouth.

Thats one of the reasons why big share of our spending is on Referral program. We have the best referral program in the market where we give upto 100% of the commission we earn to the referrer for the first two weeks and 60% after that.

And going forward we will be having a lot of Outreach programs and sessions similar to AMA sessions like these and many knowledge building webinar sessions

The next big moment would be the launch of our own token where we have big plans to thanks our supporters who have helped us through our journey

Also our team is very approachable. If you have any specific concerns or feedback you can reach out to me or Vikram directly and we will ensure you get the response

Q9. really the vast majority of wallets claim to be 100% secure and anti-hackers, but after some time they suffer hacks, how does Bitgo help the Giottus wallet to be completely secure? What tools do other security systems have?

One aspect is security, but what is much more comforting than security is the Bitgo cold wallet Insurance.

Now, we are in an Industry where even if I talk for hours about security features, it is not going to comfort the customers considering the hacks that have happened even in the largest exchanges of the world.

But by partnering with Bitgo for their cold wallet service we have made sure that at least 90% of customer funds are covered by 100% insurance incase of cyber theft.

Now that is something that does not require much of explanation from my side to state how secure customer funds are now.

Q10. Liquidity, Transaction fees and slippage are always important factors in Finance services. How does Giottus solve the above problem to attract users?

All three are inter-related. In fact they are the same question.

We are bringing tiered fees to incentivise marker makers and large traders to choose Giottus as their preferred exchange. If there is any large trader here looking for customised fee structure you can reach out to us.

Crypto to Crypto liquidity we will improve very soon with our partnership with one of the largest international exchanges.

We strongly believe these two along with opening up our APIs should bring the liquidity. And higher trading volumes, we can lower the transaction fees significantly

Q11. We can see Filecoin has been another hot spot after Defi. Could you add this type of investment in GIOTTUS?

Yes. Our backend team is working on bringing promising projects to our users. You will see some exciting coin launches in coming months

Q12. Marketing is the leading factor that helps the project thrive. So what is your strategy to attract customers and developers to #Giottus in the long term?

We are long way from launching our own Blockchain. So attracting developers for that is not on our radar right now. But we are building a strong team to create the best exchange in the world.

Marketing complements a good product. We have spent our time and energy in building a good product. Now we have turned our attention towards marketing. You will Giottus reaching out through multiple channels to listen to the customers and implement the suggestions.

Q13. Really what is the mission and vision of Giottus? is it simply achieving the highest number of registered users beyond India?

Our mission is to make sure we drive the crypto adoption in India. It is not just about the userbase but also being able to offer this complex tech product , easily to customers. We will be offering anything every product that will be related to Indian community and enable crypto adoption.

Q14. Can I stake $GIOTTUS token ? What are the Staking structures ?

We have not yet launched our own token. So we are not offering Staking of Giottus coin yet. We will be allowing staking of other coins very soon.

Q15. In your 3 years of existence, what are GIOTTUS achievements so far ?

We are really proud of the fact that we have been there for our users right from the day of our launch. When RBI circular came, we were the first spot exchange to launch P2P within a week after news

Q16. Liquidity Mining and Defi is hyped recently, what has GIOTTUS done in the trend to grab the opportunity?

Being an exchange we have made sure that we offer a lot of defi tokens for the Indian community to trade with. Starting from COMP, Lend, UNIswap we offer now more than 10+ DEFI tokens and addding many as we speak. We are launching Enjin and DFI.money tomorrow

In September 2018 we innovated again to create trusted peers powered order book. This is the model that we used to provide seamless deposits and withdrawals to our customers.. while there were Exchanges where it took days to get the withdrawal processed, right from April 2018 we have ensured 98% of INR withdrawals are processed within 30 mins

From March 2020 we launched the first instant deposit withdraw service bringing the processing time to seconds

Q17. Partnerships are crucial for Adoption, so can you tell us what partners you have currently and future partnerships

I have stated sometime ago regarding our partnership with Bitgo for Cold wallets. Apart from this there are series of partnership deals we have struck with many international exchanges. You will see many exciting news from Giottus for the days to come.

Q18. I usually use the Binance exchange and it is really easy to carry out transactions on that platform, but in Giottus it is much easier? What really makes it easier than Binance is?

We are a India focussed exchange and have the best liquidty in the market for INR pairs. That is our key focus and differentiator

Q19. Southeast Asia is a very vibrant school and there are a lot of development projects here, so do you have any plans to grow in Southeast Asia?

Yes. As explained earlier once we see Indian market is addressed to its potential we will move our focus outside.. But with the kind of growth we are seeing in Indian Crypto ecosystem, we dont want to spread too thin and lose focus

Q20. Traders are only trading in INR pair but what do you think about other pairs there are very less no of trades

We will be launching our International exchange integrations very soon. That will make sure we are best place to trade both in INR and Crypto pairs

Q21. In the current exchange as the foundation there is a main problem is washing transactions to create volumes in their platform. So do #GiottusExchange have any plans to prevent traditional washing in your Exchange platform ?

This indeed is a problem and does not give a good picture about volumes. But having said that it is not easy to get away doing wash trades. Few Indian exchanges have also been in the news and point of discussion in many Telegram channels for the same. Till date such allegations have never been levied at Giottus even once.

Q22. What is your strategy for building a strong community? Do you agree that the power of the community will lead your project to develop globally? What services do you provide to the community?

Relationship with User community is a symbiotic relationship. The only reason for a project's existence is the users. This is true for large projects like Bitcoin to the smallest of projects. We understand we will be nowhere without the support of our users. And the foundation of that relationship is communication

We work closely with our community. We listen to them and most of the features/coins that we introduce are result of such feedback.

Users who have recommended our platform to their friends and families have been richly rewarded. We have given away more than 30% of our earnings from trade till date as incentives and going forward this will go even Higher with our recent launch of best-in-class referral program

Q23. There are very less trade in p2p so how come Giottus overcome this for traders to do transaction in Giottus?

Our P2P platform had a lot of traction when customer were unable to trade in the spot markets due to RBI restrictions. But with our Instant INR deposit and Withdrawal features customers are being able save a lot of time and money transacting in spot market. This makes P2P not a very lucrative option for customers

Q24. Really why implement a verification system with "KYC Superfast"? when we are living in a time where finance DeFi is beginning to take over everything centralized? why not decentralize Giottus?

DEX is not a single solution for all the needs for cryptocurrency trading industry. The industry will hopefully move towards DEX but Fiat exchanges cannot move to a decentralized format yet. We are guys who take care of connecting the fiat and crypto world and to ensure this it is not possible for us to be decentralized. Further, we strongly believe that the need of the hour is promoting cryptocurrency adoption than moving towards decentralized exchanges. Though we are working on such decentralized projects, that is more futuristic than the solutions for the need of the hour.

Decentrat is on the cards, but we need to go a long way  before that. Our primary focus has been on fiat-on- ramp. There is no scope of decenetralising this part of the infrastructure.

However things can change with the launch of CBDC's

Q25. Which area does Giottus focus on at the moment? (DeFi, Dapps, Stake, Yield Farming..)

All, you will see many exciting product launches in days to come.

Q26. Giottus have any Referral system in their exchange? if yes, then whats the benefits you provides for referring someone?

At Giottus you have the opportunity to earn a max of 100% of referral Bonus and a min of at-least 60%... That is currently the maximum offered by any player

Q27. India have so many cryptocurrencies restrictions, so How Giottus manage the Regulatory and legal terms?

Actually...there are not any restriction at all. It is an unregulated market. We make sure all our customers are KYC verified

Q28. How do you evaluate the support from India community ? What is your strategy to marketing and for Mass Adoption ? What message do you want to send to community through AMA today?

Our primary goal of this AMA was to listen to the community, understand their concerns. Questions in the AMAs teach us a lot about the key things that our users value. Helps us focus on the high priority tasks that our customers are interested in. We are here to learn from our customers

Q29. I understand that the platform "Giottus Cryptocurrency Exchange" is available for android in playstore, but why not launch it for Appstore? or will that be the next update?

Very very soon.

Q30. A lot of people will want to know what the strength of your Project is but I want to know the weaknesses and problems Your Project faces ? How do you plan to solve it?

The key difficulty faced not just by Giottus but other exchanges in the market is the lack of regulatory clarity. But this is to be expected of a developing country like India. India always looks for an example,... For precedence of how the developed world approaches the crypto ecosystem. With the overall environment positive in the developed world, we see India regulating the market real soon

Q31. Does GIOTTUS offer token BURN or BUY BACK to increase the value of your token 

We will share the details when will have our IEO 😊

Q32. What region would you target first ?

Our focus is currently the Indian market

Q33. Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to #your project Because it is the success of a project to get more investors who are still not in the crypto world. What are the plans to increase awareness around your in non-crypto space?

True that. We are actually noticing a lot of enquires from people who have invested in traditional markets and looking at diversifying into cryptocurrencies. We are planning to have many knowledge building webinars for such customers. We are also building a knowledge base for newcomers that we will be launching soon

Q34. Trust is very important in business. So, what makes investors, customers and users feel safe when working with Your project? And how will you get the trust of many users that have negative thoughts about Blockchain and DeFi?

The most important fact to keep in mind while working in a nascent technology is that users need a lot of education and onboarding. We spend a lot of our efforts in educating people about Crypto.

Especially when the customer has just signed up, it is our paramount duty to offer support and onboard him in a comfortable manner.

If we can treat the new customers correctly and help them navigate through this chaos we believe we can build a long term community

Great. So we are an Indian focussed exchange offering best liquidity in the country for INR pairs. We are one of the Highest rated exchanges in India and are known for our top-notch customer support.

Think we have covered a lot.... This by far is the most engaging I have seen guys