Inspiration
Being a retail investor in a developing country, I am limited to buy few financial products available in our country. There are very few (approx. 50) AAA rated stocks/financial products available in India and these stocks are being traded between 150 and 300 P/E. On the other hand similar AAA rated financial products in USA are being traded at 40 P/E on average and there are huge number of products compared to India to choose from. As a serious investor I am inclined to make investments in low risk financial products in USA than in India. But I am being limited by high remittance fees and inaccessibility to transfer funds across the borders. Cryptocurrency makes these transactions easier but there isn't a platform that combines merits of Crypto and traditional Trading platforms to simplify global investments for retail investors.
What it does
We have built a Trading Platform that enables to buy XRP in any currency (Eg: Indian investor in INR, US investor in USD etc.) directly from the platform using Rapyd Payment Gateway simulation. It also provides information (both fundamental and technical) on Global Financial products fetched using Alphavantage API and converts financial information fetched in different currencies into XRP denomination which makes it easier for investor's analysis. On top of this investors can also take loans on the platform pledging their portfolio as collateral.
How we built it
Until now there isn't a Cryptocurrency platform that is capable enough to handle huge volume and high volume of transactions required for a trading platform. To implement a trading platform that works on a global scale there is a need for Crypto which is highly Scalable with lower settling times, Reliable and highly Secure. These challenges are being solved by Ripple. Hence, we built a trading platform with Ripple as a backbone. Every investor will have a Ripple Wallet and a Currency Wallet created during Signup. Investor can add funds to Currency Wallet in any currency and buy XRPs which will get credited to Ripple Wallet. Using XRPs investor can execute trades on Global Financial Products, a transaction processing fee is charged on every trade. Every investor can take up to 75% of the portfolio value as loan in XRPs and a daily interest is charged on this loan. Therefore, the platform has two main sources of monetisation.
- Processing Fees
- Interest Income
Challenges we ran into
- Alphavantage stocks API doesn't allow more than 5 API calls for minute for free tier. Therefore, we are using local storage to save latest stock prices of portfolio everyday. When there are more than 5 stocks in portfolio there can be delay in calculating portfolio gains and latest traded price.
- Also hard coded stocks in search so that there is seamless experience without glitches from Alphavantage API.
Search below Companies:
Tickers | Company Name |
---|---|
TECHM.BSE | Tech Mahindra |
INFY.BSE | Infosys |
M&M.BSE | Mahindra & Mahindra |
APOLLOTYRE.BSE | Apollo Tyres |
ARVIND.BSE | Arvind Ltd |
BHARTIARTL.BSE | Bharati Airtel |
AXISBANK.BSE | Axis Bank |
BPCL.BSE | Bharath Petroleum Corporation |
DIVISLAB.BSE | Divi's Laboratories |
DRREDDY.BSE | Dr. Reddy's Laboratories |
MO | Altria Group, Inc. |
AVB | AvalonBay Communities |
BBY | Best Buy Co., Inc. |
BK | BNY Mellon |
CL | Colgate Palmolive Company |
MMM | 3M Company |
ANF | Abercrombie & Fitch Co. |
ABT | Abbott Laboratories |
ADBE | Adobe |
ALK | Alaska Air Group |
AAL | American Airlines Group Inc |
AXP | American Express |
WHR | Whirlpool Corporation |
WDAY | Workday, Inc |
VZ | Verizon Communications Inc. |
VMW | VMware, Inc |
X | United States Steel Corporation |
DIS | The Walt Disney Company |
TDC | Teradata Corp. |
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- We have built MVP of End-to-End Trading Application integrating multiple APIs, Technology Stacks and Ripple platform in a short timeline.
- Application has dashboard with charts for analysis in both admin and investor page. Admin page gives company wide earnings and activity where investor page gives portfolio performance.
What we learned
- Ripple platform capabilities are suitable to build a high volume transaction applications on top of it.
- Taking advantage of existing frameworks, libraries and Technologies like React, Bootstrap, Cloud and Firebase etc. to make rapid development in short timeline.
What's next for TradeStation
- Peer lending capabilities instead of only company lending to investors pledging their portfolio.
- Include different investment opportunities like Startup Funding, Social Funding and Donating for a global cause.
- Purchase premium Alphavantage subscription and enable live search & get latest traded price without delay.
Testing Instructions
To run demo:
- Navigate to http://13.230.186.196:8008/
- Use below login credentials to test TradeStation application right away
Existing User Login:
- Email : katewilliams@gmail.com
- Password: Ripple@12
Admin Login:
- Email : tradestation@gmail.com
- Password: Rippleadmin@12
To run source code:
- Install Node.js version 16 or higher
- Download Source code from GitHub repo
- Go to command line and navigate to source code
- Navigate to backend folder and run below commands:
- npm install
- npx nodemon ./index.js
- This will create express server backend in localhost:5000
- Navigate to TradeStation folder and run below commands:
- npm install
- npm run start
- This will start front end application in localhost:3000
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