Effectuation Chronicle #21: Kaiko, Crypto Data Expedition
Effectuation Chronicle #21: Kaiko, Crypto Data Expedition
Exploring the deepest seabed remains mysterious for most of us. Dark, almost unknown and full of risks, oceanic faults have been explored using increasingly powerful technologies. A fascinating and disturbing universe, including the deepest fault, Challenger Deep, at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, has finally been explored by the Kaiko submarine. This Japanese submersible is the first to have returned with scientific data that can be used by humans.
In a nutshell. Crypto and Data.
Like these marine expeditions, the recovery of quality data from cryptomones, or « digital assets », is a real odyssey. Kaiko, like the deep-sea submarine, has been working since 2014 to collect, standardize and distribute data from this emerging world and its shifting borders to blockchain market players.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero,… digital currencies that are traded on marketplaces and whose trading generates an immense amount of data to be processed for Kaiko, which currently covers more than 12,000 asset pairs.
The team. Knowing how to be reborn like a phoenix.
Kaiko’s team has had two lives. 2014-2017 with Pascal Gauthier, and 2017 to now, with Ambre Soubiran.
A mathematician graduated from Dauphine, Ambre began her career at HSBC where she worked for 10 years in the Equity Derivatives market. Amber or « Madame Bitcoin » had a very specific background in the world of finance, but in 2015, she met Pascal Gauthier, former COO of Criteo and original founder of Kaiko. Instantly, she became interested in the project.
In 2017, Pascal proposed to Amber to take over, or rather to turn around, Kaiko, « almost bankrupt because it was too far ahead of its time ». Indeed, the market between 2014 and 2016 was not yet fully mature and « institutional investors would not be interested in this new asset class ». Pascal is called to another mission: he joins Ledger, another start-up in the blockchain in which he is also a shareholder, as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
Starting from practice-zero with a functional platform and a stock of historical data, Ambre surrounds itself with two developers to deploy Kaiko’s potential. Erik Fonselius and Robert Edström, two Swedish specialists in Big Data and Cryptography/Blockchain, join the « Kaiko 2.0 » adventure at its beginning. Today based in Paris, the shock team is composed of 11 people, including 7 engineers, and 3 business people.
Article to be found in full on Forbes
