March 8, 2021

Call it cryptocurrency trading for dummies.

Or, beginners, if that sounds better.

Either way, that’s the niche being pursued by Sioux Falls-based CoinLion, which was founded in 2017 and has a new CEO with a track record of startup success.

Eric McDonald, who led urgent care software provider DocuTap to an investment by a global private equity firm and subsequent merger to become Experity, began leading CoinLion late last year.

“This has the ability to be maybe three to four times bigger (than DocuTap) in about a fraction of the time,” said McDonald, who became a member of the CoinLion board after leaving DocuTap in 2019.

CoinLion envisioned itself becoming the E-Trade or Charles Schwab of cryptocurrency, which is still true, McDonald said. But a new addition could become its differentiator.

An auto-trading tool allows investors to sign up, “and the platform trades for you,” McDonald said. “And takes all the emotion out of it and knows when to buy and sell.”

Settings for conservative, moderate or aggressive investment allow investors to tell the tool how to trade.

“It’s taken off like crazy,” McDonald said. “We’ve just made the automated trading really simple. Crypto can be really complex, and a lot of our users aren’t very tech-savvy. So we keep the monkey simple. They don’t have to think about when you’re buying or selling; it does it all for them.”

For example, the goal often is to make 1.5 percent on every trade, he said. Investors must commit at least $10,000 and typically will “dip their toe in” and then invest more.

It has grown so fast, “if you go to the website, you can’t create an account,” McDonald said. “We’re trying to control the growth, make sure we give a really good experience and make sure we deliver stellar results.”

Money can be liquidated back into a bank account anytime, he said. The average client is investing $50,000 to $100,000. CoinLion’s fee is .11 percent.

Eighty percent of investors are from the Sioux Falls area, McDonald said.

“It’s all been word of mouth. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “We’re basically trading two coins, Bitcoin and Ethereum, so we want to make sure we do our research on all coins. We’ve seen such explosive growth, and we haven’t even tapped into what this company can be capable of.”

CoinLion has a small office near 49th Street and Louise Avenue but is hiring people nationwide. “I’ve always believed in that, and COVID has helped further validate, you can totally build a remote business,” McDonald said.

The auto-trading tool is patented and will be protected against “copycat functionality,” he said.

“I can scale this infinitely faster than urgent cares,” he continued, adding there are 10,000 urgent care operations nationwide and that it takes more than a year from selling software to realizing revenue.

“On this platform, any user in the world can do this with $10,000. All of a sudden, your market just went to massive, so when I start doing the math, this company has the ability to just explode.”