Tagomi Joins the Libra Association
It’s been operational for two years, and Tagomi is quickly rising into one of the well-known brokerages in the blockchain space. They’re based out of New Jersey, with operations exceeding thirty states in America. Tagomi also holds offices in the United Kingdom and European Union, allowing them to form multiple partnerships that have excelled them forward. The last recorded trade valuation for Tagomi was listed at $20 million per week. It’s now believed that they’ve exceeded past that valuation, reaching a daily figure of $20 million. Below we’ve compiled an extensive interview that Tagomi’s CEO, Marc Bhargava, had with Finance Magnates.
The interview began with Marc being asked on their market share. He stated: “Things have been scaling. We’re delighted with the market share we’ve been gaining for some of the more advanced and sophisticated traders who have been underserved, and who have either gone to these retail-based exchanges and have had to ‘cobble up’ liquidity there, or who have gone to OTC desks, where they haven’t been able to do advances algos or automated shorting.”
Their market share wasn’t the primary purpose behind this interview, with the company recently announcing that it’d entered an agreement with the Libra Association. Tagomi stands at the 22nd member of the association, who will assist with the development of the Libra Token for Facebook. The individual operating this partnership will be Jennifer Campbell, who’s taking the position of Libra Delegate for Tagomi. She stands as one of the co-founders for this brokerage, with her representing this company on multiple partnerships.
It should be noted that Jennifer Campbell stands under the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Since this announcement was confirmed, multiple news agencies have requested a follow-up interview. Finance Magnates was the only source able to receive this interview, which was held in the Podcast format. This technology blockchain brokerages interview is available on Soundcloud, YouTube and Apple Podcasts. It’s now expected that Tagomi will donate upwards of $10 million towards developing the Libra Network, which has been the standard entrance fee into this association. Returns on their investment include dividends and interest from the Libra Reserve. Donating this level of funds won’t be extensive for Tagomi, with the company recently being estimated at $72 million in profit valuations. Receiving a loan from global banking institutions to fund this investment would excel their financial portfolio.
The Libra Association Partnership
Marc was asked on his thoughts about the Libra partnership. He stated: “We’re just very excited to keep pushing our mission forward. When we started the company two years ago, we thought that the big institutional players coming into space would be folks like Goldman Sachs, for example. Still, it’s super exciting that a company like Facebook–a company with seven times the market cap of Goldman–is instead the big institution coming into space. We have a lot of admiration also for other tech companies, like Twitter.”
When asked if he’d predicted the growth of large technology firms entering the blockchain space, Marc said: “It’s one thing we were wrong on, to be honest, in terms of who would be the first big movers from the ‘institutional’ side–it’s turned out to be more ‘big tech’ than traditional finance. We’re just excited to be leveraging the same technology and team and regulatory stack to help folks like that, and especially to the Libra Association.”
Jennifer Campbell was also present at this interview, with her expressing that this decision wasn’t made easily and didn’t step away from their internal strategy. Campbell’s official statement reads: “I think that even from the beginning, our mission has always been to serve clients who are trading in size–so, folks who can’t just go to a retail platform, as Marc mentioned, and buy $10 million in Bitcoin because they need to aggregate across multiple exchanges and trade across them. Whether that’s Goldman Sachs, their clients, or larger tech companies like Facebook, our mission is still the same–to lower the execution costs for these folks.”
The Libra Association required legal and technical expertise in the blockchain space. Tagomi believes the first member that can provide this desired asset. Marc Bhargava noted that joining Facebook’s association of partner was made to contribute wherever they can for international industry growth.
When asked what Tagomi thinks of Facebook’s Libra Association, Mark mentioned: “Two things that we’ve focused on in the last two years are technology and the regulatory and legal side of the space. Libra is so much more than just Facebook, there are 22 different members. Facebook certainly is one and a driving force, but all 22 members have a common goal of basically modernizing the financial system.”
Marc continued talked about his fellow members, stating: “We’re able to use the internet and software very quickly. It touches a lot of people’s lives and scales very rapidly. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen that same sort of scale in the financial system: we still have a billion people who have no banking, or who are underbanked. We still have billions of people who can’t move money around within their own country, or across countries.”
Bhargava continued his comments to Finance Magnates, mentioning: “The mission of the broader association is to change that, in the same way, that software has sort of things like social media or listening to music or catching a car–this has not necessarily been the case in the financial system. At Tagomi, we’ve focused on two things that we’ve hoped to bring to the Association: one is technology, and the second is legal expertise. Even though we’re a young company, we’ve brought quite a lot of experience.”
International Regulation
When questioned on their platform and its respective regulation on the worldwide stage, Bhargava explained: “On the technology side, for over two years and with a team of technologists, we’ve built a lot of infrastructures. When you think about trading tokens, creating them, redeeming them, thinking about treasury; we’ve built that out, and we work with clients there. We’re operational in over 30 countries. We are registered on a national level in America and have money transfer licenses in over 30 states. This includes having the Bit License. Also in places like the UK and Hong Kong, and across the globe, we’ve been working with regulators, because we’ve been live in these 30 countries for a year.”
Tagomi has garnered an extensive level of digital experience when it applies to regulation. When they were founded in 2018, it was the cusp of all the alterations seen in the European and American markets. Tagomi is one of the few brokerages to surpass these regulation changes and continue to see increased growth. These assets on international regulation can be beneficial for Facebook, who have experienced substantial backlash relating to their respective approaches towards regulating the Libra Coin & Network.
Facebook has garnered the distrust of multiple governing agencies and government officials, often refusing to provide accurate information regarding their international regulation methods. They have the right to refuse since their operations through the Swiss Federal Data Protection & Information Commission. Most financial governing associations don’t recognize the SFDPIC. Subsequently, Facebook must approach their future applications with new strategies. That’s where Tagomi comes into effect.
When asked by Finance Magnates reporters how the Libra Association should move forward, Jennifer Campbell provides some insight on her opinions. The Tagomi Co-Founder stated:” There’s quite a lot of regulatory bodies who regulate this space, and so there’s a lot of people you have to meet there’s the SEC, there are the MTLs, there’s FINRA. It’s a matter of really going to these folks and helping them understand what you’re trying to build. Why it’s going to be safe, how and why people will be protected? It really takes a few meetings to help people to get to know you. That’s what we did with Tagomi as well. That’s why we were able to get some of these licenses so quickly.”
Marc Bhargava then provided his insight onto Libra’s potential approach to regulation. The CEO expressed: “So many of these regulators don’t necessarily talk to each other, and Tagomi, in some ways has been an in-between. When we sat down with the Hong Kong regulator, they were super interested in ‘well, how are the UK and the US thinking about this? I would say that the biggest problem is not really regulation. From our point of view, it’s standardizing regulation.”
Those statements from Marc transferred over to the United States regulation that Tagomi experienced. He mentioned: “We applied on a state-by-state basis to do business. Whether it’s trading or lending activities, there are different regulatory bodies within each state, and there’s not a lot of standardization there. Over the last year, we’ve been advocating for more standardization in the US, and globally as well. The two things that define Libra are how early it is in its development, and also how ambitious it is.”
The Departed Members
The conversation between the Tagomi Founders and Finance Magnates moved towards the previously associated members with Libra. It appeared that both Jennifer Campbell and Marc Bhargava weren’t phased that multiple original members left this project after regulation concerns became more prevalent. The most extensive loss to the Libra Association was MasterCard, who have provided insight on their motivations towards leaving this project. Ajay Banga, the Chief Executive Officer for MasterCard, at the time expressed that Facebook wasn’t revealing their honest motivations towards the Libra Coin. Ajay mentioned that the project went from al altruistic idea into something that sounded criminal.
Throughout the various interviews that the MasterCard CEO had regarding their disassociation, it was mentioned that Facebook’s financial networks weren’t practical and would’ve provided Zuckerberg with an excellent level of power. Facebook could’ve eventually required global citizens to pay substantial funds to access their currencies. The fees would’ve reached more than $10.00 depending on the funds wanting to be removed. Ajay often noted that the concept wouldn’t work unless a complete overhaul was accomplished, which Mastercard wouldn’t be a part of.
Tagomi doesn’t believe the same things that MasterCard has expressed, with marc Bhargava mentioning that making these level of judgements was extreme. Finance Magnates brought up the comments made by Ajay Banga, receiving the response they wanted from Tagomi’s CEO.
Marc Bhargava mentioned the early stages of the Libra Association and how more consideration needs to be put towards their future: “I think that the two things that define Libra are how early it is in its development, and also how ambitious it is. None of it was a firm commitment. It was and still is figuring out a lot of pieces of the model: technology, regulatory, distribution; but it has a lot of the right players, I think, to succeed on a scale that we haven’t yet seen in crypto.”
Marc continued those remarks with: “There was a lot of hype around crypto in 2017, and I think that quite a few players got interested or in the space around that hype. Also, to be fair to that same group, I think that all of us would have expected more use cases to have emerged over these few years. We’re starting to see it be sure whether it’s store-of-value, or whether it’s payments. Whether it’s Defi, but we don’t see it at scale, to date. I think what’s exciting is that you have a lot of the right players to make this happen at scale. However, it’s still very early.”
Bhargava finished out the interview with finance Magnates by stating: “As the project figures out the specifics the regulatory aspects and the tech, members are going to provide services in ways you’re bound to see a lot of mixing and matching. I think that some of those players may not have been the right match. But that also could be a timing thing, they could end up being the right match again in a year or two. I think it’s just essential to keep in mind how early stage the project is, especially in the context of how ambitious it is.”
Tom Arran
