The Block Media has been conducting interviews with promising companies, startups, and project representatives as a New Year's plan for 2023. It is a plan to meet people who will stand out in the digital asset and blockchain technology market and listen to their vision.

Our second interview is with AM Management CEO Kim Ho-joong. AM Management is doing decentralized quant trading.

AM Management CEO Kim Ho-joong and analyst Song Seung-jae are professional traders doing crypto quant trading for many years.

AM Management won third place with Lemon Chain at the Block Festa 2022 Web3 Startup Pitching Contest.  

AM Management received a good evaluation of the business feasibility of decentralized quant trading in the competition. The interview took place last month at AM Management office in southern Seoul.

Q. Please introduce AM management.

It is a company where the quant team and manual traders work together to create a crypto fund strategy. It was established in January of this year and had three co-founders. The co-founders have known each other for more than four to five years, and two quants and one manual trader.

AM Management's goal is to achieve the self-certified No. 1 in crypto quant trading and macro analysis. It has been selected for a government support project (startup initial startup package) and is also receiving support.

Q. What are the main assets  AM management handles?

Currently, AM Management is quant trading only Bitcoin. To reduce volatility and increase stability. Since Bitcoin has the largest amount of institutional investment, volatility is low.

Expertise in Bitcoin. Since 2018, Bitcoin has accounted for over 90 percent of the analysis I posted on TradingView.

Ethereum is more volatile than Bitcoin. Institutional investors added Bitcoin to their investment portfolios because of its limited supply. However, institutional investors have started Ethereum investment relatively late. Altcoins' volatility is high because they have a small market capitalization.

The larger the operating funds, the higher the market influence in Quant investing; in that case, the performance will drop. Investors focus on Bitcoin because it has a large market cap, and there is no exchange in the world where Bitcoin is not listed. Even if the assets under management (AUM) increase, it can sufficiently cover the trading of Bitcoin.

Q. What are projects AM Management working?

We supply AM management reports to domestic and foreign exchanges. To expand its business to B2C, it is currently developing a decentralized quant trading platform, Quant Now.

The core of the problem, such as the FTX and 3AC incidents, is that they should have managed customer assets more transparently. After depositing assets into the company, customers can only see the numerical return on the monitor. I believed in the figure and held the asset but suffered damage.

Metamask and DEX exchanges have been linked to the platform. You can use AM Management's trading system through Metamask, and Metamask and DEX exchanges help investors track their assets.

Q. What are the advantages of the trading platform?

AM Management's quant trading platform is decentralized. If you centrally control the amount deposited into the platform, investors need to learn how they conduct management and operation. AM links its account to Metamask, and the asset portfolio is visible transparently. Because AM Management does not have the right to fund, customers can withdraw their money anytime.

The timing of pre-buying and pre-selling, a problem of the existing copy trading, can also be overcome. If the order is delayed, copy traders get less profit even if it is 0.1 percent, and the loss rate is significant because the stop loss is deferred. AM management is doing quant trading, so each customer has a wallet, and APIs manage trading wallets simultaneously. 

I also paid attention to the UI. Compared to stocks, coin trading apps are complex, and we made the UI as simple as possible to increase accessibility.

Q. What did differentiate you from other startups participating in Block Festa?

It takes time for startups to generate operating revenue, but our quant trading helped us generate revenue.

There are limits to expanding customers in the Korean market, and the ultimate goal is to advance into the global market. From a long-term perspective, we are trying to tap into the global market while strengthening services to domestic customers.

Q. What is the asset management record?

Although Bitcoin has fallen by up to 70 percent since January 2022, AM Management achieved a 32 percent return by combining long-term and short-term strategies.

Bitcoin has continued to decline in price since the approval of futures-based ETFs in 2021. However, AM Management began to attract people's attention by reaping a 32 percent rate of return. AM Management's quant trading technique, which pursues stability, may have been less effective in a rising market, but it could instead draw attention in a falling market.

AM Management differentiated itself from other quant trading companies. Many companies arbitrage with quant trading, but AM did not do the arbitrage. Also, rather than increasing the number of coins, it presents a rate of return based on won or dollars.

After the Block Festa 2022 Web3 Pitching Contest, venture capital companies contacted me first. It was nice to create an investment opportunity.

The Block Media is Korea's first media specialized in blockchain and digital asset market and holds the Block Festa conference every year. At Block Festa 2022, we had time to discuss with experts what to prepare for innovation under the Spring of Web3. As one of the Block Festa 2022 events, the Block Media held a Web3 Startup Pitching Contest on Dec. 2 last year at the Uprise Lounge in southern Seoul.