Imge su Cetin, CEO of Defy Trends: On Big Data, Crypto Volatility, and Data Analytics
Imge su Cetin, CEO of Defy Trends, breaks the mold of the enigmatic night-owl coder with her strong leadership and outgoing personality. After sitting on her laptop programming or scraping together data from thousands of sources, she likes to unwind by bringing like-minded people together and learning from smart friends. She even DJs for fun.
Imge su was born in Turkey. She moved to the United States when she 5. She moved back and forth between Turkey and the US, adapting to both cultures and developing the cosmopolitan savviness that she is known for today . After obtaining a B.S. in Economics at Bilkent Univesity, one of Turkey’s most prestigious academic institutions, Imge su worked for the United Nations in Iraq for a year. While living in Iraq she Imgesu also taught English to locals. She got her M.S. in Data Science at the University of California San Diego, working on research in EV charging optimization on the side while completing her degree. Imgesu’s proudest accomplishment was being selected among only 2,000 applicants for a full-time data scientist position in the UN. During her professional and academic careers, Imgesu was always passionate about blockchain technology and trading, creating apps for herself in her downtime to better guide her investments.
In the following piece, Imgesu shares her insights on some of the problems that need to be solved in the world of cryptocurrencies, how data analytics platforms can help to solve some of these problems, and offers a tantalizing hint of what’s to come.
DeFi Data Analysis Will Help Solve Cryptocurrency Stability
If you want to survive and thrive as a crypto trader and investor in 2022, you need to understand data analytics. Applying data analysis to meet goals is the center of analytics, and I founded my company, Defy Trends, to achieve one goal: understanding where cryptocurrency markets are going, and why.
There are billions upon billions of data points to be found online that might, in aggregate, tell us something about where crypto markets are going. Gathering data in the blockchain space is not always easy. Finding the right data set and method of analysis is a primary challenge. And dismissing rubbish data and cleaning the data set is an art form. The more accurate and timely the data is, the more trustworthy and profitable it has the potential to be.
Great data analysis benefits everyone with steady returns and the insights to navigate volatile swings in the market. The process of building up and analyzing a data set is extraordinarily complex, but the growing incentive to inform investment decisions with analytics-driven insights means that the challenge of analyzing available data on where crypto markets are going will be met.
There is a lot of money on the line, and anyone who can crunch market data the right way stands to make big returns. In modern trading, information analysis and speed are the keys to making good decisions. Being able to collect, collate, and analyze that data to produce valuable metrics and insights that provide results to investors is of massive importance for the growing pool of individual and institutional investors curious about cryptocurrency.
One major concern for investors who are new to cryptocurrency is the volatility that has characterized cryptocurrency markets in recent years. While that volatility has decreased in the last two years in particular, valuations in crypto markets are still more volatile than stocks and bonds. While it is nice to think that added liquidity in the crypto market will continue to dull volatility and cushion major shocks, we are unlikely to see the taming of volatility in digital asset markets any time soon. Volatility is here to stay, and crypto investors can profit the most when they accept and accommodate that inherent volatility.
Volatility in Crypto
Volatility is a natural part of any financial market, but crypto markets are notably volatile when compared to traditional financial markets.
While there are not yet any major indices that measure crypto price volatility, historical price charts illustrate the volatility that has characterized crypto markets in recent years. Skyrocketing peaks and massive sell-offs occur quickly and without warning. Other cryptocurrencies in the market tend to follow Bitcoin, which is now a mainstream asset held by a growing number of institutional and retail investors.
In some ways, the popularity that Bitcoin found in 2021 has helped it to stabilize it at higher price levels. However, it has also opened the entire ecosystem of digital assets to the market-moving influence of institutional investors.
Since most cryptocurrencies are impacted by Bitcoin’s fluctuating prices, BTC represents the broader strength or weakness of the crypto market at any given time. Many factors can impact Bitcoin’s volatility, including its attractiveness, governments’ regulatory policy, hash rates, or demand. In June of 2021, the Chinese government’s crackdown on mining likely forced Bitcoin’s prices to drop below $32,000. As the rest of the year demonstrates, this fall was short-lived and was also a massive trading opportunity. Concerns about the U.S. Federal Reserve’s upcoming interest rate hikes and growing bond yields may be contributing to the current dip in BTC prices.
Whatever the driver, gaining ultra-accurate data about Bitcoin and other large-cap tokens, is vital for any crypto investor who wants to successfully navigate the volatility inherent to cryptocurrency markets.. I will now explain how using data analytics platforms like the one we’ve built at Defy Trends can do more than just inform decision-making by investors - they can also help to calm the broader volatility of the crypto market itself by making the markets more rational.
Data Analytics Platforms Can Help Calm Uncertainty
Data analytics platforms collect information from many sources, including social media, customer behavior, and cloud-based data centers. Most data analytic platforms work in five stages: data inspection, identifying opportunities, clustering, modeling, and visualizing. This data is then cleaned and processed into a form where recognizable patterns and trends become apparent. Finally, these statistical trends are transformed into actionable reports and business intelligence that can inform investors of emerging trends.
By understanding people’s feelings towards the state of the market, investors can gauge market trends and take advantage of cryptocurrencies’ volatility. By looking beyond the micro-level of reading individual posts, data analytics can assess and measure aggregate shifts in behavior or sentiment amongst participants in the market. Collecting that data, cleaning it, measuring it, and producing analytics from it is a near Herculean task. But anyone who has the right tools and skillset to do so - or who has access to the analytics and insights produced by a platform like Defy - will be best equipped to navigate the volatile sea of cryptocurrency markets and generate the best returns on their investments.
The Future of Data in Cryptocurrency
Every day, tens of millions of users of social media platforms produce and consume billions of bits of data. Being able to select the ones that concern your business is becoming a fine art. In the world of crypto investing, data analytics platforms that can analyze those data points and evolving trends in real-time are some of the few things that can provide better results for investors. It will also help larger institutions enter the marketplace, giving them the deep knowledge of trends - and the ability to analyze the data in which those trends are visible before they are made apparent through price changes - they need to take the plunge into the market for digital assets.
Let's not miss the big picture either - data science holds the potential to change the world in countless ways beyond investing in cryptocurrencies. From helping to find cures to complex diseases, generating new sources of clean energy, to changing the global economy through A.I. there are so many exciting and fascinating areas where our lives and livelihoods can be improved with the help of advanced data analytics. This generation can dream beyond the previous bounds of comprehension when it comes to the power of applied data.
With crypto investors increasingly realizing the value of data analytics for informing their investing decisions, widespread adoption of data analytics platforms for crypto is likely. More confidence in a market always leads to lower volatility. It is “fear, uncertainty, and doubt,” that leads new and even seasoned investors to pull their funds at the slightest hint of bad news. While many in the crypto space boast of having ‘diamond hands’ that won’t sell despite uncertainty, most investors are understandably cautious about the downside risk of volatility despite being enticed by the upside. Having a platform that displays past and future trends - so that investors can see that the ups and downs of the market are normal - will prevent many from panic selling.
As major crypto investors come to base their decisions on data-backed insights rather than intuition or speculation about where crypto markets are going, the markets themselves may become less volatile. The mainstreaming of BTC and cryptocurrencies in 2020 and 2021 have brought changes that few of us in the space would have expected years ago, and the opportunities to come in 2022 and beyond are equally beyond our imagination. By basing investing decisions on good data and good analytics, crypto investors will be best equipped to navigate the growth and volatility in crypto that we will see in the 2020s and beyond.
