Financial news

A hacker turned good, Jose Pino has announced his new business venture that seeks to protect the value of stablecoins. The Colombian 22-year-old is well known for having found ways to improve both Microsoft and Harvard‘s security systems. Now he has set his eyes on creating a crypto solution to ensure the protection of individuals’ funds through stablecoins.  

During a presentation at the Hash House Club in Medellín, the Andro founding team presented its analysis of the current market situation. It invited users to register for the beta version of their product — a bet on transparent security for digital dollars.

Stablecoins settled more than $7billion of value in 2022, representing a yearly increase of 15 per cent. However, the last few months have seen major collapses such as FTX and UST/Terra/Luna, who were affected by the loss of parity (1:1) of their digital dollars against the U.S. dollar.

“Andro was born when I almost lost a large portion of my savings due to the collapse of Terra. Fearful of the lack of security and transparency in the crypto ecosystem, I began to build a solution that offers greater peace of mind and stability to fintech companies, banks, exchanges, and centralised finance platforms (CeFi) that want to provide more protection to their clients, as well as individuals who want to protect their savings in stablecoins,” said Jose Pino, CEO and founder of the company.

Ensuring digital asset security 

In the face of rising cyber-attacks or ‘hacks’ on traditional and decentralised financial systems, Andro’s infrastructure seeks to enable everyone. Not only individuals but also banks, fintechs, and digital wallets. It looks to incorporate a personalised and exclusive version of its protection protocol. In turn, ensuring the security of clients’ digital assets.

“Digital assets have not been incorporated into the financial system due to a lack of guarantees in security and regulatory compliance. This puts us all at the mercy of another attack. Should this happen, the financial stability of companies and their clients could be jeopardised. Our tool is designed with industry security in mind. We want it to become a reference in the crypto sector,” emphasised Pino.

In the midst of the need for decentralised financial assets, Andro places greater attention on the importance of having assets that allow users to minimise uncertainty in the face of volatility and loss of parity. Andro’s protocol automatically connects users with the best decentralised liquidity pools. Examples include Uniswap and Curve, which offer greater transparency, security, and real asset ownership while earning profits from exchange fees.

Andro will also introduce a product that uses two-factor authentication to prevent the loss of access to funds, either through theft or loss of private keys. In case this fails, the team has added an additional layer of security. It allows people to name a backup wallet that guarantees users can always regain access to their funds, even in the worst-case scenarios. For the entire team, security is the key reason for boating this startup.

Meet the team

The company’s founding team consists of Angela Ocando, in charge of growth at Andro and a leader in the Latin American Web3 ecosystem. Jaime Varela is strategy leader and also co-founder of Zulu, a startup that provides mobile self-custody wallets in stablecoins with a presence in 15 countries. Along with Pino, they invite users to be the first to register to the platform and benefit from early advantages.

Pino also highlighted that: “one of the major problems in our ecosystem is the lack of trust. Mainly caused by the poor user experience. This is highlighted by long acronyms and incomprehensible jargon, contributing to the lack of trust and promoting greater uncertainty amongst users. This takes us away from our ultimate goal: the global adoption of cryptocurrencies as decentralised financial assets worldwide.”

To demonstrate this, Andro’s design manager, Carlos Villareal, highlighted the future features that users will be able to enjoy. He presented the roadmap which the company has drawn up prior to its official launch later in the year.

Those interested in being the first to access Andro can do so by connecting their MetaMask, Ledger, or Trust Wallet, for example. They can then pay in Matic or Ether for their registration, equivalent to one dollar (USD) plus network fees. These users will be the first to have access to the new developments of Andro. There will be no account opening costs, and they can participate in a $10,000 stablecoin airdrop.