In this exciting AMA, we discuss with Farbod Sadeghian their journey to success. So relax, and prepare to be inspired by the story of arteQ.
Andrey Diyakonov: Hi everyone in the Choise.com community. It's another week. It's another month. And another exciting project to be added into our partners list. I'm Andrey. Together on the call with me today is our co-founder Austin. And we're very proud and happy to have Farbod Sadeghia from Arteq representing Arteq and Qlindo – two marvelous tokens that we've just added recently, and that we are already seeing a lot of excitement, and a lot of hype about within our platform.
But believe me, guys, there's actually so much more compactor, which is why we want to conduct this AMA session – to ask about this first-hand from Farbod, to learn a little bit more about the wider context of the project and what you guys are up to and of course to share some exciting updates about what's coming and what's in there for you. So, how about who dive right into it?
Hey, Farbod, say hello to our wonderful community. And why won't you tell us a little bit more about Arteq and Qlindo, get us started.
Farbod Sadeghian: Hi, everyone, happy to be here. Thank you guys for the opportunity to present what we are doing out here. Yeah, I’m Farbod, Co-founder of the Arteq and Qlindо token. We started both of the tokens actually as a kind of investment capital. It means we would ask the people who are interested into digital art NFTs and all the era to invest in the token and we would do the trading and investment into cool projects. We were very lucky to get a lot of museums and a lot of associations that worked with us.
And we had cool projects like Gustav Klimt “The Kiss” that was the largest museum NFT drop ever. It worked quite well out. Now, we are running on a white listing of Tintin and Milo. And we ran out of the whitelisting, which is great, running well, and we have a lot of upcoming beautiful art that will be fractionalized or directly as co-ownership will be offered. But of course as all the tokens we are going for a staking and we are offering a lot of advantages and bonuses.
One of the cool things we came up with is that you can actually visit any museum in the world and then we pay the ticket for our token holders.These are like the advantages that just getting people more coming back to the art scene and enjoying art and especially in the hard times or good times. Always artists are being a piece of our life, that brings a smile on your face, and then that's why we are enabling those things, of course, after the last year, a little bit of a crypto winter/summer or whatever they call it, we were happy to be able to develop much more. And now we got EU regulation for doing also a security token. And that's something that I think is really cool.
It means we’re soon going to be able to also auction or to sell art pieces in a kind of fractional ownership and co-ownership. But this time we are talking about the art in the museum or art in a gallery. It means, it's a real Picasso that is over there. Of course, it's going to be NFTs in tokens always available by the products, but that would be the part in actually ownership of a masterpiece. Then when it's sold out, you, of course, obviously make the profit. In the traditional art it's always 14-17% growth every year. And that's what we’re also bringing on the table.
We are still launching the platform (the first trading engine platform for real art). In March there will be our extension. It means, the arteQ token would actually come back and be there. Initially, there would be an exchange for art, and people can use their tokens to pay with it, to get discounts and everything that is out there.
And, yeah, that was our arteQ part. Since today I have two hats on my head, I also have the Qlindo token. It has exactly the same structure we’re building on. But Qlindo actually invests in green tech and green housing. It's very much real estate oriented. It means the token holders profit from the trade and investment of Qlindo. At the same stage we decided to bring the Qlindo up to status of issuing security tokens. It means real ownership of property by earning your token. We have properties coming up from New York to China and Singapore. It's a really cool portfolio that we offer.
That's so far a kind of overview. I can go more in detail: about the bonuses, the whole advantages and whitelisting and so on (what we are offering).
Andrey Diyakonov: We would definitely want you to get into the nitty-gritty details about those tokens but now let me highlight something for our community here.
So, we've got two tokens on our hands, both of them are available for purchase in our Choise.com App and web platform. Bear in mind you, guys, arteQ is focused on fractional art ownership. I've done a little bit of research and realized that the art ownership was the biggest growing asset class in the North America during the last year outbeating whole bunch of stuff. There are a couple of projects that have been developed in the States and were focusing on fractional ownership or democratizing access. But nothing of this sort has been done in Europe. And definitely you, guys in arteQ, are checking all the boxes because you're democratizing that access in a true way and doing that on blockchain and all those tokens are available now.
I do need to remind you, guys, that Qlindo is focusing on a green housing aspect of it. It is also riding the wave of recent developments. Everyone's focusing on sustainability, on making sure that real estate ownership is being democratized. And you, guys, are making some nice moves. So, kudos, terrific!
Well, look, you mentioned some of the terrific real-life utilities, such as discounts for museum tickets, obviously democratizing access to that terrific asset class... Talk to us a little bit more about your path to crypto or rather to NFTs. Did you dive right into it? Or is it not your first project in crypto?
Farbod Sadeghian: Okay, just tell a little bit about myself... I started in 1999, as soon as I got into the University, with a software development company. We have always been around as a software development company. In the last five years, of course, we got a lot of demand coming in for blockchain development. Our team was great and very fast to upgrade ourselves to the Web3 scene. And what we did, we started a lot of platforms for third parties. It means, we worked with oil and gas companies, all types of companies that we don't like to produce. But it was interesting to dive in. And we learned a lot about the blockchain.
Me, personally... I'm an art collector. I have been in the art scene for over like 10-15 years. We have our own galleries in Vienna (because we are based in Vienna). Having own art gallery and all those artist, when I saw the blockchain coming up, NFTs and everything, what we could do – and couldn't do before – because of the blockchain and the easiness of approaching it, I thought why not to create a kind of capital (so everybody can profit from art investment) and at the same time why we don't help museums and everybody else who want to sell art to access a global community that is always there, and they could take shares in it.
Now we are also fundraising for museums with a crowd investment because the museums normally work on donations. And when they want to get new pieces in, they need to go through a very long-term process, collecting donations. We are giving them access to a platform, they just can click on it. It means, I would own a piece – let's say, 1% of it – and the beautiful piece is hanging in a museum in Europe or in the US, wherever it is. People even can go and watch their own piece of which they have a fractional ownership.
I see the future of art with the blockchain. It is growing much faster because sometimes people forget about art. I think the blockchain enabled us globally to look into a new movement for artists and art lovers to act. And it's beautiful to have your shares in a wallet and showcase it on beautiful screens that recently has been a lot developed to that. You can get a frame that looks exactly like your art frame and have your beautiful pieces randomly over there.
I think the future for arteQ is on two sides. Firstly, the capital side. We trade for our investors and token holders, enabling them to join the whole community award. We also have new software that we are very proud of. It's a crowd auction bidding, it's really cool. It means, we're going to go up to Sotheby's with all of our community. They can decide which piece we want to buy today and then, as soon as they get together – let's say, 1,000 of our token holders, – they would say: let's go for it, each bid for $100.
It means, we're going to have one of the major powers of buying beautiful art in different auctions and save a lot of money. That’s a cool thing. You log in with your wallet, one of our representatives is in the auction and they represent thousands of our co-investors to buy a beautiful Picasso and take it back. And this crowd buying, I think, would be the power. At the end of the day, of course, art is cool and great. But we should also look at it as an investment because everybody wants to make money. If I buy art and lose all the value in the year, there is no meaning in it. That's why with having all of our community (which joins and buys great pieces easily) we can reach 10-15% profits over the years. That would also be a cool aspect of it.
Under the NFT side, of course, it enables us to do a verified copy of a beautiful painting. What we did with Gustav Klimt (“The Kiss”) is that we took one genesis edition – one edition only allowed to be turned into NFT – and divided it into 10,000 pieces. And so far, the museum has got $6,500,000. That's a cool project because in the corona times selling tickets and everything else was really hard for them. And we helped them to raise funds.
And when we look at those two aspects, I see a great future for the token and its holders. And also the good thing, as I mentioned, is our team. We come from a tech background, it means, we are developing 24/7. We are pushing it with a lot of cool gadgets and tools coming up. And yeah, I think, as a long-term secure investment with underlying assets, as of art, we are doing quite well.
Andrey Diyakonov: Terrific. Go ahead, Austin.
Austin Kimm: I have just one question for the community, really. Because maybe not everybody understands how fractionalized art actually works in practice. Maybe you could just explain how it works. For example, you mentioned Klimt, or Piccasso, or something. And I decide that I really like it, I get the token and buy a very small piece of it. Do I own a small piece of art or a token that can be used across all arts? I mean how does it work? Is it very specific to a piece of art or is it across a whole portfolio of art?
Farbod Sadeghian: Okay. The arteQ token, as its own utility token, which we are talking now about and is listed also in the great Choise.com App, is a fractional ownership of a whole treasury for us. The treasury holds a lot of different pieces from different projects and different artists. It means, fractional ownership of a capital investment into art and the growth would be among like 200 different artworks and 300 different NFTs. That's what we are building. For people who buy the token, we immediately go and acquire new art with our expert team. We have 11 people and the team that only negotiates with artists to make them be a part of us.
Great projects like Tintin, The Kiss or Picasso which we're going to have soon in April are found at a very reasonable price. We make profit immediately, as soon as we buy it on the arteQ funds. I talked about the exchange and the trading engine that we will be the first in the market in March trading STO. It's like the security token that is directly EU and has an ownership.
Let's put it a simple thing. We have a beautiful Picasso and divide it into 1,000 shares. The users would own exactly like 2% of it when they procure that. We are going to have those pieces in our treasury. That's a live treasury, not a blockchain treasury. One is located in Liechtenstein and another is in Austria. It means that beautiful pieces would go in the treasury. It will be notary verified that the pieces are original and they have been bought at X price. And we keep it in short, obviously, into third-party treasuries.
The treasuries in Austria... They work as banks, they are banks actually and they offer treasury services. It means, people would own exactly 1-5% of the real art peace laying into a treasury with all the regulations. That's the step that we thought was necessary because we love NFTs but they have different character in comparison with the traditional art in a real area. That's why we offer both: the NFTs in the token would be in a blockchain treasury, but the security tokens, which we provide now, are real shares of a masterpiece.
Austin Kimm: Cool, very cool. So, people have a choice. They can either effectively invest into a portfolio of art, or they can buy an individual piece or a part of a piece of art.
Farbod Sadeghian: Exactly, Austin.
Austin Kimm: Very cool.
Andrey Diyakonov: Yeah, just to follow up on that. Obviously, we've heard about all of the beautiful components of the ecosystem. You've got a piece with the token (which is streamlining the access) and an ability to tokenize pieces of art, you've got the platform.
Now talk to us a little bit more because obviously Choise.com works with retail users, most of them are going to be looking at this AMA and making purchasing decisions. And of course, we're working with institutions. Tell us a little bit more about institutional partnerships and participation in the secondary market. Are you anticipating it or already witnessing it?
Because a lot of the people are concerned about this market environment. They want to see that the long money, smart money, institutional money (whatever you want to call it), are also taking part. So, what have you got to share on that one?
Farbod Sadeghian: Sure. Look, as the tradition, art has always been a great investment for institutions, banks, insurance companies. And every one of them, especially in Europe, has used, first of all, a tax-free investment. And second of all, holding those assets has always been profitable in recession times or in great times – art has always been performing very well. Now we witness the problem exactly with a lot of our utility tokens. A lot of the family offices and institutions were avoiding getting into it because it was not regulated within Europe. And now we have both options and our utility token as a part of the EU regulated environment, we see a lot of interest from our institutions' partners. They are banks and I don't want to name them now, but they are negotiating to be able to also invest into us and to buy a part of the capital which they love to share the risk. It would be a few hundred art pieces and also the security token ownership – we see a lot of increase coming on that.
I think the future is already here, it's like everybody was waiting. Maybe we will get results in 2025-2026. I think the market has stabilized extremely well. If the companies do a proper job, they will grow. It has become a very traditional business way, you need to have business plans. It is not enough just to have a token which will grow because of the demand now. There needs to be a lot behind it including developing platforms from the technology side and the security of the technology. Because one of the biggest issues was: when an institution invests, where they're going to hold their assets. They couldn't allow holding on Choise.com App, or MetaMask, or any others because they needed a treasury. The banks were not accepting that before. Now we see most of the banks have created a custodial service for blockchain and crypto. And it gets extremely interesting. It means, they can buy it on Choise.com but put it in cold storage by a traditional bank which they trust. And they see it's a digital asset which is growing for them.
And the other issue was pricing: how they would go out with it, recalculate the revenues and everything per year. Having the blockchain behind has enabled everyone to have more transparent art investments. Because before they buy an art piece, they need to wait 6-7 years and then reevaluate it with a huge cost. Now they can see the market live into blockchain. What's happening? What is my asset value? What trades are happening underneath such an asset? It's much more transparent. And I think in the next 1-2 years we are going to face our company with a lot of traditional and institutional investors jumped in.
Andrey Diyakonov: Terrific. So we've covered the institutional partnership side. You've also mentioned that you've got some strong and unique assets, such as the treasury, capability located in 2 very safe looking countries: Liechtenstein and Austria. You've mentioned your regulatory status.
Now could you please highlight a little bit more about that? So give a little bit of color on your regulatory status. Where are you regulated and how accessible are those secondary market platforms and your products to the wider, not just European client base?
Farbod Sadeghian: Look, all of our products are made to be international. Why did we get it EU regulated? Because of our own geolocation, we're based in Vienna. It was easier for us to get the regulation over here and comply with them.
The idea of everything we do: everybody around the globe can invest, there are no limitations for any countries. We have a very simple KYC among all of the apps. And people can easily invest in our security tokens also. The whole idea of the regulation: before a security token has been issued it isn't allowed to be traded in a secondary market. We know that there have been art tokens and real estate tokens. All types of tokens have been created as security tokens in the last 5-8 years. There is nothing new in what we are doing here. The new thing is only the secondary market. It means, if I bought a token from a beautiful masterpiece, I would need to wait for the organization’s selling of this masterpiece at an auction or to a gallery, whatever. Then I would get my shares with profit back. Now with the secondary market (for which we got regulated) we offer a secondary trade on security tokens. Our trading engine will say that if I've bought a masterpiece of – let's say – beautiful Picasso, today I see a slight profit in it. I can sell it, go and invest in a beautiful Banksy or whatever, how I decide.
In the last years the tokens were existing, the secondary markets were not. And obviously with licensing in Europe we got everything that the Institutions need to invest now, have the trust and to join to. We need them for a larger market capacity. That's why we got regulated here, our regulation acts globally, anybody and any other institutions can use it. The idea was only, as I mentioned before, how they can save their tokens when they buy something.That's why we did a lot of APIs connections to banks. Now you can choose: I have bought this asset, I want a custodial in it, or in a real bank, or in a real cold storage of the bank. All of those things you can do digitally under the platform and you say, okay, I bought it, I want to leave it with this bank and that's it. And these things needed to be solved and regulated. Now that we have all the infrastructure ready, we are happy that we are getting online with a trading engine still in this month. Of course, for all the great Choise.com followers we will definitely share a link or a news item as soon as it's launched. And they can take a look at it. It's going to be cool. I can bid on real time and real masterpieces and we are very excited about it.
Andrey Diyakonov: Let's just quickly go through all the points that we covered here. You, guys, have got a wonderful technology driven by the developers. And I always love that type of projects. You’ve got a strong regulatory base located in Europe and you covered all the ground there. You've got strong institutional ties and partnerships. I’m not even mentioning your banking partnership, those are terrific.
But as for those museums and art institutions' kind of partnerships, all of those names that you drop (Picasso, Klimt, Vienna Museum)… Sounds just terrific! I can't come up with another project that has got something like this.
So, I really want to highlight for our audience that the previous goal of running crypto was in a lot of regards driven by facilitation of the infrastructure for the institutional investors, right? When the big money, when the long money was able to come into crypto and do that securely, in a way that was acceptable to them. This is why we saw the biggest high in crypto prices and the biggest kind of adoption. That's exactly what you're doing for the art segment of the industry. This is very exciting, but I'm sure you've got some more updates that you want to share.
Why don't you quickly give us, before we dive into what we've got prepared for our audience and the buyers of your tokens, a brief introduction into what's in for arteQ and Qlindo next month, maybe this year? What kind of plans have you got in mind?
Farbod Sadeghian: Yeah, as for our roadmap, especially on the art side... First thing for us is to onboard as much as we can. One of the partnerships that I needed to mention but forgot is Belvedere Museum, one of the largest museums on the globe. It's state-owned and it was a really tough challenge to get them on board. It took us about 8-9 months and we got very familiar with whole institutional and government based organizations which want to move into crypto (with all their concerns and so on). Mostly we are working on our technology now. First of all, it should be able to work with APIs and сo-partnership with the others. Because we don't want to be the only ones who are going for this. We want to enable museums, galleries, everyone to use the technology in-house, convert their assets into a very small wizard that can pass about 5-6 pages and convert their certificates and their ownerships into tokenized assets.
And we have all of our lawyers, notaries and everything we need. We have brought them on-chain and that's one of the other great things. It means, I don't need to meet my notaries in person all the time, they have their own wallets, the lawyers have the wallets, they can sign everything off within our infrastructure making it much lower cost. Because when you talk about tokenization of a real world asset into blockchain the lawyers and notaries charge $50-60,000 for such a process. And it's really not affordable, If everyone wants to do that. That's why we have automated everything. With a few clicks they have the agreements, they have the STO issuance and everything that they need and they can get on board. That's one of the main targets for the next 6-8 months.
Then we will grow our portfolio of the underlying assets for the arteQ token holders. We are negotiating with a lot of cool projects. Some of them I named. We are going to have a lot of assets coming in to make our token very solid because at this moment we have a great collection but we need to grow it as soon as possible and we are bringing a lot of great pieces inside.
Also for arteQ token holders and the exchange we need to explain to people and to our investors, how we can reach the price of $1. Just because of the demand of the market there would be something very exciting to say, but it wouldn't be long term feasible to keep it. That's why with our technology and the trading engine we're going to have 2% share on every trade and become a very profitable company because of the whole art structure that we offer to other platforms. If anybody is going to create a security token on our platform, we will always have a share of transactions. And the transaction may be extremely high because of the art piece that, we know, is going to be announced in the Sotheby's or Art Base, all those big events. Trading will be under one piece making the whole company profitable as a long-term startup in this field (not only our technology that we value a lot but also the income of the company). We're going to reach a point where all standard calculations as a solid company will be there. And that's our whole target in 2023 to reach those goals to bring the company in profitability not only because of sales of tokens, but actually a solid arts' trading.
We also hold one of the largest events globally that we are planning to have in Vienna, in a place called Marx Halle. There will be around 12,000 people attending it in October 2023. The idea is that we see ourselves as a bridge of real world assets and digital ones. And since we have created those technologies, that's why we call it 'the reforming of the future of creativity'. That's the theme of the event to showcase how great companies can use both worlds because having only a metaverse without a real life doesn't make sense, as well as vice versa. That's why we want to bridge this gap and say “you know, guys, work together”.
Because when you go to a traditional gallery and you tell them “let's tokenize your art”, you hear “what are you doing with my art?”. But there's nothing special, no cutting or anything. So we are doing this event to get a lot of awareness. And obviously all our token holders have a free ticket. There will be two greatest DJs going to Vienna. A lot is happening! We want to build this community, the art lovers' community and investors to earn money and enjoy, to be long-term art assets' investors.
That's all targets we have and that's the plans for 2023. Also launching the trade engine made us busy during the last months. And we will be busy a lot with adding collections, maintaining that platform and growing it, doing partnerships until the end of 2023. Now we are partnering with museums in the USA, Ukraine and other places supporting us. In Eastern Europe we never had great protections to move faster but now we do. It's becoming a global movement and we are very happy about that.
Austin Kimm: Very cool!
Andrey Diyakonov: Wow, guys. So, you've heard it first on our Choise.com AMA. ArteQ and Qlindo are all about building a sustainable business driven by fundamentals and strong partnerships, led by a terrific team of IT developers and guys with a great expertise in the technology. They not just take care of the retail side but also the institutional one and bridge the gap between the virtual (or meta) and the real-life utilities.
I think it's time to announce that we're obviously very happy and excited to partner with such a wonderful project. And we want to keep that interest going from our retail community by announcing our newest trading competition, which would be all about incentivizing you, rewarding for purchasing, trading and doing target actions with arteQ tokens.
Now what we have got in mind is that we want to make sure that you are rewarded for your purchasing decisions. Which is why within the next couple of days we're going to announce a very detailed set of rules and prices for your participating in arteQ competition.
Those of you who have already taken part in our previous editions know that they are very exciting and it gets even better. Not only those folks that will have top positions in a trading competition will be rewarded. We are going to announce mechanics according to which randomly selected users will be rewarded as well. So it's not just about those Top 3 or 5. Stay tuned for the details!
And of course, it gets even better because after we announce the trading competition results, which is expected to last for about 10 days on the Choise.com App, we are expecting a launch of the first of a kind of product. We are going to announce a yield focusing and yield generation product connected to arteQ token. Now the way those kinds of products are usually tagged is the staking. But we've got a couple ideas and how to improve the conventional staking mechanics and we're going to announce after the competition stops. Stay tuned, It's all about giving you access to that wonderful ecosystem, wonderful platform powered by this token and it is all about rewarding you for doing that all on Choise.com App.
So do you want to share a little bit more on that, give a little bit of details?
Farbod Sadeghian: Sure, it has been a pleasure working with Choise.com team because they come with great ideas that we thought of doing, staking and a lot of other bonuses for our investors and traders in arteQ and Qlindo both. With the idea that the Choise.com team brought to us, we see a lot of sense into that. It would change our gamification, the whole thing, and our investment. And in the long term people see that we are looking for new ways to bring profit to them. It's not just like getting our token sold and then seeing what happens. We are fully active in building it up.
I'm not disrespecting any other projects but altogether putting it in a guideline, giving them new ideas. And then I think about that type of staking mix which you, guys, will do for our investors... When I was talking to the team, they were so excited. And most of our investors that we know personally were like: okay, that sounds like a great solid change. We are changing the way of artworks and we want to support artists, young ones and the whole art industry.
You, guys, changed the way our great followers and users can earn money with it. And I think that would be a very interesting aspect of it, we are all excited to see it running soon. And I would just invite everyone to join and have a long-term partnership. Both of our projects are based on DAO. It means sooner or later, there will be their own companies, they will run it hopefully and maybe I will go on a vacation then. Until then we need to run the show. And that would be great if they buy it twice and then stake it and change it to the hedging. That would be, I think, a very profitable, very long term positive point. Thank you, guys, for that!
Austin Kimm: Brilliant, thank you!
Andrey Diyakonov: You've heard it all. It's not just about me getting access to one of a kind NFT and art investment capital platform. It's not just about doing that in a secure and compliant fashion. It's not just about partnering with the biggest names in this industry. It's also about making a potentially solid financial decision for yourself and helping Farbod to go on vacation Sunday.
Thank you, guys! It has been wonderful. Thanks for your time. We're very excited that you're coming on to the platform. You're already there, we're seeing some wonderful results. And we want to make sure that as many of our users as possible are getting to know you, your product, your ideas and getting a benefit of what you, guys, have built up.
So, thank you very much. Stay tuned for the details, I really appreciate your time, community. Take care!
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