One Coin, Unlimited Financial Market Intelligence
“Beating the stock market is easy. I've got all the tools and data needed to make the next winning trade.”
— said no one ever
The financial markets are a complex and opaque system to navigate. Historically, only a small minority of well capitalized investors (e.g., hedge funds, institutional insiders) have had access to information and tools to outperform the market. The vast majority of investors often find themselves on the losing side of information asymmetry when strategizing their next trade.
At the same time, the power and impact of internet communities has reached a critical inflection point. Entirely new cultural and economic movements have emerged by disrupting financial systems that are stacked against the retail investor and exposing the borderline corrupt foundations of legacy systems.
Alpha Vantage Coin (AVC) is a dual-purpose utility and governance token that seeks to invert the existing model of Web 2.0 based systems and empower ALL financial market participants to access high-quality market intelligence and formulate informed trading strategies.
Unlike legacy systems in which application code is closed-sourced and opaque, AVC’s code is open source, transparent, and can be integrated in a permissionless manner within the Ethereum ecosystem. Rather than having user profiles be stored and exploited on a centralized server, user profiles are private/public key pairs owned by the user.
As an Ethereum-based ERC20 token, AVC enables its holders to:
- Participate in and get the most out of the Alpha Tournament, the world's leading open-portfolio competition and home to a vibrant investor community.
- Make high-volume data requests to the Alpha Vantage Market Data API, a major provider of global financial and economic data that has powered trading strategy development for millions of investors, software developers, and machine learning researchers around the world.
- Tap into the knowledge base of the Alpha Academy, an ever-growing repository of educational content in quantitative investing, software development, and blockchain technologies, all delivered by industry experts and thought leaders.
- Obtain the industry-leading Alpha Academy Certificate and get connected with top technology startups in the software, quantitative investing, data analysis, and blockchain domains.
AVC's public contract address on the Ethereum blockchain is 0xF10057D7B887cfC0Fe3CFC1fB326eCe805334661
Utility & Governance Privileges of AVC Tokens
AVC holders can exercise various utility & governance privileges within the AVC ecosystem, including:
Utility: high-volume access to Alpha Vantage APIs
AVC holders can access the Alpha Vantage APIs for up to 5 data requests per minute with NO daily rate limits (non-AVC holders are capped at 500 requests per day). The Alpha Vantage APIs include over 80 financial and economic datasets that are commonly used by institutional investors for trading strategy development. AVC holders have the full flexibility on how to query the API service - be it through the cloud or from a spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
Utility: unlock the Alpha Academy Certificate with job referral opportunities
Unlock the industry-leading Alpha Academy Certificate of Excellence in quantitative investing, AI for finance, fintech software development, and blockchain technologies, with job referrals opportunities to top technology companies within the Y Combinator network (learn more).
Utility: advanced data analytics and tools in Alpha Tournament
AVC holders have unrestricted access to the portfolio information of previous tournament winners, with data points including ticker names, share counts, and split-adjusted portfolio returns. AVC holders can also enjoy a dedicated group chat experience with current tournament participants for a more focused discussion on specific portfolio decisions.
Governance: community-based voting on the project roadmap
AVC is a community-based project. AVC holders can vote on key product features and roadmap of AVC, Alpha Vantage APIs, and the Alpha Tournament as long as they have a connected wallet with AVC tokens.
AVC Economy & Mining
AVC has a fixed total supply of 1 billion (1,000,000,000) tokens. A monthly supply cap of 1 million (1,000,000) tokens is allocated across the following activities:
| AVC Ecosystem Activities | Monthly Supply Cap |
|---|---|
| Participation in the Alpha Tournament | 100,000 monthly AVC supply distributed to the top 1000 ranked tournament participants |
| Voting for Alpha Tournament participants | Up to 100,000 monthly AVC supply distributed based on the time and accuracy of votes |
| Completion of daily challenges in the domains of quantitative investing and blockchain | Up to 800,000 monthly AVC supply distributed based on the accuracy of daily challenge responses |
In addition, at least 10% of total AVC supply is reserved for external contributors to the AVC community - including content creators, community administrators/moderators, open-source software developers, and other voluntary contributors.
Unlike most cryptocurrency mining paradigms, AVC mining does NOT require any computer programming skills or specialized hardware. All you need is internet access and a passion for the financial market. Check out the AVC Mining Guide for a detailed breakdown of the token economy and mining process.
Team AVC
The AVC Project is an experimental initiative from Alpha Vantage Inc, a Y Combinator backed, Harvard-incubated technology company that provides cloud-based financial market data to millions of quantitative traders, data scientists, and software developers around the world. The team is comprised of thought leaders, researchers, experts, and technology executives at the intersection of finance, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technologies.
Olivier Porté (Cofounder & CEO)
Olivier Porté is co-founder and CEO of Alpha Vantage and sets the vision and strategy for the company. Prior to co-founding Alpha Vantage with fellow MBA classmate Steve Zheng in 2017, he worked in various capacities in finance at Morgan Stanley and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG). He is an alumnus of Y Combinator (S18) and received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University.
Efrem Sternbach, PhD (Vice President)
Efrem Sternbach is an experienced capital markets professional with expertise in data management, financial engineering, trading, hedging and risk analysis of portfolios in senior leadership capacities. He has worked at both sell-side and buy-side companies, and is currently working to democratize access to financial data. Efrem received his doctoral degree in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Kyle Ehler-Vock (Product Specialist)
Kyle Vock is a product developer with a creative and entrepreneurial mindset. Kyle has held multiple product development and data analytics positions in finance and B2C software. Kyle graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Vermont with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration, a double concentration in Finance & Accounting, and a minor in Economics.
And, most importantly, you!
Join us for the blockchain revolution to make the global financial markets fair, transparent, and decentralized!
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