Company

You Asked, We Answered: Why Don’t the Founders Use Peccala to Get Rich?

September 2, 2022
3 min read
We’re always open to questions and feedback. After all, it’s the best way to improve our product and serve our users. One question we’re repeatedly asked is: “if your trading algos work so well, why are you sharing it with others?” In other words, why wouldn’t we just keep the product for ourselves, and why do we feel the need to share them with the outside world? So we sat down with Peccala founders – JJ, Laura, and Aldo – to explain why we don’t just take our earnings and live on some carefree island. 

Why Don’t You Use Peccala to Get Rich?

Aldo: Before Peccala, I was actually living off the profits of the algorithms while I was perfecting them. Then my friends and family saw how it worked with me and decided to join in. So for me, it was natural to not just keep this trading machine for myself but to open it up to my network. I ended up getting an offer from some guy to buy it off me, and I could’ve lived the rest of my life off it. It would’ve been a comfortable life. But I felt like I didn’t want to live my whole life just making 3-4 guys richer. It made more sense to open it up to a broader audience. Long-term, I don’t want just a comfortable life, I see myself being able to fund other ideas in the biotech domain since that’s where my passion lies. Ultimately, it takes money to make money, so for me it’s a win-win situation. I get the freedom to pursue my biotech projects while helping thousands of users achieve financial security. 

JJ: Three reasons: First, we’re value-driven. We want to make something that everyone can use. There’s a level of inequality in finance and banking that only favors the super-rich. Consider hedge funds, which are able to generate the highest returns in traditional finance: you can only invest money with them if you are a “qualified investor” able to put in €100,000 minimum. So they are totally closed to the average person, who is stuck earning 0.01% in a savings account, or 8% per year from a tracker ETF. Crypto helps break that mold, and when Laura, Aldo, and I met we all wanted to make this high-value proposition available to everyone. 

We actually chose the more challenging path. From a regulatory and customer acquisition point of view, serving ordinary people (known in finance as “retail investors”) is much more complex. Instead of finding ten rich people who will invest €10 million each and double their money, we have to (and want to) find 100,000 people who will invest €1,000 each, and to whom doubling their money means a lot more. 

The second bit is that it takes money to make money. Many people ask us why we haven’t made €10 million privately using the algorithms. The answer is that none of us come from money. You need to invest in a large sum to see quick returns like that, because it takes a while to grow your returns. 

And thirdly, in the long run, we’ll make more money by creating a product that is open to everyone. I know someone who built a forex trading algorithm which earns them around 17% profit per month.  They live off this money - it pays their rent and food bills without working. We could have done the same, but actually, we’ll make more money by building a successful company that also makes money for others. 

Laura: I always answer this question with another question: why wouldn’t we? We have this great tech and unique product, so why should we keep it for ourselves when we can share it with the world? Not sharing it is the antithesis of who I am. Hearing our users’ stories on how they’ve used their Peccala returns, I’ve already seen the positive impact we can have on their lives, from enabling them to help out a family member, to making a planned vacation a little nicer. These stories always put a smile on my face. If our product can benefit more people and positively impact their lives, why wouldn’t I want to offer that? I’m not building Peccala to only enrich myself, as I find it more fulfilling to help others achieve financial security.

People who ask this initial question are right. I could’ve put my savings in Peccala (living off the returns) and not dedicated the last year of my life building a product that also benefits others. But where’s the fun in that? I like the idea of doing something that hasn’t been done before, breaking barriers, which motivates me. There was a gap in the crypto industry for such a trading engine; I think the automated trading part is especially game-changing and it’s really exciting to be able to bring this tech to the mainstream.

How does Peccala make money?

Aldo: It’s straightforward. We have a product that only makes us money if our customers make money. So our interests are aligned and we try to improve our technologies so they can make better profits. 

JJ: The only charges to our users are a 20% performance fee on profits, and a 0.5% withdrawal fee. We also get a rebate from the exchanges we work with. We outline all of this in the litepaper on our website.

Laura: Our biggest source of revenue comes from the performance fees we take on our users' profits. It’s 20%, so our users still take away 80%. That’s where we aim to be fair since it’s in our interest for our users to make money, I really liked the fact that our interests are aligned as it naturally ensures we’re always user-centric. We also get rebates on trading fees generated for the ongoing trades we’re placing, from the exchange we use. 

How's Peccala impacting your life today?

Aldo: I was generally happy to see how my friends and family could afford things they couldn’t get before when I opened up my algorithms. I had a close friend who invested a small, and he was able to grow his money enough to the point of being able to buy a car that he couldn’t before. That meant a lot to me, hearing these stories is very rewarding.

JJ: So many ways, so many learnings! One thing that's important to me is that I know it’s natural for people to be hesitant that Peccala might be some kind of scam. There are so many fake projects and rug pulls in crypto that caution is definitely warranted! But we are trying to be as transparent as possible - we’re open about who we are, and you can read about us on LinkedIn, discover our story, and more. We’re also backed by legitimate entities like Antler and angel investors who have done their due diligence, and you can see all this on our website. We’re transparent about how our algorithms work, how the trading is done, and the risks involved, and we want to share that with as many people as possible.

Laura: As mentioned before, hearing the stories about how we’re having a positive impact on people’s lives; aligns with my personal values and keeps me going. 

That being said, if we only look at it from the growth potential of Peccala, there’s a much bigger size of the prize by sharing this technology and getting hundreds of thousands or even millions of people to invest with us. So that in the long-term, sharing this trading engine will make us more money than keeping it for ourselves. I don’t believe all the wealth in the world should be in the hands of a few people. That’s not who I am or what I believe in fundamentally. Financial security and independence are difficult for most people to attain, and we want to help. 

When I consider the diversity and inclusion aspect of our company, I believe we’ll also help many women. You may have heard of the Shecession during the COVID lockdown and how it affected women much more than men. Also, women generally don’t get involved in investing, even less so in crypto, the same way men do. We’re building a way for women to get involved without sacrificing the precious time they dedicate to the things that matter most to them. Working from home, taking care of the kids, and managing a household is a lot of work, and then people wonder why women don’t have the bandwidth to consider and learn more about investing. Our automated crypto investing platform is an excellent way for women to get more engaged.