While retail investors are being crushed by market conditions, Delphia, a mobile investment platform, aims to give them the edge to act better against hedge funds and other institutional investors.
The stock-picking startup with algorithmic and crypto features plans to reward users for accessing their data, a model that helped close a new $60 million Series A led by Multicoin Capital. Other investors in the round include FTX Ventures, fintech-focused Ribbit Capital, M13 and Lattice Ventures.
Starting this summer, the startup’s “share-to-earn” data token model will reward users for contributing valuable information, which it will then use to help its model make better stock choices. The company offers two types of investment methods, one of which is free (the stock selection) and a long/short mix that is open to accredited investors. Fees paid by the wealthier investors are used to reward users who provide data, who can get their rewards in the form of cash or tokens.
Delphia’s data token model will function as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), whose votes are tied to the ERC-20 token that users who provide data receive for sharing their information.
“DAOs are new tools for managing assets, risks and data. We’ve already experimented a lot with assets and risk, but not with data,” Tushar Jain, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, told Vidak For Congress. “Long-term, I see data DAOs pursuing new business models beyond crypto markets to compete with some of the largest data-centric companies in the world.”
Delphia also aims to level the playing field between institutional and private investors by leveraging insights into consumer spending, employment patterns and public opinion data from social media to deliver algorithmic models traditionally reserved for top-performing hedge funds, the company said.
“Our thesis is that users will willingly contribute their commerce, device, search, and social media data in exchange for tokens, which serve as both their interest in the total value of the data and their governing power,” said Jain.
As Delphia’s fund seeks a competitive advantage through access to proprietary data, it plans to reward contributors through “data dividends” or its rewards program, giving back to those who provide data on its mobile applications, Delphia CEO Andrew Peek wrote. in a message.
“Data (especially proprietary data) is a sustainable competitive advantage,” Peek wrote.
The app plans to use the capital to launch its native rewards token, increase the various ways users can contribute data, and expand the team.
Delphia hopes its algorithmic investments, as well as new user data collections, can help investors improve their financial wealth, Peek noted. “Ultimately, none of us can pick stocks as well as all of us.”