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The CEO of ADVFN and Online Blockchain talked to Zak Mir about how the aftermath of the pandemic has raised interest in the stock market and the crypto space, and how both of his companies have benefitted over the past year.
Clem said, “ADVFN has had a really, really good run since the beginning of last year and the interest in the markets has been very good for us.” He explained that something an old broker told him back in 2000 turns out to be true: that after the dotcom crash, it would be another generation till investors come back.
“It turned out her was totally right. All those that got totally fried in the dotcom crash, they never carried on. Only the really smartest and hardest, and the most switched on people, carried on through that period… Now the next generation is here, and they’ve been here really two to three years now, but they first appeared in crypto… crypto is the rock n roll of their generation. They then started to pivot into equities, and we’ve seen that in America, and that upwelling, that Reddit crowd, that market boom, that Robinhood thing, has been very good for us.”
Clem said, “As people become more and more sophisticated, they have more and more experience, and they want more and more information… If you want the tools the big boys use, the professionals use, you have to come to us – there’s not really anywhere else you can get them – unless you want to pay $3,000 a month.”
Talking about Online Blockchain, Clem explained: We were the first dotcom that exploded in the dotcom boom, and we went from 15p to £15. We incubated ADVFN. Online was, is and will continue to be an incubator, of things like web stuff and crypto stuff. We changed our name (to Online Blockchain) and bang, up went the price.”
Clem told Zak about Online’s latest project, Umbria, a decentralised finance project. “What we built is something called a bridge, that enables you to take your tokens from one blockchain, say for example Ethereum, and put it onto another blockchain, say Matic or Polkadot or any one of another ones. So that bridge technology is very powerful and we’re the first to do it, and it’s got great prospects.”
This has boosted Online Blockchain’s profile. “People are seeing what we’re doing with our development of Umbria and its bridge technology and its farming and its swapping technology, and they’re going, oh that’s exciting, that could be enormous.”
To watch the full interview, click here (registration required).
