For a long time, centralised finance was the main method of accessing various crypto services. However, as the popularity of decentralised finance grew, it became more common for investors to want more control over their assets.
Vladimir Gorbunov is a young innovative serial Fintech and IT entrepreneur who changes the crypto market with his products. He has extensive experience in the crypto market and dealing with its volatility. His company Choise.com connects crypto banking solutions with an earning marketplace with CeFi and DeFi products. The marketplace features a variety of high-yield products such as yield farming, crypto-insurance, and staking.
Besides being a part of the crypto industry, the team behind Choise.com also operates in the CeFi and DeFi sectors. They started their journey in 2017 by launching the Crypto wallet and platform known as Crypterium. After DeFi started gaining popularity, the team expanded its services and eventually became Choise.com. Their vision is to provide the best possible crypto experience by combining the benefits of both DeFi and CeFi.
Choise.com is currently raising a round of $33M, despite the crypto winter.
We caught up with Vladimir to understand why Choise.com is unique, how companies can attract investments in the tight market, and what are the prospects for earning in CeFi and DeFi.
SC: What is Choise.com, and which market problems are you solving?
Gorbunov: Choise.com is a brand-new solution, an earning marketplace that combines CeFi and DeFi services to offer users more opportunities to earn on crypto. It is important for the market because the primary retail crypto audience is made up of people who want to earn money: in various iterations, using various means, at various levels of ability, and so on. The huge hype around the decentralised and DeFi markets has also been proven: this market has grown by over $100B in literally two years.
New companies entering the market have integrated all these mistakes into their risk strategy, such as Choise.com, and we now have good knowledge and understanding of how to manage this business to avoid mistakes made before. The centralised side also has an issue with the reliability of their protocols, which are constantly breaking – there’s a lot of scamming there, and some money is siphoned out of there – this is a matter of protection, selection, and scoring these products.
SC: Tell us about your general idea.
Gorbunov: We are one of the first companies on the market to unify centralised and decentralised earnings in one place by erasing the borders between DeFi and CeFi. Because earning is universal – it’s for everyone.
Our goal, as a marketplace, is to handle the selection, scoring, and integration instead of competing with everyone. We are among the first on the market to create a transaction builder protocol as part of our Charism platform that lets users process transactions and move their liquidity from the centralised to the decentralised side through very simple steps.
SC: You have announced a $33M Series A round. Could you talk about why you’re actively fundraising right now?
Gorbunov: First of all, in the history of Choise.com, this is by no means a very large figure, because the company has already invested over $50M in development over the last five years. We have already secured $15M, and launched equity sales on the Seedrs platform.
We have thousands of investors participating in our investment rounds, as we always give members of our community a chance to take part. In terms of full-scale funds, Choise.com has seen investments from 24 funds so far, among which is Grupo HS3.
During the current crypto winter, many companies have left the market. But the niche in which we operate, and the marketplace sector where we have a business subsection, are all-seasonal. This means, we can operate in these markets efficiently, whether it is during a “winter” or a “summer”. That’s why right now, we have an opportunity to attract a new audience and get ready for the next bull run.
SC: Go into a bit more detail about your product. How does Choise.com differentiate itself from competitors?
Gorbunov: Our main product is an earn marketplace that offers the best solutions for earning on digital assets. Instead of competing with market giants, Choise.com gathers its products and services so users can access them easily with a press of a button.
Our goal is to provide access to all the most interesting earning opportunities available on the market. This aggregation allows us to offer more choices and simplify the process, ensuring easier availability for various participants, while also protecting them from potential losses.
So this unification, simplifying the process of entry into decentralised and centralised investment products, is the key value.
SC: You’re currently raising funds. Where will the funds go?
Gorbunov: The first direction is token management. Our native token CHO has already seen impressive growth since its listing, despite the current crypto winter. CHO is listed on leading centralised and decentralised exchanges, such as Uniswap, LBank, Raydium, MEXC Global, and Gate.io, and there are more to come.
We’re also planning to invest further into product enhancement. We are aiming to become the market leader as an earning marketplace, as well as to continue improving our B2B products. Finally, we will continue to attract new users.
SC: You mentioned that you’ve already raised $15M from your stated goal of $33M. What would be the main point in favour of investing in you?
Gorbunov: Choise.com is building a business where everyone who participates in the ecosystem wins. We offer a product that 90% of the entire crypto space currently needs. The demand for CeFi/DeFi integration and a unified marketplace for earning solutions is something that has already been proven clearly. In the current market, it is a key value, and we expect it to only grow going forward. At Choise.com we are moving ahead of the curve to respond to this demand.
We work with funds that understand the value of long-term investments. We base the idea on the tokenomics of our CHO token and its lock-ups. Even though our competitors initially told us it was a bad strategy, their own practices proved them wrong.
SC: We’re in a crypto winter right now. Do you think this is a favourable time for investment?
Gorbunov: Every winter is great because the market gets smarter. People lose their rose-tinted glasses and start looking at things through the viewpoint of, “what does this company have?”. I think the extremely important companies in the current climate are those with expertise and experience, who have already shown what they can do and get results.
And now we’re using the existing product as a foundation to build a new one. I think good projects can raise money under any circumstances.
SC: How has the crypto winter affected Choise.com specifically?
Gorbunov: The team at Choise.com has experience in successfully surviving crypto winters. We committed to launching Charism and other products and stuck to it. Also, we were on time with the idea of integrating CeFi and DeFi. We are optimistic about the future.
What’s happening on the market doesn’t affect us at all. In our TVL business, we’re not seeing any far-reaching changes yet. Totals are basically, give or take a little, at the same level. Maybe activity is a little bit down, but so is the marketing cost; generally, players have changed their approaches. And generally, players in our market have changed their approaches a little bit.
SC: What are your plans for the near future?
Gorbunov: We are continuing to build our marketplace. We had CeFi infrastructure, and now we are developing DeFi and adding some CeFi products. We need to accelerate our pace, and the new round will help.
We’re working on integrating more complicated products, like arbitrage and portfolio strategies, a portfolio management company, and algorithmic strategies for NFTs. We’re planning to launch the first 2-3 companies in Q1, launch new funds continually, add new funds, and have new earning opportunities for our customers.
