Roobic.io is an EU based exchange that is aimed at providing multiple crypto-related activities:
- Buying/selling crypto vs. fiat in an OTC model for both individuals and businesses
- Staking
- Crypto-based loans
The platform differentiates itself by establishing straightforward and low-priced fees, allowing customers in the EU to have a local platform.
Roobic also provides an innovative, client-driven approach to collateral amounts for their crypto loan product.
While a relatively new platform, these features are interesting enough to dive into Roobic, have a look at what they offer, and predict where they will be at the end of 2022.
Roobic Vision
The company was founded not with rounds of fundraising, but rather as a team-invested bootstrap endeavor.
After working on a number of other blockchain projects, the team saw that the crypto market—particularly the OTC exchanges—had several key areas that were causing growing pain for their customers.
Two pain points stuck out. The first is the obscure ways that exchanges can extract fees from their customers, including deposit/withdrawal fees, exchange fees, network gas, currency conversion spreads, wallet fees, and more.
The second issue lies with crypto loans, and the fact that the collateral required is often two to three times more than the loan itself, which is too high a risk for many.
Roobic set out to structure their exchange in a way that addresses these pain points.
Key Features
Source: Roobic.io
Feature 1: Buy/Sell with Simplified Fees
While there are many exchanges, including OTC, that are available for clients to buy and sell crypto, they can typically charge more than their customers realize by slipping in hidden fees.
While Roobic certainly has lower costs than many of these exchanges, they don’t claim to be the lowest. Instead, their pledge is to be as transparent as possible.
The fee structure shown on their website is:
- 0.45% per transfer blockchain withdrawal fees
- 0 fiat withdrawal fee
- 2.99% currency conversion fee
- 0 deposit fee
In addition to buying and selling crypto assets, the company does offer staking opportunities.
Though the details have not been announced on their site or social media yet, having a staking feature will be critical for keeping the investors invested on the platform, and will allow for inciting rewards for those committed to keeping their assets on Roobic.
Feature 2: Crypto Loans with Variable Collateral Rates
This feature was the other pain point that Roobic set out to solve, and their solution is interesting in that it creates a larger market for both lenders and borrowers.
Simply put, many other exchanges have high collateral rates for their loans, sometimes reaching 2-3 times that of the fiat loan.
This rate could still be appealing to investors who want to hold their crypto investment, take out low-interest fiat, and get the cash in hand quickly (and without a credit check).
However, even though a large amount of crypto to loan makes sense in the context of collateral, given that crypto values fluctuate wildly, there are a number of lenders willing to risk a little more in order to find a borrower and a number of borrowers who are turned away by 2-3x collateral but may choose a loan with less collateral.
Roobic creates a marketplace where the customers creating the crypto loans are able to choose what collateral rate they would like.
This creates a more open market system, with more lenders and borrowers looking for a match compared to a traditional, single rate collateral on a loan.
Competitor Landscape
The primary competition for Roobic are the many OTC exchanges offering buying/selling services, staking, loans, and more.
Roobic has set itself apart with its open market collateral rate range, and with its emphasis on transparent fees. However, its services are very basic at this point, which may create competition with any of the other exchanges offering a variety of features for buying/selling, staking, farming, loans, and more.
Roobic will need to focus on customers looking for a simple exchange with reasonable, transparent rates, then grow their services as time goes on.
Looking Ahead to 2022
The coming year should be very interesting for crypto platforms of all types, with increased popularity, awareness, and a willingness to jump in from the larger public.
This will add many more potential customers to the crypto ecosystem, and some will be looking for a basic exchange with intuitive, transparent fees, an easy-to-learn platform, and crypto loans that don’t have prohibitive collateral requirements.
Roobic fits very well into this niche, and as they mature, it wouldn’t be surprising for them to face additional competition from exchanges that mimic these features.
Regardless, Roobic has a solid platform, solid features, and has the potential to change what we want in a crypto exchange.
