Amazing AI Plc (AQSE:AAI) CEO and founder Paul Mathieson talked Proactive through the company’s unique approach to digital asset investment and its dual business model rooted in US consumer lending.
Proactive:
Amazing AI has quite an interesting story. You've been in the US consumer lending space for over 15 years as Mr. Amazing Loans, recently rebranded to Amazing AI. Could you give us the elevator pitch and what makes Amazing AI different with its distinctive approach?
Paul Mathieson:
Sure. So Amazing AI has its foundations in consumer lending. My background’s been investment banking, funds management, and consumer lending over more than 30 years. So our core is lending that we've been doing and fully licensed since 2010. In the US, we're licensed in six different states. We've used that as a foundation to expand into offering AI services over consumer lending globally. And we've recently launched our digital asset strategy, our treasury strategy, where we're using a unique, sophisticated and diversified strategy for investors to gain exposure over a basket of digital assets.
Proactive:
You actually just purchased some Bitcoin as well. So take us through your plans to buy other digital currencies and the strategic rationale behind that move?
Paul Mathieson:
Yeah. So we didn't actually buy Bitcoin. We bought exposure over Bitcoin. The difference in our strategy is we use call options and put options to gain 100 times of leverage over these assets, as opposed to a normal treasury company that’s simply raising money, buying Bitcoin, and hoping for the best. So we utilize medium-term call options to gain 100 times exposure. For $1 million of premium, we can actually have exposure to $100 million of digital assets. But we also protect on the downside via buying put options so that if crypto or digital assets were to fail over time, we would still make money. So we're betting on the continued volatility in the market space, which is very different. These assets have been very volatile over time, and we expect that to continue, which forms a core basis of our strategy.
Proactive:
Beyond that exposure that you've now bought into Bitcoin, would you follow a similar route with other digital currencies also through put options and call options?
Paul Mathieson:
Yes, it would be very similar. So our next asset will be Ethereum, and then we'll move into XRP and Solana. We're looking at a fifth asset and potentially a sixth one that would be gold-linked. We're also looking at an AI-based crypto in terms of Tal — that’s quite interesting. We're different to the other companies that generally are just buying Bitcoin. We believe it's prudent to diversify across a bundle in the sector. So we're not just reliant on the performance of Bitcoin. We're also not relying on the price just going up. We have a strategy that makes money whether it goes down or up.
Proactive:
Would you look at acquiring other companies as you increase your exposure to the strategy?
Paul Mathieson:
Yeah. So we see ourselves as Treasury 3.0. 1.0 was in essence buying Bitcoin, hoping for the best, raising equity, do it again. We think 2.0 is diversifying across multiple digital assets — not just Bitcoin — as I've described. But 3.0 is really using a highly capital-efficient strategy, utilizing smart strategies over call and put options that are not available to small investors. So it's really an institutional-level strategy that has a lot of barriers to entry in terms of being able to actually do it. A lot of countries around the world can't even buy options over digital assets. So we think it's much more developed and much more efficient. And we combine that with 50% of our business being a proportionate share in our core 60%-revenue-owning lending business.
Recently, stock exchanges have brought in new rules where they don't want pure-play listed companies purely only doing treasury. They want 50% or a proportionate amount to be in assets or generating revenue in other core businesses. So we see opportunities to acquire those companies that can't meet those requirements — cheaply. A lot of them have fallen 90–95%. So we see opportunities to purchase them, sell off their assets, deploy the capital 50% into our sophisticated strategy and 50% into our lending business.
Proactive:
So the two businesses really sit alongside each other very well then, Paul?
Paul Mathieson:
Yeah, there's a lot of synergy between them in what we do. So the excess profits from the lending can also be deployed into our digital asset strategy without requiring ongoing dilutive capital raisings in equity, which has been the model for most of the other failed treasury companies.
Proactive:
So tell us what the future looks like then for Amazing AI?
Paul Mathieson:
So we've been strategic and patient in terms of when we started our strategy. We only initiated it recently. So we've avoided the last month's significant falls in digital assets. Bitcoin’s fallen from $125,000 down to around $100,000. Ethereum and others have also fallen in the order of 14%. So we're initiating our highly leveraged 100-times strategy that we think is a very opportune time. As per our Monday announcement, we're going to deploy our capital over the next two months using dollar-cost averaging and also take advantage of these further falls in the digital assets over that period.
Proactive:
Well Paul, I hope you'll continue to keep us updated with your progress. Thank you very much for the introduction today.