In a recent interview with InsideBitcoins.com, Delta.App Chief Executive Officer Nicolas Van Hoorde revealed that investors were going back to digital assets as a hedge against the depreciating dollar. Hoorde talked about the chances of cryptocurrencies utilizing the current Coronavirus pandemic to surge in value.
During the interview, the chief executive also delved into the possibility of Facebook’s Libra seeing the light of the day. Furthermore, Hoorde talked about the current and prospects of institutional investors continuing to take part in the crypto sector.
The company behind the Delta.App was recently acquired by eToro, a leading global multi-asset investment platform. How will this acquisition impact Delta’s goals?
“Well, prior to the acquisition, Delta was already looking to diversify either horizontally or vertically. Seeing that eToro already offers tools for either direction, having a full-fledged cryptocurrency exchange via eToroX in their portfolio or the eToro platform itself which not only supports crypto but also stocks, ETF’s, indices and so forth – we basically teamed up with the best possible party for us to deliver on either of these future goals.”
Amid the huge competition in the sphere, you state that Delta.App is “the best Bitcoin, ICO & cryptocurrency portfolio tracker everywhere”. What are the arguments for such confidence?
“In 2017 and 2018 Delta was by far the highest-reviewed app within the crypto-asset portfolio tracker space. Delta raised the standards on UI and better customer support and we were pleased to see other providers invest in these aspects as well. Alongside this, we also won the Webby Award for the best mobile app UI and more importantly, users cite our product for ease of use. In fact, we get messages from people daily, which is really encouraging and also boosts the team.”
Can you tell us the current number of users the Delta.App has? How many users do you expect by the end of 2020?
“We reached 1.5 million downloads not so long ago and we’re seeing people using the tracker even when market volatility is low, which is encouraging.”
Institutional interest in the crypto sector has been on the rise over the past couple of years. What does this shift say about the future of digital assets?
“Much in line with eToro’s thinking, we believe we’ll see the greatest transfer of wealth onto the blockchain in years to come. You can increasingly see the crypto sector and the traditional financial markets grow towards each other. The ‘wild west’ period for the crypto market seems to be behind us, with more regulators, policymakers and central banks increasingly looking at what blockchain technology has to offer. Institutions are dipping their toe in the water – the likes of JP Morgan have launched their own internal crypto (JPM Coin) – and we expect this to rise as more use cases for the technology are being established.”
Bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency sector are characterized by volatility. In your opinion, how will the upcoming Bitcoin halving have on this volatility?
“Bitcoin and crypto, in general, is still a very volatile asset class so it is difficult to predict what will happen after the halving. Hopefully, as the asset class matures through regulation and increasing rates of adoption, bitcoin behavior will become easier for people to understand. Although, like with any financial asset class, if we could predict how markets were going to behave, there wouldn’t be an orderly market for us to invest in.”
Do you think coronavirus can be a catalyst for crypto prices to surge amid the growing demand for digital money?
“We’ve seen extreme market volatility across all asset classes and stock markets around the world crash. Crypto markets have remained volatile, and in line with traditional markets, also dropped. However, we are seeing some investors on eToro going back into crypto as a hedge against a depreciating dollar, caused by the unlimited quantitative easing measures the US Fed announced a couple of weeks ago.”
The regulatory factor is a thorny issue in the cryptocurrency sector. In your opinion what should be done in order to have uniform regulations across the board?
“I don’t think I have the right qualifications to adequately answer the question – I hope that the people entrusted with this matter come up with a solution that makes sense for what crypto stands for in terms of transparency, while also making sure it can be done within a realistic and reasonable legal framework that protects those investing in it.”
Facebook’s Libra is seen as a game-changer in the cryptocurrency world. With the current controversies, will the coin be rolled out anytime soon?
“I have every faith that Facebook will enter the crypto asset space – what that looks like however is still up in the air. Mark Zuckerberg has announced they will ensure the project has the correct regulatory approvals before launching anything so whether they create a token or something else, like an on-chain payments network, remains to be seen. Either way, I feel confident that they will follow their mantra of creating something that will solve a significant problem.”
One of the major risks with the crypto sector is fraud and security issues. How does Delta.App cushion users against such threats?
“Delta is completely anonymous, there’s no user sign up process at all. No personal identifiable data is asked or collected at any point. Apart from that, we’re also very strict in terms of security. Let’s take our Exchange Account Connections as an example, a system that allows users to link up their exchange so that their transactions are imported automatically. First of all, these connections and parameters are stored fully client-side, which means that it never leaves the device. It’s not sent to any server. The downside is that if the user has multiple devices or switches device, he needs to set up the connection again. But it’s a small price to pay for this level of security.
Secondly, we only need to have access to the transactions that happened in the past, we don’t need the ability to transact. This ‘read-only’ permission level vs ‘trade’ permission is very important and to make sure Delta doesn’t have more permission than it actually needs, we actively refuse connections that give us more than ‘read-only’ access. We just won’t do it. So we basically protect the user doubly.”
Thank you, Nicolas, for the conversation!
