Crypto Kings

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  Crypto Kings Logo

Inspiration

60% of millennials have no stock market exposure. 30% of them favor cash investments over stocks and 30% don’t trust banks or investment companies. In contrast, 88% of millennials surveyed in a study expressed that they want to invest in cryptocurrencies and 75% of them see crypto as part of a financial plan. Yet this same group is hesitant to invest because they lack knowledge.

When asked what they want most in an investing app or platform, 65% said they want gamification to learn investing and to keep them engaged in their portfolio. 62% said they wanted social features and social sentiment from their peers when making investment choices.

The message is clear - in order to engage the next generation of investors, investing apps need to be fun, social and engaging.

That’s why we built this Alexa skill - to make it easy, social and fun for anyone to learn how to trade with cryptocurrencies, without the risk of losing money. Because we know that there's a huge crossover between those who are Alexa users and those who own cryptocurrencies, we believe Alexa users will love this new interactive way of learning to trade cryptocurrencies.

What it does

Crypto Kings is an Alexa skill that allows people to learn and practice trading cryptocurrencies risk-free through building the best portfolio and competing against others in virtual trading competitions. Starting with a virtual portfolio, users choose to allocate their portfolio to various cryptocurrencies of their choice. They can buy and sell cryptocurrencies throughout the competition period and when they choose to purchase a cryptocurrency, they get information about each coin to improve their knowledge. Users can check the leaderboard regularly to see how they are ranking compared to others in the competition. At the end of the competition period, the person with the highest gains in their portfolio wins the competition.

Users have access to trade the 3 most popular cryptocurrencies for free - Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple. The purchase skill is used to unlock premium cryptocurrencies, which allows the user to gain access to over 3,000 cryptocurrencies to trade with.

We also built in the Spanish skill because Mexico and Latin American countries are big users of crypto, especially for remittance purposes and we think this will appeal to those in the US who want to send money via crypto to their families in Mexico and Latin America.

How we built it

We have a backend process that generates a contest every week. The same backend process queries the live coin data information and determines the portfolio value based on what the user has purchased via Alexa in the skill.

Challenges we ran into

We had to store the information outside of the session since the session is clear when the user goes through the ISP flow. We also had to do calculations to perform leaderboard updates for the rank.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re happy that we created a voice skill for a highly targeted audience that’s fun and risk-free to learn about trading crypto. People can compete against others all over the world in the trading competitions, which makes it even more interesting because you can become a top global trader.

Because this game is completely risk-free, even kids can get on board and start learning about the crypto market so that when they’re ready to make investments, they understand the market and have knowledge about the many different cryptocurrencies that exist. This gives them a head start over other people who may have no exposure to cryptocurrencies. Just as the earlier people invest to let the magic of compound interest work, the earlier that younger generations learn about these new financial investment products, the earlier they can invest small amounts to see their savings grow.

What we learned

That the Alexa skills API is pretty comprehensive. We are surprised at the accuracy of the Spanish and Japanese that Alexa knows ;)

What's next for Crypto Kings

We would like to turn Crypto Kings into an Alexa multimodal skill to make it even more fun and engaging. The gamification of trading would make it perfect for screens because of visual features such as charts, leaderboards and badges.

We’d also like to add in the ability for users to challenge their friends and family in private competitions to see who can build the best portfolio for bragging rights or even real prizes.

Built With

• alexa
• amazon-web-services
• ask-sdk
• lambda