Meet Daniele Marinelli, Founder and CEO at FinTech Company: DTSocialize Holding

After 23 years of working as a consultant for major companies in Italy, I was starting to feel that this wasn’t my dream job. I wanted (and still want) to build something that could last, and whilst doing that I wanted to give something back to the world, creating a virtuous circle. After Bitcoin was born, I decided to learn more about this new phenomenon and I looked into the technology behind it.

And as I realized the great potential of cryptocurrencies, I began to think about the creation of an ecosystem that could satisfy the global tech users’ needs – including a digital currency that could be complementary to fiat and therefore used in everyday life – and that could give recognition to the users’ community for data released whilst staying online. Thus the DTCircle ecosystem came to life.

A network of services and platforms through which the users can protect their privacy or monetize their online experiences when choosing to share data within the ecosystem getting a reward for the data released whilst using the different services. And this was just the start of a new and great adventure.
 
 
DTSocialize Holding | LinkedIn
 

How did you come up with the idea for DTSocialize?

 
The real trigger to eventually creating DTSocialize was noticing how the massive Big Tech companies had been gaining more and more revenues from the monetization of people’s data through advertising. As I always said, whenever you don’t pay for a service, it means that you somehow become the product for that specific provider. And that’s exactly what happened starting from Facebook, which has been selling big data for years and whose example was swiftly followed by others.

I thought that there was a need in the market for users either to protect their own data or to profit from it and this is the purpose behind the creation of DTCircle, an ecosystem that provides tech solutions and social communications services to protect people’s privacy, building a global community of users that is now made of more than 700,000 people.

For instance, we have a messaging app, called Uup Messenger, that uses exactly the same technology as Bitcoin to encrypt all the communication that you transmit through it. So my point was: let’s start providing people the choice to keep their data for themselves or to opt for sharing data within the ecosystem, data which is then anonymized and aggregated into Big Data stacks for market research. In this last case, people could get rewarded for the data they share instead of being the source and the target of marketing campaigns without earning one cent.

The ecosystem was the primary method of enabling the DT community and has been the trigger for the next phase of DTSocialize’s expansion. If data coming from the use of apps and social networks can be valuable, how much so the ones that are released using credit cards or other financial services?

And the DTCircle community showed an appetite for different services that could benefit from the firm’s aim to protect their client’s data or to reward users for sharing them. That’s why my team started to build up a new set of capabilities for the firm. This brought integrating payment solutions and FinTech services alongside social communications apps and tools. DTSocialize Holding (DTSH) wants to offer its community a seamless user experience in a single ecosystem across platforms where people can transact, manage their assets, communicate, shop, and socialize both in the physical and virtual world.

One thing I want to outline is that with the offer of fintech services we want to create a bridge between the classic banking world, including asset management, and new payment technologies and solutions. We’d like to fill a still existing gap in the current banking system and help people to manage both their traditional and their digital assets easily whilst using all the standard procedures of AML, KYC, always in full compliance with the current regulations.
 

 

Which projects are you working on right now? Is Big Data the main focus of the company?

 
Actually, Big Data is where we’re rooted as a company and we will keep on working on them and on rewarding people who accept to share their data within our ecosystem. The reward will be based on our DTCoin, the utility token that users can spend within the ecosystem to buy goods or services whenever using Ubuyup, our app that provides our community with access to a selected number and type of shops.

What we are working hard on now is to bring the ecosystem to the next level. Our technicians are developing single digital IDs using NFT technology and the ID will be based on a clear preliminary identification process to get it. You may wonder why this is important and my answer is that going forward people should be able to use this digital ID to safely access every type of service.

The most important thing will be staying compliant with the different regulations. For instance, people will be thoroughly identified, meaning that any authority will be able to see who’s behind the digital ID (for financial services people will have to submit themselves to AML and KYC procedures) whilst hackers won’t be able to get someone’s info so easily. One example that I often make is the following. Let’s imagine that I get in an accident whilst traveling abroad. Using my digital ID I will make the hospital able to access my information in one go and act for the best.
 

What can we hope to see from DTSocialize in the next following years?

 
I have ambitious plans and my people are strongly committed to them. Being a bit of a visionary, I started to actively work on the Metaverse two years ago. For me, the Metaverse is not a game and it is not just virtual reality for gaming. It brings a world of opportunities, both from a personal and a business point of view. I believe that the Metaverse will become, by all means, the natural evolution of the web as we know it.

The social networks and the websites will be subject to profound transformation because of the integration into the Metaverse and thanks to what I love to define the immersive experience you can make there. But this is only the tip of the classical iceberg. Let’s try to imagine how the world of online shopping could change when in the Metaverse in which the avatar can move around in stores, choose and try products, and get advice from AI who will interact with us to choose what fits us best.

Or again, how participation in online meetings, conferences, reports, and business presentations will change. We will get the feeling of being there as opposed to feeling separated by physical distance. There will be huge advantages for disabled people as well, that will have the possibility to make experiences otherwise not even dreamable. Visiting museums on other continents, going to prestigious universities (paying much less), attending conferences, concerts, and whatever other experience will be able to make accessible into the Metaverse.

Rather than focusing only on the more leisurely activities envisioned by other already existing Metaverses, Umetaworld, our DTSH version of the Metaverse, will be symbiotic to the real physical world and this is how people will be able to interact with other people walking along the streets of Dubai without moving from their couch and enjoying the sightseeing and the shopping they can make there.

We don’t just want to make our product and services available in the Metaverse but we are opening up to service and product providers all around the world, to universities, training centers, museums, and anyone that would be interested in opening their doors to people wherever they are.