There are myriad options for financial services that most of us take for granted, but across the world, billions of people aren’t as fortunate. Our global financial system has created massive wealth but its centralized nature has resulted in the spoils going to those who are best connected to the financial centers of the world, resulting in significant financial inequality.

We recently sat down with Abra CEO, Bill Barhydt, to have a chat with him about their latest developments in crypto & stock investments.

What is Abra’s big announcement?

We are adding the ability to invest in traditional assets like stocks and ETFs to the Abra app!
Now, Abra users in over 150 countries will have the ability to gain exposure to valuable stocks like Apple, Amazon, Tesla and Uber, or a gold ETF, right from the app. These new offerings of stock and ETFs will be available alongside the 30 cryptocurrencies and 50 fiat currencies already available on Abra for investors outside of the United States.
This is just the next step in our larger vision of providing a full array of financial services, all available through a couple of clicks on a smartphone.
On the backend, this new technology is based on a non-custodial bitcoin wallet, and the exposure to assets like stocks and ETFs happens via a crypto-collateralized contract.

Why are you doing this?

Abra’s mission is to democratize access to all financial services for everyone. Most consumers globally are shut out of traditional investment products for many reasons including geography, income level, education, fear, etc., which can be categorized as issues stemming from access, trust, and complexity. Abra is going to fix these problems.
We believe in financial inclusion, both from the standpoint of making finance simple and straightforward and in giving access to public markets to people that have traditionally been left out.
We believe that cryptocurrency technology such as bitcoin can serve as a new platform to solve these problems of access and trust. Abra’s unique user experience makes the service easy to use and completely accessible to any consumer.
In the end, we just want to build such a great product that we will appeal to a spectrum of investors, from the revolutionaries to the entry-level experimenters.

What kinds of assets will be available on Abra?

With this new feature release, Abra users will be able to get exposure to cryptocurrencies including our crypto index, traditional currencies, traditional stocks, commodities, indexes, and ETFs.
Most importantly, Abra’s unique technology platform based on crypto-collateralized contracts allows us to scale to include all kinds of investment products, opening access to financial markets around the world in a way that has never been done before.

Who can use the stock and ETF investing feature?

The stock and ETF features described are provided by Plutus Technologies Philippines Corporation (Abra International). Users are not allowed to access or use the services of Abra International if they are located, incorporated or otherwise established in, or a citizen or resident of: The United States of America, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine. Persons or businesses in these countries or in any jurisdiction where it would be illegal according to applicable law (by reason of nationality, domicile, citizenship, residence or otherwise) are forbidden to access or use the services of Abra International.

Get your free $25 in Bitcoin now with the all new Abra App!

No fees, really?

Yes, to launch our new functionality of buying, selling, and holding exposure to traditional assets like stocks and ETFs, we are offering zero trading fees on these assets for the rest of 2019.

Will I still be able to use Abra to buy bitcoin?

Yes, all day, every day. Abra offers the largest selection of cryptocurrency investment options on the market today. Abra will continue to expand our crypto investing capabilities with more innovative and interesting products, like the BIT10 crypto index, alongside traditional investments like stocks, commodities, ETFs, and indexes.

What is a non-custodial wallet?

Abra’s investment app functions as a non-custodial wallet. What does that mean?
Prior to the creation of the Bitcoin network, financial transactions required a centralized and “trusted” third-party, such as a bank, a payment provider, or a credit card company. We say “trusted” in quotes as you all know how much trust these institutions exude these days.
In the simplest of terms, a non-custodial wallet allows anyone to become their own bank, so you don’t have to trust anyone to manage your money or your assets.
Think of a non-custodial wallet as a digital safe deposit box where you are in control of your own money and assets. This means that Abra cannot borrow or touch your assets unless you direct us to. Abra never holds user funds
When you first set up an Abra wallet you will be given a recovery phrase, which is your key to the safe deposit box, so don’t lose it. The beauty of a non-custodial wallet is that as long as you have access to your recovery phrase, you are in control of your assets, which are stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.
This sets us apart from all traditional investment services, and many other crypto services (like exchanges) that hold and can access user assets like a traditional bank. This also means that Abra is not susceptible to hacking to steal your assets, the way exchanges are because we don’t have your assets, you do.

What are crypto-collateralized contracts?

While we think it’s great that you’ve taken such a big interest in our technology and investment platform please note that you don’t need to understand any of this to use Abra. But we’re still very happy to explain how our technology works.
Crypto-collateralized contracts allow an investor to easily gain investment exposure to any asset, such as a stock, bond, another cryptocurrency, etc., by simply using bitcoin as the underlying technology for the investment. In other words, if you want to invest $1000 in Apple shares you will place $1000 worth of bitcoin into a contract. As the price of Apple goes up or down versus the dollar, bitcoin will be added to or subtracted from your contract. When you terminate the contract, i.e. sell the Apple investment, the value of the Apple shares will be reflected in bitcoin in your wallet which can easily, or transparently, be converted back to dollars or any other asset for that matter.

But you said that Abra can’t touch my funds?

That’s true. When you enter into the investment contract, you’re effectively creating a smart contract which automatically determines based on the price of the Apple shares whether the investor has made money or lost money. The underlying bitcoin collateral then adjusts itself accordingly to be equal to the value of the Apple shares.
If the value of the underlying bitcoin collateral adjusts itself who is taking the risk on these contracts when the price of Apple goes up? Simply put, Abra is taking that risk. However, Abra hedges away our risk on these contracts in the open market the moment the consumer creates the investment. Abra has already successfully processed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these investment contracts and has never lost money on them.
Crypto-collateralized contracts leverage the programmable aspects of bitcoin to create a new universe of secure and decentralized finance. The programmable nature of crypto-collateralized contracts means that we can peg the value of anything with a reliable price feed to the value of bitcoin. This technology will enable all kinds of interesting financial services and products in the future.

So this is a security token, right?

No, Abra is not creating security tokens. We have created a system of crypto-collateralized contracts that peg price feeds of other assets to bitcoin. In other words, the underlying financial instrument is always bitcoin.
If the value of the pegged asset goes up or down, then the Abra user’s bitcoin balance will go up or down accordingly.
There is no secondary market for any of Abra’s investment contracts and they can only be bought and sold on the Abra platform.

Why should I trust Abra with my money?

You aren’t trusting Abra with your money. With Abra, you are holding your own assets in the form of crypto collateralized contracts. Abra is a non-custodial wallet, which means we don’t hold your funds, they exist on individual user phones and are accounted for on the Bitcoin blockchain.
While we are offering new features in the form of exposure to traditional stocks, commodities, and ETFs (and more investment opportunities are on the way), we have been using the underlying crypto-collateralized contract model for years to secure transactions around the world.
When you make an initial deposit from your bank account into Abra, Abra works with regulated exchanges around the world to convert your fiat into crypto, i.e. Bitcoin, and then moves the crypto immediately to your wallet which then gets inserted into your investment contract.
To date, we are able to account for every single decimal point of value ever traded through Abra.

Where is Abra based?

Abra is based in Mountain View, California. The company was founded in 2014 and has been growing ever since.
We have been featured in popular publications like Forbes, CNN, CNBC, Techcrunch, Coindesk, amongst others. Last year, The Wall Street Journal named Abra one of the top technology companies to watch.

We’ll be scheduling even more exclusive interviews like this in the coming weeks to delve into the minds of what makes a blockchain startup tick as well asking the questions you want to know the most.

To make sure you don’t miss out on our exclusive interviews, go ahead and sign-up to our mailing list and subscribe to our social media channels.

Get in touch to let us know who you want us to interview as well as the questions you want us to ask.

You’ll get notifications on the latest exclusive articles as soon as they appear on our website – we won’t and will never spam you.

The post Exclusive Interview with Abra CEO Bill Barhydt – Crypto, Stock and ETF Investing using Bitcoin appeared first on ChipIn.

Why then do we continue to see women and other minorities underrepresented at every level?

Perhaps it should come as no surprise when we remember that cryptocurrencies are fundamentally tech innovation companies. During the previous couple of years, the technology industry has spawned some of the worst high-profile examples of institutional sexism – with cases of bullying, discrimination and toxic organizational cultures coexisting alongside some of the most innovative products and ambitious mission statements on the planet. Frankly, if Silicon Valley regards itself as the future, we’re in big trouble.

There are many brilliant #women like @NataliePropy @SaWang_IOST @KatherineNoall @LoneFonss being influential in #blockchain - but we need greater accessibility and involvement, for that, some business and development environments need to…
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So we’re looking at the intersection of both the nerdiest of tech and the heavyweight presence of the finance industry… Also not known to be a hotbed of feminist liberalism. (And anyone who argues that lack of a pay-rise or a bit of workplace ‘banter’ is irrelevant in the light of the exposure of recent criminal activities in the entertainment industry and elsewhere, is simply failing to understand how such abuses of power originate and get normalized).

As long as the tech industry, in general, is perceived to be somewhere that women will face systematic casual abuse in the workplace, or simply have diminished earning potential or career opportunities, then we shouldn’t be surprised if many of the best and the brightest choose to go elsewhere. And let’s remember that the earliest waves of cryptocurrency consumer adoption and knowledge-sharing happened across the least regulated channels of online communications, such as Reddit and 4Chan – again, spaces which are intensely gender-biased and appeal to a narrow subculture of those obsessed with Lambo memes and Pepe the Frog. Not exactly embracing inclusivity, shall we say.

Crypto in the real world

But even going beyond the politics to looking at the practicalities of the cryptocurrency marketplace, it’s obvious that failing to engage with the voices of women is going to seriously obstruct future mass adoption of blockchain-based products and technologies.

Women buy 70-80% of the world’s products and act as the purchasing gateways for multiple institutions across different categories. If cryptocurrencies are ever to cross effectively into use as a medium of exchange rather than just a store of value – which is surely the objective of the industry long-term – then it’s incredibly short-sighted to ignore the female perspective.

However, in December 2017 Forbes quoted data that only 5%-7% of cryptocurrency users are women – and that means at best 5%-7% of the $85 billion wealth creation from Bitcoin in 2017 benefited women as a result. Far from leveling the playing field and empowering underrepresented groups in the way that it could, so far the benefits of crypto are actually deepening existing inequalities.

Thank goodness the backlash has started, even though it’s yet far from equally distributed. The Blockstack Summit in 2017 specifically reserved a quota of ticket allocation for women and other underrepresented groups, in an effort to amplify the voices which were going unheard, and create space for participants to speak up without feeling themselves to be in a minority. Linda Xie, the co-founder of Scalar Capital, described it as ‘one of the only crypto events I attended where I actually had to wait for the women’s restroom’!

ICOs too present increased opportunities for female engagement in the space, given that they are less dependent on the traditionally male-dominated careers related to coding and instead stand or fall on their whitepapers – in other words, effective communications, a professional realm where women have greater penetration. And stepping outside that closed (and yet again male-dominated) culture of VC funding to the egalitarian potential of crowdsourcing, ICOs have the scope to democratize access to startup capital for founders from every demographic.

Women to watch

So today let’s take a quick look at some of the women who are really making a difference in the crypto world because there are plenty of them. With a few notable exceptions, they’re doing it too quietly, compared with the airtime and exposure that their male counterparts are gaining in the press.

Let’s change that right here, right now, by rounding up a few female movers and shakers in the space to keep an eye out for in 2018. Some of these you may not have heard of yet… But you will:

Joyce Kim
@joyce

Joyce is Executive Director of Stellar.org (Stellar Lumens) and managing partner at Spark Change Capital. She is passionate about the potential for blockchain on the global stage, as a tool for empowering the unbanked and tackling inequality at the grassroots.

An expert in the cryptocurrency space, she has presented on cryptocurrency platforms for banks, governmental organizations, the UN and the Bank and has advised numerous crypto-related projects and ICOs, as well as devoting pro-bono time as an attorney to helping immigrant families and domestic violence victims.
Image: sparkchaincapital.com

Perianne Boring
@PerianneDC

Perianne is the founder of the Digital Chamber of Commerce, advocating for blockchain “at the intersection of innovation, investment and policy” (their leadership team is 50% female). A regular Forbes contributor through her column, “The Beauty of the Blockchain.”, Perianne was named among CoinDesk’s “10 Most Influential People in Blockchain 2016” and “Top Woman in Bitcoin 2015” for her public policy accomplishments.
Image source: digitalchamber.org

Amber Baldet
@Amberbaldet

Amber is the executive director of JP Morgan’s Blockchain Center of Excellence. She is working on blockchain in a bank, and she has pink-tipped hair. This would make her someone to watch in any circumstances. She is one of the real synergists in the world who will be vital to mass adoption, bridging the crypto/big-bank world, as she similarly champions the benefits of both open-source and digital privacy.

Amber also speaks up for inclusivity issues, and making the blockchain world fully accessible, whenever she gets the chance. She made Coindesk’s list of “Most Influential in Blockchain 2017”, and taught herself to code when she was 11.
Image: Fortune.com

Jinglan Wang
@jinglanW

Jinglan is the executive director of Blockchain Educational Network and Blockchain Product Manager at NASDAQ .

Designed to help students start and/or grow their blockchain clubs across the world, the Blockchain Educational Network cross-campus initiative ambitious seeks to propagate blockchain culture across university campuses. By connecting the various blockchain hubs through friendly competitive activities, student-leaders form strong relationships between each other and amplify their local efforts, whilst the organizational support takes the non-hierarchical form of ‘janitors’ rather than managers. In 2017 they reached new (decentralized) growth goals, exceeding 1,200 members across 270 schools in over 50 countries.

Blockchain isn’t all about making money, this organisation is engaging young people across the world using volunteer activity to make a difference in the world.
Image: twitter.com

Jen Greyson
jengreyson

The CEO of Powered by Neureal Jennifer brings decades of executive leadership to the blockchain/crypto space.

Her adamant stances on empowering women, global issues, and educating over regulating, set her team at Neureal apart in the frenzy that is the current crypto space. With a project tackling artificial intelligence, big data, and cryptocurrency, she’ll be one to watch as she bridges some of the biggest nascent technologies.

About Neureal’s far-reaching impact, she says, “We are giving everyone the ability to matter, to make a difference in the world on a grand scale. Users will be able to predict anything they’re passionate about, from hurricane paths to the extinction of a species to climate change to medical advances. And, of course… Bitcoin prices.”
Image: Neureal.net

Fahima Anwar
@FahimaAnwar

Fahima is the Director, Marketing & Communications for IVEP, and Senior Director, Global Marketing & Communications at Dubtokens. The Canada-based organisation is bringing the immutability of the blockchain to the trust-challenged industry of media engagement metrics, and Fahima is a content strategist with 8+ years in marketing, e-commerce & technology with a keen interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain.

She is the founder of Canada’s largest influencer conference, Spark Sessions, and has a background in the fashion influencer space. At IVEP she has purposefully built her team to be 90% female, in order to deliberately disrupt the growing lack of diversity in the cryptocurrency movement. “They [all] had the skills, they just didn’t know they could excel in the space”. She has exciting plans for 2018 to hopefully get other women thinking about entering the industry and making the change an unstoppable reality.
Image: LinkedIn.com

Meltem Demirors
@Melt_Dem

Meltem is the development director at the Digital Currency Group (whose subsidiaries include Coindesk), where she has been described as “the ‘connective tissue’ between subsidiaries, portfolio companies, investors, and corporate partners”.

Working as a synergist between the cutting edge of blockchain development and traditional investment, she is focused on creating new models for partnership and growth. As well as driving investor relations, development programmes and vendor partnerships, she incubated DCG Connect, a subsidiary of DCG that connects startups with enterprises and technology service providers to build scalable solutions across value chains.
Meltem is also a member of Global Future Council on Blockchain at the World Economic Forum.
Image: LinkedIn.com

Raine Revere
@metaraine

A background in contemplative psychotherapy and now working as a blockchain engineer, would be enough to make Raine an interesting person on its own. She is still a practicing therapist, but as well as being a developer and educator in the smart contracts space, she is a founder at Maiden – teaching modern cryptocurrency investment and development skills to women, people of color, LGBTQIAP+, and others who have not traditionally had access to wealth.

As with many of the women making this list, Raine is working across the boundaries of the technological and social change, quite possibly the only place where the true implications of the impact of the blockchain revolution might be understood.
Image: Linkedin.com

International Woman’s Day

Jane Zhang, Marketing Partner, Delphy – a blockchain-powered predictive market, is one of the leading women in the blockchain space and has written a brief quote sharing her thoughts on women’s treatment in crypto space and highlighting some important issues.

“On March 8th it is International Woman’s Day, which seeks to celebrate women’s achievements. This year’s theme #pressforprogress is calling for change – change in gender equality across the globe. As a woman in the relatively new area of blockchain, a technology industry that has only been around for 9 years, it is interesting to reflect on the presence of the female voice in this area.

“Sadly, for all its talk on innovation and disruption, the world of cryptocurrencies trails behind in diversity and there is underlying tone of a “gentlemen’s club” culture. The wider technology industry has faced many issues with gender equality, but strides are being made in the right direction. Yet why do we see and read about cryptocurrency events being held at gentlemen’s clubs? Why are there so many stories from women who have attended cryptocurrency events only to be subjected to sexist and condescending remarks? An innovative and exciting new world is stuck in the dark ages.

“But there is hope. The crypto community is still relatively new. We need to ensure that women’s voices are being heard, that women are being brought into the industry whether that be from a business, investment or development perspective. This is an exciting world, but it can only succeed in truly disrupting if it is inclusive.”
“We definitely see a wave of talented women bagging leadership positions in blockchain start-ups.

Grassroots change

Indeed, education is where change has got to start. Whilst valuable initiatives such as Girls in Tech can start to bridge the gap for women to enter the highly male-dominated world of coding, it’s vital that more generally financial literacy is heightened for all young people.

Investing has been the largest wealth generation tool for decades worldwide, so it’s essential that women are equal players in this system. A lack of financial literacy and no social empowerment to invest for those in developing markets is leading women to miss out on opportunities such as cryptocurrency. The only way to fix this is to work financial literacy and investment training into global education programmes, so all young people will be more able to advance their financial positions in a rapidly changing world.

Sadly our educational institutions in the ‘developed’ world have always failed badly at this area. Watching my own daughters struggling with schoolwork covering critical life-skills like trigonometry, I can’t help thinking how much more useful it’d be for them to be learning to understand trading, risk, and even compound interest… Whatever their future holds for their generation, a fundamental understanding of triangles probably won’t help them as much as understanding how to value and manage and make their most of the assets they acquire.

But in a world where learning is a click away for most of us, the traditional curriculums surely become less and less important, and so in parallel will the institutions which gate-keep such knowledge. I look forward to the next generation of men and women in cryptocurrency, who are the self-taught pioneers of a new age and will build the new economy to fit a world we can’t begin to imagine. I believe, or at the very least sincerely hope, we won’t be looking around wondering where the women are.

The post Women in Cryptocurrency: Bring On The Revolution appeared first on ChipIn.

Even in one of the richest economies on the planet – the U.S. – 46% of the population cannot obtain a loan on favorable terms. 70% of the population has no access to credit at all. The availability of such services along with basic access to a bank account, get more disparate outside of developed economies. And into this yawning gape of financial need has stepped the FinTech services industry in general and blockchain-enabled finance in particular.

South of the Rio Grande, blockchain-based FinTechs are already shaking up financial services by reaching out to the unbanked. In just one country – Mexico – FinTechs offering financial services to those traditionally priced out of banking services are on track to capture 30% of the entire banking market within a decade.

Financial exclusion, in other words, is becoming an opportunity.

And into this mix are coming new FinTech start-ups – offering a plethora of services that the big guys can’t afford, do not want to offer, or cannot touch. Into this fertile mix, also add a technology that can connect micro-borrowers anywhere on the planet with those willing to make a microloan or send cash or even pay bills remotely. All enabled by push-button technology that avoids traditional fees, charges, middlemen and all that processing time.

Uulala is a company on a mission. Owned by minorities of first or second generation Latino descent, it aims to facilitate and accelerate the financial inclusion of the under and non-banked in the Americas. Uulala empowers users by providing financial tools and services critical in building credit, sending money and participating in e-commerce. Uulala can move those without access to banking and traditional banking services now away from a cash-only environment for the first time.

The platform also enables users to participate in a full range of services they could not access before. This includes the ability to send and receive secure financial transactions digitally and via mobile devices, pay bills, build credit and even gain access to digital goods, services, and entertainment once out of reach because of no access to banking services.

As Oscar Garcia, the co-founder of Uulala said about what drives the company, especially now, “We are at a tumultuous time in history where the Latino community has a lot of fear about what will happen with the US government and US financial institutions and how that will affect their ability to work, save and support their families.

Uulala was developed to be the beacon of light or mechanism to sustain and empower a culture that has been cast aside.”

Here is the market that Uulala has in its sights. Global remittances, which totaled $429 billion in 2016, are worth three times the annual amount of foreign aid distributed by governments. The money is also more efficient than government aid because it side-steps all the corrupt go-betweens and inefficiencies of the current system.

On top of this, remittances are a critical source of income for families in developing countries – particularly those with relatives in more developed countries. Migration for work is a major issue of the 21st century. And one of the places it has always been an issue is in the migrant, Latino-heritage market segment of both the U.S. and all of the particularly Spanish-speaking countries south of the U.S. border.

The World Bank says that transaction fees average 7.45% of this amount globally and can drift as high as 15%. Fintech and blockchain-enabled services are of course making inroads by offering competitive rates, and Uulala is no exception.

Of course recipients of such “aid” are also instantly able to have access to other banking services.

At present, only 7% of all remittances in this market segment are even digital. As such, this creates a huge opportunity for the services Uulala is now preparing to offer to a highly valuable, underpenetrated market with huge and untapped banking and buying power.

Remittance: Domestic and international money transfers occur both peer-to-peer and peer-to-institution. Cut out the expensive middlemen (goodbye Western Union).

Banking Services: Uulala offers banking services with low monthly fees, even to those with account minimums that traditional banks will not touch. This also gives users the ability to pay bills for people in other countries. The service also features a top-up program for mobile phone numbers. On top of this, the platform creates opportunities for B2B services and micro-credit.

Digital Credit: Paying bills, transferring money and purchasing goods and services add up. That includes in the creation of a global credit score that can be continually improved by users as they enhance their profile via active app use.

Cash Rewards: Users can even use services associated with a pre-paid MasterCard. This includes the ability to earn a percentage of all purchases back as a “forced” saving account. 300 top tier retailers are participating in the Uulala network already with rewards as high as 6% of total purchases.

If it sounds “normal” that is because it is. Uulala is just recreating what people with traditional banking access take for granted for those who have never had access to such services before. And all enabled by blockchain technology.

Here are the details of the upcoming Uulala token sale:

Token name: UULA

Token base: Multichain utility token

Token supply: 750 million (total supply)

Token sale duration: Staggered pre-sale and crowd-sale with discounts and incentives underway now until the end of the public crowd sale in Q’2, 2018.

Token sale target: USD $50 million (hard cap) for the sale of 2/3rds of all tokens

Token exchange rate: Between USD $0.02-$0.28 per token depending on time of purchase.

Uulala’s Website

Uulala’s whitepaper

The post Uulala – The Financial Platform Empowering The Cash Consumer To Become Creditworthy appeared first on ChipIn.

It does this by providing algorithmic trading bots built to make efficient trades for all investors without restrictions.
There is no need for programming knowledge or previous trading experience in Gimmer as all complicated processes work in the background; all investors are welcome to use user-intuitive trading bots that are highly customizable depending on the investor’s trading goals. At the same time, users do not need to understand cryptocurrencies like a pro which means that even first-time cryptocurrency traders can enjoy the benefits of Gimmer.

We recently sat down with Philipe Comini, the CEO of Gimmer to have a chat with him about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.

Hi, Philipe. Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us more about yourself and Gimmer?

Sure, I was born in Brazil and have been living in London for the past 9 years. My background is predominantly design and User Experience. I have worked for the top agencies in the world and I’ve produced creative work for brands like Disney, Xbox, Honda, Nestle, Sony, among many others. I discovered cryptocurrencies in 2014 and I was amazed. I couldn’t believe I didn’t know about them beforehand. A friend of mine and Co-Founder in Gimmer, Pérsio Flexa, introduced me to this world.
He is a full stack developer with a technical background. Even in 2014, he was a few steps ahead of the market – he developed algorithms or ‘bots’ to spot opportunities and trade on his behalf.
The additional gains he was making was phenomenal, it blew my mind.

Following our conversation, I decided to investigate this myself and see what I could build, but I was lost. I needed his help and guidance.
I then joined various communities and saw the demand for trading bots was high as crypto trading can become a full-time job due to the innovation in this space. We started brainstorming how we could improve the process of developing these bots with non-technical people in mind – using his technical skills and my design skills.

Boom, and that is the story of the birth of Gimmer. Building bots to trade cryptocurrencies. Persio suggested we could make this process much easier by building a platform so everyone could use it regardless their level of expertise. On that day Gimmer was born.

First off, why did you decide to use the blockchain in building Gimmer? What was your thought process behind it?

We are building a decentralized application which runs on people’s computer. We are not building our own blockchain per say. We will depend on the Ethereum blockchain for some tasks, like storing users’ data.
As we’ll be generating our ERC20 token called GMR Token, it makes sense to use to use Ethereum infrastructure to work alongside our DAPP.
Gimmer is built on the Ethereum blockchain for multiple reasons, but the key reasons are the ability to reduce security breaches and enable our application to exchange data and use it to activate the features of the app.
The traditional stock markets have operating hours and days, not the world of cryptocurrencies. We are building systems that will be dealing with large sums of ‘digital money’ 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Any sort of breach will be highly costly not just for the company but also for all our users, leading to a lack of faith in the system and eventually lead to a collapse. Understandably, we want to avoid this at all costs and for that reason, we decided to build our system on the Ethereum blockchain.

Tell us about how you came up with the idea of Gimmer. Did you face a problem within the industry or do you think there is a gap in the market for Gimmer to fill?

I want people to think of Gimmer store like the ‘app store’. App store was launched so the creators can create amazing apps and tools for others to use and improve their lives. Creating software, algorithms and apps aren’t for everyone, it’s for a select few, but billions of people around the world still get to use them.

On Gimmer platform, everyone from amateurs to an expert will be able to come and trade cryptocurrencies using bots, regardless of their level of expertise.

If you can build, build for others.
If you can’t, rent from others.
Collaboration at its best!

Currently there a few platforms which you can create crypto-trading bots, but they require programming skills and a great amount of knowledge and time. As I mentioned before, the overall idea of Gimmer is to simplify the experience of creating bots to trade on your behalf.
We are also building a Bot store that will enable our platform to connect experienced traders to complete beginners and this will bridge the gap between the two.

What do you think is the biggest problem Gimmer will solve and why is the problem important to solve?

As per our research, we can identify that 80% of the trading markets are automated. The banks and big hedge funds use such automated solutions to achieve massive profits. With the extraordinary advancements in the fields of AI and machine learning over the past few years, such technologies are becoming more accessible to everyone.

uote>In finance and trading, this won’t be any different. In the very near future, we’ll have bots competing against bots. The most intelligent one will take the bigger profits. The holy grail hunt has already started.

The outcome will disrupt the industry and bring the whole game to the next level.

The rise of the blockchain has also seen a rise in the number of startups providing trading bots or algorithms that either fully or partially manages the portfolios of users. Why do you think this trend is happening? Is it because of the actual demand from users or is just a “hot” trend that many startups are catching on?

Automation is the future, not just for trading but for every industry and humanity. To answer this correctly, we have to understand what automation does. Put simply, it reduces manual labor and increases efficiency. Software and algorithms power the world, most individuals just aren’t aware of this. Automation will continue to play an ever-increasing role in our industry and we will be grateful for it.

In terms of Gimmer, we are building systems that will enable individuals to maximize their profits in a market that is very much active, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.
A friend of mine once said, missing out on minutes in the crypto world is like missing out on hours in the ‘normal’ world and missing out on hours is like missing out on days and so on. We just don’t want enthusiasts to miss out on anything and thankfully bots don’t need to eat, sleep or rest.

Intelligent automation in any industry brings a whole different perspective and special value. For instance, in the automobile industry, Tesla has been working on self-driving cars and trucks.

I trust that there’s a demand for it because whatever that can save you time and money, or even make you money, is something not just “hot” for a moment but rather something to stay.

If you can rely on a service that can do something exceptionally well for you why would you do it yourself? That’s one of the biggest challenges we’ll face. To create the most intelligent and reliable bot which will provide the best possible trading experience.

Editors Pick: Gimmer ICO

Gimmer – Automated Trading Platform to Revolutionize Crypto Investing

Posted: January 20, 2018

The cryptocurrency market today is a far cry from where it first started. Often described as “volatile”, today’s cryptocurrency market is growing extremely fast in comparison to other markets in the world which presents a potential gold mine for traders to earn significant amounts of profits in a relatively short

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The most interesting aspect of trading bots is almost always the technology behind it. With the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies, what technologies do you have in place for Gimmer to ensure that trades are accurate and efficient?Are there any safety features in place to prevent massive losses to investors?

As I write this, the cryptocurrency market cap stood at $550BN on the morning of Jan 2016. In the last 10 days, the whole market had lost around $300 BN – this is important because I want to emphasize there is no technology in place that can guarantee prevention of massive losses. Unfortunately this is the nature of the industry and fortunately, this is exactly what keeps things exciting.
What our systems do is enable you to put your strategies in play around the clock, so if you think your strategies can minimize losses and maximize gains, that’s what the bot will do.
In terms of accuracy and efficiency, we believe software has much more potential to achieve this than humans because of the speed of execution.

Tell us more about the bot store. What is the reasoning behind having a bot store instead of providing them all at the start to users? Also, how do you weed out the good strategies from the bad? Is it solely based on performance?

The bot store is a key element of Gimmer’s offer. Gimmer will be the go-to place for any type of cryptocurrency trading for any type of trader. For example – margin trading, arbitrage trading, etc. However, for experienced traders whose strategies are doing well, the bot store will provide them with the opportunity to rent their own bots to people less experienced.
Again, I want to go back to the ‘app store’ analogy. We will have a rigorous review system that enables users to differentiate between the good, the bad and the ugly with ease. Users will be allowed to comment, review and share their experience of every strategy they use.
We may even push it further to create a system where reviews are mandatory (think Uber or Airbnb) to further improve our traders’ experience.
We’ll show the performance and other interesting stats but never what’s behind the strategy, therefore protecting the trader’s intellectual property. This will provide traders with an additional income stream as they will be able to set a price for each bot. Equally for less experienced traders or complete beginners, having a professional trader who they can rely on will be a game changer. This social engagement is crucial for the platform to reach its maximum potential. We want to create not just a crypto-trading platform, but a community which people can share, learn and earn together. That is how unique value is embedded.

On the topic of renting bots, is Gimmer going to continue providing trading strategies or are you shifting towards becoming a 100% trading bot marketplace instead of providing strategies yourself?
Are there any other future products or services coming up?

Our platform is more than just a bot store. We are in the process of building a community of cryptocurrency trading enthusiasts. There are great platforms currently that the team and myself use to get tips and engage with other enthusiasts, but the market is very dissected and full of ‘noise’.
We want to try and get away from that and build a ‘safe haven’ and already have over 20,000 people in our community. We also plan to further enhance our platform by providing learning pools, tutorials, and courses for upcoming crypto enthusiasts.

What’s something that you believed to be true for a long time until you found out that you were wrong, or if you don’t like that dichotomy of right versus wrong, what’s something significant that you really changed your mind about over time?

I am from Brazil as I mentioned before. Although it’s one of the most beautiful countries in the world it was very hard to grow up there in comparison to other countries. I have seen a lot of dissatisfaction, and poverty and never used to buy into ‘you can do anything you want to in life’.

But I was wrong, I think anyone, anywhere can achieve their true potential if you set your mind to it and act.

I hope I don’t sound too cheesy here.
Just a quick comment on that, I have met a lot of dreamers and visionaries but not so many action takers, so if I can encourage your readers to do one thing, I want it to be ‘take action’ in anything they want. As long as you have a clear vision of what you want, go for it. The reward will come.

What has been your happiest moment so far working on Gimmer?

One of our happiest moments was when the number of downloads for our demo app crossed 10,000. And positive feedback from users also makes me feel warm inside, as does seeing our team that has been formed (and is still growing).

On the flipside, what has been the most painful, or perhaps the most regretful decision you’ve made with Gimmer?

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. Even after we have done things right, we have often found ways to do it better and of course, when you go wrong, you wish you had done things differently. I think part of starting a company and entrepreneurship is the learning curve, which has been extremely exciting for us. So, without the risk of sounding arrogant, I would like to say we haven’t made many regretful decisions.

Is Gimmer already working with notable businesses or firms? Are there any future partnerships in process? If yes, can you explain briefly about it?

Gimmer (GMR) and XTRADE.IO (XTRD) are working in a partnership to build several new next-generation features for Gimmer’s existing decentralized automated cryptocurrency trading platform.
XTRADE.IO will be bringing their expertise and tech to further enhance Gimmer’s trading system. This will include building a unified FIX API to allow Gimmer users to execute trades across multiple exchanges much faster as well as having aggregated liquidity. This means Gimmer’s trading bots, including arbitrage, will execute deals quickly at the best possible price. Totally a game changer.

Gimmer already has a working beta version and a crypto trading bot app that has been downloaded over 10,000 times. The addition of the XTRADE.IO technology will enhance Gimmer’s offering, which gives novice and experienced traders the best and most intuitive decentralized trading platform in the crypto sector.

Tell us more about GMR. What is its function in the platform and what can users expect from it in the future?

Every purchase, rental, sale, exchange, reward or fee made in the ecosystem will require the use of GMR Tokens. This includes, but not limited too:

• Paying for the rental of crypto-trading, crypto-lending and crypto-arbitrage bots
• Customising your trading strategy with additional currency pairs, indicators and safeties
• Renting trading strategies from other customers
• Earning GMR tokens for creating content in Gimmer’s integrated social network
• As a reward for expanding the Gimmer community by inviting friends
• As a reward for featuring in the community ‘Best Bot’ leaderboard

Simply put, the function of the platform is to help cryptocurrency traders maximize their profits using automated cryptocurrency trading bots. Systems that don’t need to eat, sleep or rest unlike us, but can be tailored to your specific strategies with ease.
Also, if you are new to the game and not confident in trading, you could rent strategies from more experienced traders if you wish. Or even if you are experienced and confident, you could find more profitable strategies than yours and adapt them yourself.

What do you think is the biggest challenge or obstacle Gimmer will face? How do you plan to tackle that challenge?

We believe the biggest challenge for Gimmer is going to be overcoming human psychology. As it is with any industry, adoption of new technologies can be slow – for example, adoption of self-driving cars and complex artificial intelligent systems. The majority of the tech has been available for some time now, yet not widely used, but it takes the right platform for crypto traders to trust bots to do their trades over the year and around the clock. It will be all about how reliable and accurate our bots can be. Our data science, ML and AI team will have a big challenge ahead and I’m confident we’ll do an excellent job to overcome any obstacles.

Moving on to more personal stuff, what does a typical day in your life look like?

This question comes at a great time because we welcomed our first daughter into this world 10 days ago. So, as you can imagine, right now, it’s pretty hectic. But in a good way!
In terms of work, weekday and weekends don’t mean anything and nor do days and nights. Our team is very international, spanning Asia to South America, meaning working around the clock can be achieved easily by building an incredible team and support system around me. As we are currently in the process of a token sale – so the majority of my time is taken up managing and reaching out to potential investors.
Amongst all this, I also try and keep myself active by going to the gym as often as possible (4 times a week is good).

Can you express one personal opinion of yours about the blockchain? It doesn’t matter if it’s negative or positive, we just want to hear your thoughts on it.

Sure, in one line? I think it’s great. Having a decentralized public ledger which can be audited at any time and also highly secure can disrupt many industries.

Finally, what other personal goals (besides your career) do you have in life? Is there anything else in life you want to achieve?

I want to continue doing what I do, as design is my passion and hobby. Creating solutions which bring value to people’s life. At some point in the distant future, I want to develop coaching skills and help people like me achieve their goals.

That concludes our Interview with Philipe Comini

We’ll be scheduling even more exclusive interviews like this in the coming weeks to delve into the minds of what makes a blockchain startup tick as well asking the questions you want to know the most.

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The post Meet the Boss – Exclusive Interview with Gimmer CEO Philipe Comini appeared first on ChipIn.

The 22X Fund, announces today the first-ever token launch of its kind, with token pre-sales beginning on January 26, 2018 at 07:00 EST. By purchasing tokens issued by 22X, investors will now have an opportunity for early exposure to up to 30 high potential early-stage companies.

22X was derived from “Batch 22” of the 500 Startups Global Seed Accelerator program, all of whom participated in the 500 Startups summer 2017 accelerator program. Participating companies in the 22X Fund have already raised over $22MM in seed capital from top VCs, institutions and angel investors.

“ICOs are all the rage right now, but few have a concrete offering underpinning the value of their token,” said Chris Rawlings founder of Judolaunch, a participating 22X company. “Since ICO’s represent a new form of early-stage funding, 22X is leading the way by offering a token that gives investors real value right from the start.”
“Democratizing access to startup capital is the most significant innovation opportunity for the next ten years. Blockchain now allows this to become a reality, by enabling us to better manage who gets funded and who gets to invest. We’re proud to play a role in such an exciting endeavor,” said Ashwini Anburajan, founder of OpenUp, a participating 22X company.

Investors that satisfy the applicable suitability standards and are interested in gaining exposure to a select group of promising startups, can subscribe to 22X with several crypto or fiat currencies and will receive the digital ERC20 compliant 22X Token in return.

In addition to gaining exposure to emerging companies, investors in 22X can expect lower fees compared to traditional VC or ICO investments. Another distinguishing factor of 22X is that unlike many other venture capital investments, it does not subject its investors to carried interest.

22X is aiming to raise $35 MM, almost all of which will be deployed immediately and invested on a pro-rata basis in the equity of participating companies with a view towards fueling their expansion.

“22X can be thought of as a trailblazer in tokenization. We firmly believe we are accelerating toward a future where paper-based securities are completely extinct. 22X is at the forefront of innovation in what might be considered the first issuance of tokens in which returns are based on the success of a select group of promising startups. We are proud to be powering the 22X offering with the Securitize platform,” said Carlos Domingo, Securitize co-founder and president of Securitize.io.

“22X represents an advancement in new investment vehicles, a token backed by equity in up to 30 companies. This offering represents a significant development in the crypto space, and I’m thrilled to be on board,” said Tim Reynders, co-founder of Securitize Capital LLC and investment manager to 22X.

This press release is not intended to be an offer to sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy, any security or other financial instrument or to invest in the token issued by 22X (“22X Token”). The offering of the 22X Token has not been registered, qualified, or approved under any securities, futures, financial instruments, capital markets, or exchange control legislation, regulation, or ordinance of any jurisdiction. In all jurisdictions, any offer to sell or solicitation to buy a 22X Token, when made, will be directed solely to qualified institutional investors, qualified professional investors, and those other sophisticated persons to whom offers and solicitation may be made without any licensing, registration, qualification, or approval under applicable law. Before you decide to invest in a 22X Token, you should carefully read the 22X offering documents and consult with your own advisors. An investment in a 22X Token is speculative and involves risks, which you should understand prior to making an investment.

The private placements of 22X Tokens have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”) or any state securities laws, and the 22X Tokens are being offered pursuant to an exemption from registration provided by Rule 506(c) of Regulation D under the Securities Act and in reliance on similar exemptions under applicable state laws. An investment in 22X is suitable only for sophisticated, well-informed investors, and investors will be required to represent that they are accredited investors as such term is defined in Rule 501(a) of Regulation under the Securities Act.

About 22X Fund Companies
The idea for 22X was originally conceived when a group of founders participating in Batch 22 of 500 Startups in San Francisco started discussing some of the challenges facing many companies in the VC industry. After much collaboration, this group discovered Securitize.io, a new platform designed to facilitate the purchase and transfer of tokens among qualified investors. Hence, the 22X Fund was born, Securitize Capital LLC (a wholly owned subsidiary of Securitize.io) was engaged to act as its investment manager and the rest is history in the making. For more information, visit 22xfund.com.

The List
Agentbong
COR
Cryptomover
Elyse28
FalaFreud
FinCheck
FreightRoll
Fyodor Bio
Jones
Judolaunch
LaborVoices
Mailhaven
Mobile Forms
Myndlift
Next Play
Ohalo
OpenUp
Payment24
Plum
Public Goods
Rapa
reDock
REVER
ShortPoint
Sofy.ai
Stealth Co.
TEXEL
TrueFace
VCV
WayPay

About 500 Startups
500 Startups is a venture capital firm on a mission to discover and back some of the world’s most talented entrepreneurs, help them create successful companies at scale, and build thriving global ecosystems. All companies that will be invested in by 22X were part of Batch 22 of 500 Startups.

Since its inception in 2010, 500 Startups has provided hundreds of millions of investment dollars, acceleration programs, and support services to thousands of entrepreneurs in over 60 countries. Notable portfolio companies include: Twilio (NYSE: TWLO), SendGrid (NASDAQ: SEND), Credit Karma, Grab, Carousell, Udemy, Kudo (acquired by Grab), Talkdesk, Makerbot (acquired by SSYS), Wildfire (acquired by GOOG), and Viki (acquired by Rakuten).

About Securitize
Securitize is the first platform that enables globally regulation-compliant tokenization of securities. The platform is available now, and delivers end-to-end tokenization of any fund, company, or asset. Companies such as 22X Fund (Batch 22 of 500 Startups), CryptoOracle, Kairos.com, and Lottery.com work with Securitize to seamlessly tokenize their securities, raise capital, enable increased investor liquidity, and deliver value to token holders in innovative ways. Read more at www.Securitize.io.

About Securitize Capital LLC: Securitize Capital LLC acts as the investment manager to 22X. Securitize Capital LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Securtize.io . Tim Reynders, the manager of Securitize Capital, LLC and formerly of Aiden Lair Partners, will have primary responsibility for the activities of Securitize Capital LLC with respect to 22X.

The post 22X Fund is Here: 30 Companies, 1 Digital Token = A Whole New Way to Win at Startup Investing appeared first on ChipIn.

2017 was a record year for initial coin offerings (or ICOs). Over USD $4 Billion was raised using this technique last year. And if things are anything to go by in January 2018, this action is only going to increase on a monthly basis for the near future. Not only that, but the amount of money raised per ICO is also likely to go through the roof. What will be the first ICO through the $100 million ceiling this year?

The North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami held between January 18-19 drew some of the year’s early “star” if not break-out contenders. The event is part of the World Blockchain Forum: Investments and ICOs. In 2017, the gathering drew the hottest startups, funders and strategic partners from all parts of the planet. This year, the environment is even more fever-pitched. Here are a few of the companies that Chipin thought stood out, even in this prestigious crowd.

The Best Of North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami 2018

With that being said, here is a recap of some of the more interesting ICOs during the event:

1. Solve.Care

Healthcare provision – from medical records management to paying for services and obtaining medication and supply and insurance coverage – is one of the hot areas of blockchain disruption and will be for some time. There are multiple players now entering the market globally – and Solve Care is on the leading edge of them.

There are several reasons this is an impressive entrant into the market – starting with the U.S. market – which this start-up is clearly targeted on like a laser beam.

The first is the impressive list of advisors, who include the likes of David Randall, Ph.D, a resident scholar with the American Research and Policy Institute in Washington D.C, the Honourable James Moran who served in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1991 and 2015, Donald Upson, a former cabinet secretary of Technology for the state of Virginia, and Chris Peterson, who has over three decades of experience in the health sector including a stint as Vice President of Legal Affairs with the Health Insurance Association of America.

The second is the clearly comprehensive take the company has used to approach a problem that is amorphous but driving costs and complexity at every step of the healthcare provision and insurance question. This includes the integration of services, billing, records, payments and provision into health insurance and in such a way that medical and financial privacy and security is maximized throughout. Further, it is precisely the threat of unauthorized aggregation of healthcare data that has also stymied previous reform. In the U.S. this is governed in the healthcare space specifically by a law called the HIPPA.

To learn more about the ICO, click here or go to Solve Care’ homepage.

2. Codex Protocol

Codex Protocol is building the infrastructure for a decentralized title registry for art and other collectibles. The founders intend for this to be an industry protocol on top of which other applications can be built. They are starting with biddables and sellables. Think blockchained Christie’s Auction, and you hit the mark.

To quote the Codex CEO Mark Lurie “The global art and collectibles market is approximately $2 Trillion, yet today, there is no way to prove who owned what and when. This is especially important in art and collectibles because almost the entire value is based on provenance and authenticity.”

Just so.

The Codex Protocol will be powered by the BidDex Token and will be released in early 2018.

Codex’s landmark application – Biddable – will enable cryptocurrency holders to bid in auctions. Privacy and access will be enhanced for all bidders through a title-escrow system. As the first application to provide direct access to the market, Biddable will drive Codex adoption from both sides of the arts and collectibles market.

Benefits for the industry also include a technical fix to end bidders who hijack auctions and then skip town without paying. A blockchained bid system locking in all bidders will effectively end this bane of the entire industry.

Because these solutions are clear wins for the vertical, major stakeholders have already enthusiastically embraced the Codex Protocol – and across a spectrum of industry partners including collectors, auctioneers, dealers, museums and other organizations vetted by existing members.

The team on this project is also strong. CEO Mark Lurie brings a background in venture capital and an MBA from Harvard. COO Jess Houlgrave is a former equity investor with experience in the arts industry directly and an MA from Oxford. John Forrest, a former Microsoft engineer and company CTO rounds out the founder team.

To learn more about the ICO and read the whitepaper, click here or go to Codex’s homepage.

3. Project Districts

Project Districts is connecting two cutting-edge technologies – cryptocurrency and augmented reality technology – in a way that is likely to be the crest of a trend driving both for the foreseeable future. That starts with the ability of developers to raise funds quickly for innovative projects but does not stop there. That said, it is clear that Project Districts intends to drive a significant part of the virtual reality market, if not increase it beyond predictions that are already astonishing. According to Forbes, Virtual Reality (VR) will be a $40 billion industry by 2020. If not more.

This start-up aims to create an environment where virtual and augmented reality projects can be hosted, accessed, developed and of course, monetized. The system will use its own proprietary blockchain as this is cheaper than using an ETH-based token.

There are many fundamental strengths to this idea, starting with eliminating the major hurdles facing most developers today. Existing projects require expert knowledge to develop and so far, this has limited the development pool. On top of that, such applications require dedicated, high-end hosting infrastructure, out of the reach of most consumers. As a direct result, capabilities and existing use cases are still very limited.

Project District aims to change all that.

The platform’s ecosystem will come with a pre-defined 3D world template with existing entities and architecture to allow users to create their own custom entities using creation tools also provided by the platform. User-defined DAPPS can easily be monetized and launched (for example a digital store). By exploiting the latent capabilities of the blockchain, this 3D world also floats on a robust peer-to-peer system which drops the costs of development and ongoing maintenance, while speeding up commercialization and community aggregation. The immersive, pre-built environment has also included, from the beginning, many opportunities for unique advertising and content provision.

On top of that, existing industry partners leave no doubt that this will be a go-to platform for all those interested in a fascinating and now faster developing “alt” world which cryptocurrency is helping make more real, and much sooner.

To learn more about the ICO, click here or go to Project Districts’ homepage. to learn more about this fascinating project

4. Credits

If anyone thought that Bitcoin or Ethereum were the last words in blockchains themselves, think again. The entire space is rife for disruption on the basis of cost, speed, scalability and engineered architecture.

It is also rife for disruption in specialized applications and verticals – starting of course with everything with a Fintech element. The team at Credits is certainly poised to present an interesting option for those looking for alternatives.

The company is clearly going after users who are looking for blockchain that is more secure, with new instruments for developers and users, and no working competition.

The comparisons with both Bitcoin and Ethereum are also pretty jaw-dropping.

In comparison with Bitcoin’s 7 transaction-a-second network volume capability and Ethereum’s 300-500, Credits comes in with a whopping 1,000,000. Transaction speeds are also blazingly different. Credits’ transaction speed clocks in at 0.01 – 0.03. In comparison, Ethereum takes between 1-5 minutes. And poor old Bitcoin chugs along at one every 10 minutes.

Credits is also clearly targeting the Fintech space. Their tokens can be used for everything from payments and bank services to cross-border trading, stocks and exchange services, and interbank payments (look out Ripple).

For those looking for an experienced team to helm such an ambitious enterprise and a well-thought out entrant and competitor in a still expanding FinTech space that has not heard the last word on core blockchain development, check out more details about the ICO, or go to Credits’ homepage which also includes many handy links to other informative documents.

5. Akropolis

According to the World Economic Forum, 48% of the retirement aged population do not receive a pension. Even more terrifying? The retirement savings gap globally will grow from $70 trillion in 2015 to $400 trillion in 2050.

To add to this confusion if not dire catastrophe, both private and public pensions are so broken that most people agree that what is needed is a radically new solution. And that is where Akropolis comes in – or at least would like to. Their mission is to solve the “pension-gap” problem and utilize blockchain to do it.

While the white paper along with a private sale is now in progress, here is what already looks interesting. The concept of a decentralized pension management system could not be better timed. The team behind it is clearly well qualified. And while strategic partners with name recognition have not been named yet, it is obvious they are coming.

Absolutely a project to watch.
To learn more about Akropolis check out their clearly expanding ICO landing pages.

We will continue updating the article with the latest and best ICO’s presenting and exhibiting at the conference.

The post The Best Of North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami 2018 | ICO Highlights appeared first on ChipIn.

According to MIT, centralized exchanges are themselves a blowback to a different concept of “currency.” They are also antithetical to the idea of a decentralized, global, currency market.

Streamity, in fact, is on the verge of a new wave in currency development and exchange. They are also setting up their platform to work as a kind of “payment processor” for those who need to make payments or exchanges in any kind of currency – fiat or cyber. In doing so, they lower the costs of exchange. They also are able to give users instant access to the best global rates of exchange for all currencies at the time of money transfer.

We recently sat down with Vladislav Kuznetzov, the CEO of Streamity to have a chat with him about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.

Hi, Vlad. Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us more about yourself and Streamity?

I decided to create StreamDesk in response to the huge market problem that exists in the global crypto-currency market. In most countries of the world, people have no opportunity to convert crypto-currencies into traditional money quickly and conveniently. Although platforms for currency exchange exist, most of them are not large-scaled enough, they offer simplified technical solutions that lack security, and they are difficult to use. I’ve been in business for more than 10 years and I realize that my hour has come.

I selected the best people for the Streamity team. These guys worked in well-known companies and everyone has succeeded in their business. Such people will only follow a real leader, and I do not doubt our success!

First off, why did you decide to use Ethereum blockchain in building Streamity? What was your thought process behind it?

We use Ethereum blockchain because we believe in its reliability and scalability, our programmers know Solidity in perfection, well, also, of course, I trust statistics. Open the site: The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and see what companies are in the alliance – I trust the well-known brands! Ethereum will definitely continue to develop.

What do you think is the biggest problem Streamity will solve and why is the problem important to solve?

The main problem that Streamity can solve is the problem of exchanging cryptocurrency for fiat money and vice versa. Now the market is very fraudulent, there are overvalued rates and high commission fees. In order to develop cryptocurrency market more rapidly and reach new heights, it is necessary to solve this problem.

Your KYC is based on fairly conventional “ID checks” like passport, bank account, and utility bill provision. Is there a time that you see this might change (i.e. you will use a different form of identity verification that is based on crypto identification?)

We are already negotiating with CIVIC on this issue and it will be incredibly convenient to use our service with digital identification! I think it will happen very soon.

In the whitepaper, you talk quite a bit about the rise of decentralized exchanges – and your market position already with regards to emerging competition. What is it that really distinguishes you from a) traditional exchanges b) the newer entrants in the decentralized exchange space?

Our service is unique. Yet no company has integrated smart contracts and API payment systems. It allows you to work with minimal commissions and above all provides absolute security for users, which is one of our main goals.

Regulation-wise, you are clearly setting up your service to market first to the developed western economies (i.e. places where a bank account is relatively easy to obtain). But what about customers in economies that are still largely unbanked (i.e. see Africa?) How do you intend to provide KYC provisions for those customers – potentially the largest market already in sum for your services?

As I said, we will soon launch a digital identification service and then we will be able to solve this problem.

Editors Pick: Streamity ICO

Streamity – A Decentralized Cryptocurrency Exchange Enabled by Smart Contracts

Posted: January 11, 2018

Decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges are on the rise after the well-publicized hacks of centralized trading platforms. The growth of the cryptocurrency market is one thing. Last year the industry grew exponentially and this year, it is expected that the market overall will reach new heights. New currencies are being introduced daily.

0 comments

Let’s talk about your ideal customer. Is it a gig economy worker with multiple clients who pay him or her in different currencies? Is it a company with multiple employees in several countries? You mention the concept of “payment processor” but in reality, in just a few years, many people will have to manage not only multiple cryptocurrencies but integrate their fiat currency into the same. Talk a bit about this and how you see your “ideal” customer, and what they need already and will need in the short term future.

We are focused on the P2P exchange, which means that our ideal client is absolutely anyone with any possibilities. I hope that in the future, the world will finally give up fiat money and we will be able to plunge fully into the digital world, where all payments will be comfortable and transparent, there will be no inflated prices and hype, bubbles and scammers. Where we could pay easily and simply in an unmanned taxi, transferring cryptocurrency to the purse of the program that manages the car.

What has been your happiest moment so far working on Streamity? On the flipside, what has been the most painful, or perhaps the most regretful decision you’ve made with Streamity?

The happiest moment was when I realized that I can create something that is truly worthwhile, that it is possible to change the world and make it easier and safer!
So far, fortunately, I have not made any sad decisions; everything is going smoothly according to my plan.

Is Streamity already working with notable businesses or firms? Are there any future partnerships in process? If yes, can you explain briefly about it?

We conclude agreements with payment systems. We will integrate each payment system separately into our service. This is rather a long and complicated procedure, but when we connect a sufficient number of payment systems, the service will be fully automatic. I hope that PayPal will be among our partners. After all, this company is my personal role model. I’m a fan of Elon Mask and everything that he creates. This is a great man who has already changed the world and he will do much more, I am sure! At the moment, I’m not ready to disclose with whom we have already concluded contracts, we will report this a little later.

Tell us more about the STM token. What is its function on the platform and what can token-holders expect from it in the future?

Streamity is not only an exchange platform, it is a huge ecosystem, led by an STM token. Streamity services include news and analysis, investment, and educational resources, each existing as an independent business environment. We are creating an attractive and powerful portal in the area of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, which will integrate news, ideas, high-quality analysis in one personal account, unique training courses created by experts in various fields, algorithms and ready-made solutions for trading, a number of forums with token remuneration, user-friendly interface, and timely data submission. All of this will involve blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. In the ecosystem, there will be a constant turnover of the STM token and with the development of services, the token will become more and more in demand.

What do you think is the biggest challenge or obstacle Streamity will face? How do you plan to tackle that challenge?

At this stage, Streamity does not have any big and unsolvable problems, we solve any problems that arise on our way and plan to do the same in the future.

Moving on to more personal stuff, what does a typical day in your life look like?

I can not imagine my life without interesting work and new discoveries, sometimes it seems to me that I will never retire: after all, even when I am on leave for more than 1 week, I’m already starting to miss my business! Now my usual day is about working 18 hours a day. ICO is not a simple job as many people might think. ICO requires the full attention to the project and team as there is a huge responsibility.

Can you express one personal opinion of yours about the blockchain? It doesn’t matter if it’s negative or positive, we just want to hear your thoughts on it.

Blockchain changed my life, my world and the world for many people. This is the technology of the future. But I do not believe in Bitcoin as a means of payment! I believe in smart contracts, Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum and in https://entethalliance.org. Bitcoin was created to show the whole world what money could be, but it is easy to create a cryptocurrency in its likeness. Then what is the point in supporting it and keeping it in circulation? It is more profitable for any state to create its Bitcoin and implement it in its jurisdiction. However, it is only my opinion.

Finally, what other personal goals (besides your career) do you have in life? Is there anything else in life you want to achieve?

Of course! I always dream about something, and then turn those dreams into goals and fulfill them. There are so many goals in my life. Now, for example, my goal – to move to Singapore, it is one of the reasons why I registered my company there. I love this country!

That concludes our Interview with Vladislav Kuznetsov

We’ll be scheduling even more exclusive interviews like this in the coming weeks to delve into the minds of what makes a blockchain startup tick as well asking the questions you want to know the most.
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The post Meet the Boss – Exclusive Interview with Streamity CEO Vladislav Kuznetsov appeared first on ChipIn.

Because information regarding transactions carried out through blockchain exists on and as a mutually reconciled, shared database— successful hacks on the network are well-nigh impossible. Information isn’t stored at a single location but on several computers spread throughout the world. Additionally, the data is publicly accessible and verifiable. Decentralization of data makes it unavailable for hackers to take the entire network down or land any significant blows to data veracity. Additionally, blockchain is a peer-to-peer transaction network that can speed up transactions owing to mutual instant reconciliation and effective synchronization of data and this sheds the drawbacks surrounding conventional international transactions.

A survey from Accenture reveals that over 44% of North American and European banks are interested in using blockchain for cross-border banking transactions.

These banks also want the technology for cross-border remittances, corporate payments, asset and securities, insurance and for cash pooling. 30% of these big banks are already working on proof-of-concepts of distributed ledger solutions.

That’s not all.

Fintech firms and big banks like Barclays, HSBC, and Commerzbank have collaborated on a prototype of a blockchain based distributed ledger technology for cross-border payments.
UBS Wealth Management estimates that blockchain could infuse an additional $400bn of annual global economic value by 2027

Let’s see what unique advantages blockchain offers to banking and how they can challenge traditional banking.

Differences on the architecture of blockchain and traditional banking transactions

1. Blockchain is a real-time updating shared database

A distributed ledger is a consistently updated, synchronized shared ledger that records transactions. Details of asset transfer and exchange are recorded and shown to all parties on an as-it-happens basis. Participants in the network govern and agree by consensus on the updates to the records in the ledger. This eliminates the necessity of a central record-keeping server, or third parties to broker the deal.

Here’s an example to illustrate the point.

Blockchain technology shares some similarities with how torrent sites distribute files on a p2p network. Under both systems, the data remains decentralized. The core difference is that on torrents someone sending the file and the one receiving it both end up with copies of the file. With blockchain, changes to the file are kept track of and mutually agreed upon and everybody accesses the same file all at once.
Just like torrents the network lives and thrives on decentralized computer nodes.

With timestamped unique records sealed with cryptographic signatures, each record is securely stored on the network. This inherent strength lends many advantages when applied to banking.

Blockchain makes transactions available on both ends of the spectrum. Unlike Schrodinger’s cat, the transaction is live and happening simultaneously at both places. Transactions traditionally require banks to lower the amount at one account and make the transfer, update the ledger and maintain the balance.

Since ledger information is distributed on blockchain, both owners can see what’s happening and this aids transparency. Consequently, there wouldn’t be any need for banks to briefly lock access to accounts or decrease account balances when making transfers.

2. Encryption of user data boosts security

A username or password combo can get hacked and is vulnerable to threats on multiple fronts. Add to that the sheer lethargy that drives most password choices.

A research from Telesign indicates that 73% of online accounts use duplicate passwords, 47% of accounts haven’t changed their passwords in half a decade and 22% rotate three or few passwords.
An entire infrastructure is needed just for managing passwords which are often vulnerable.

For instance, Forever 21 recently admitted to a hack on its POS systems. The company said, “In a group of stores that were involved in this incident, malware was installed on the log devices that was capable of finding payment card data from the logs, so if encryption was off on a POS device prior to April 3, 2017 and that data was still present in the log file at one of these stores, the malware could have found that data,” the company noted.
Blockchain ditches passwords in favor of encryption.

Mostly, crypto-coin exchange consists of someone sending coins to a hashed series of letters called a public key. This string of numbers is the user’s address.
The receiver has another key that’s hidden from public view called the private key. Despite the key being public, a bystander doesn’t stand a chance at extracting reason out of public keys.

Only someone holding the private key can use it to derive the public key, information about the network and for performing security checks. The private key is used to generate a unique signature for each blockchain transaction and can confirm the transaction has come from the user.

1. Clearing and settlement and pumping more cash to the economy

According to Accenture, banks could save up to $10 bn per year if they replace extant technology with blockchain. Credit card settlements, securities clearing, and settlement which often require considerable human involvement can be automated, eased and sped up.

Blockchain can also lower transaction costs.

In 2015 alone, remittances from the US to developing countries amounted to $431.6 billion. The average cost of sending $200 from the US to developing countries was 7.4% of the sent amount in 2015. Third-world countries like South Africa is the most expensive region to send money to with average cost sitting between 9.5% to 10%.

There’s a call by the UN and G20 to reduce these transaction costs to 5% and then further down to 3% and blockchain could pave the way.

Another report provides us with startling insights— inefficiencies in the global collateral market alone account for $4 billion in costs for banks. With distributed ledgers, existing record-keeping infrastructure for all parties can be whittled down to the tune of $15 to $20 billion per annum.

Crypto-coins offer another advantage.

Most people in developing countries distrust banks and corporates. Hence blockchain powered cryptocurrencies which have transparency weaved into its fabric could breed trust. After a private beta, Bitcoin was launched in 2009 as a decentralized digital currency. As such it cannot be regulated by governments or banks.

Bitcoin has been hailed and adopted by people in lots of developing nations because of the same reasons. This could allow for more cash in the world to enter the banking system and fuel growth spurts for the economy.
I am reiterating an important point here but the key advantage is that data isn’t duplicated but still made available for all parties involved. This allows all stakeholders to simultaneously verify transactions and additionally discards the need for any third parties.

Before any of this happens banks have to evolve and support a new culture that can inculcate Blockchain.

2. Finance/Currency trading

Forex is a trillion dollar market.
Forex trading is a complicated business with all parties involved creating records for currency trades and reconciliations. A lot of time’s wasted just verifying things and maintaining records.

Blockchain can revolutionize forex currency trading in two different ways:
Firstly it can shorten settlement times and secondly increase transparency. Forex’s structure provides ample opportunity for manipulation. There are over 10,000 FX brokers, each one listing deviated prices.

This is more than enough to manipulate currency values and sell currencies for higher-than-actual values to buyers.

With blockchain, every transaction is recorded and accessible to public view, and this can clear the cloud around currency trading and essentially reduce manipulation to zero. Just like everything else Forex trading requires tomes of records created multiple times for each stakeholder— the buyer, seller broker and clearer. The plethora of record births the need for reconciliation among all stakeholders all of which sponges away hundreds of hours.

With blockchain, everyone gets a shared file where values are updated and synchronized in-tandem with the trades. This system can result in 80% savings on market infrastructure costs and reduce time for reconciliation and trade reporting and simplify communication.

3. Syndicated loan processing

In the US alone the syndicated loans market is worth $4 to $5 trillion. The pivot for syndicated loan processing hinges on shortening settlement times.

The way traditional banking works is corporate borrowers let agent banks handle most of the work that often includes making timely interest payments and mundane administrative roles including paperwork and loan processing. Startups like Synaps reduce the time for syndicated loans from middlemen to corporate borrowers. Instead of having to manually review each pending trade, smart contracts would automate the process and ensure that the transfer conditions for the credits are met.

Smart contracts can be used by lenders and banks to minimize the need or completely skip over data reconciliation. Smart contracts execute themselves based on a shared login and distributed ledger. Instead of wasting time on reconciling data at both ends traders can spend more time on actual trading and other operations and significantly improve processing times.

Additionally, the DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) platform lets lenders and agents cross-check data simultaneously online without sitting hours on the phone. The digital nature minimizes potential errors too. Also, with agent banks publishing loan data like pricing and payment schedules, the DLT platform becomes a one-stop hub for buyers to review the details of transactions. Another startup in the fray, ClearPar cleared over 850,000 syndicated loan allocations settlements in 2016.

The Loan Syndications & Trading Association (LSTA), the trade group representing the US Currently the LSTA recommends 7-day settlements but it traditionally takes 14 days. With blockchain the settlement periods have come down to 11 days.

BANKEX

BANKEX is building a new blockchain technology that enables the creation of smart assets to develop a new generation of decentralized capital markets. Its USP is proof of asset. Every alt coin it issues is backed by a real asset. The platform allows users to tokenize real assets

Network speed

Let’s look at bitcoin itself. Each block of the transaction can be added at 10-minute intervals only and a maximum size of 1 MB. The speed of transactions is current 7 per second while other channels like Visa and Mastercard process transactions at the speed of 50,000 transactions per second. Many companies are working on solving the transaction speed, for instance Universa.

Bitcoins exchanges can be hacked

While it’s nearly impossible to hack the bitcoin network, bitcoin exchanges are often being hacked. $70 million worth of bitcoins were stolen from Nicehash. In 2016, Bitfinex shut down for a brief period after $60 million in bitcoins was stolen. Such hacking incidents can lend a bad rep to blockchain.

The 51% attack

One of the biggest security flaws in blockchains is that if more than 50% of the nodal computers propagate false information, it’ll be accepted by the whole network. Called the 51% attack, this can result in the entire network being compromised.

The post Do Blockchain Based Banks Have an Edge over Traditional Banks? appeared first on ChipIn.

After much hype and interest around Universa’s innovative approach to smart contracts, not least because it counts famous tech businessman John Mcafee among its advisors, the team managed to run a slick coin offering that raised over USD$28,5 million, far outdoing its soft cap of USD$10 million. While it did not fulfill its ambitious hard cap of USD$99 million, the fantastic rise in the price of Ethereum over the last month should help to reinforce the team’s budget to move the project forward.

Universa is no small endeavor.

The team is developing its own blockchain with the intent of greatly improving the capabilities offered by the likes of the Bitcoin and Ethereum chains. For starters, the Universa ecosystem will allow for transactions over a thousand times faster than Bitcoin, at ten thousand transactions per second. That is five times faster than the traditional system used by Visa for bank transactions. According to the team, the network will require near-zero transaction costs as it does not operate with mining.

The project has rallied massive community support, now counting well over 700,000 users and growing, which gives it a great base to continue to develop its services.

The team led by founder and CEO Alexander Borodich has not sat idle over the holiday season. The self-proclaimed “workaholics” maintain weekly reports on their work and it seems like things are moving quickly.

Just a week after the ICO, Universa reportedly won the Blockchain Startup 2017 award in a ceremony in Russia. The following week, the project was awarded the 1st place at the IX Worldwide IR Case Competition. Almost simultaneously, Alpha Bank, Russia’s largest private commercial bank has agreed to integrate the Universa money transfer platform with its systems for a pilot program, in a similar way Ripple has been adopted by many banks in Asia. Also, Voskhod, Russia’s first legally approved cryptocurrency exchange has also negotiated the integration of UTN, Universa’s token, in its listings.

Universa’s Russian relationships don’t stop there either. Mr. Borodich has been in negotiations with the local leaders of the Samara region in Russia eyeing the use of the Universa blockchain in the region’s public services. Further, the team is collaborating with the Russian Association of Crypto Currency and Blockchain to develop the Cryptorouble, a state-backed cryptocurrency that could become of common use in Russia in the coming years.

Read our Interview with Universa CEO Alexander Borodich

The team’s Asian division has also been working hard on building partnerships over the last couple of weeks. After holding a number of roadshows through some of China’s biggest cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Huchzhou, a number of partnership agreements were signed, including the intent to create a Blockchain Association and a Blockchain Academy in China.

Most importantly, a partnership penned between Beijing Kuyshu Quantum Technologies Co and Universa opens the door for the Russian startup to establish offices in Beijing. This could significantly increase the project’s exposure and outreach to established businesses. The team is reportedly also holding negotiations in Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Monaco, Belarus, the Isle of Man, and the United Arab Emirates.

Now with established offices in Moscow, Universa will open a Belarus branch by mid-January, in what can only be described as a very intense expansion strategy.

All this represents welcome news for Universa investors. The company’s expansion within Russia and in major consumer markets like China can greatly expand its user base and reinforce the hype behind the project. However, what really matters right now is the tech itself, and there have been some interesting developments there.

In Mid-December, the team started testing a new version of its blockchain on the testnet, allowing for troubleshooting and interaction with Universa’s unique approach to smart contract design (more on that below).

At the same time, the team released the first version of Unipayments, which will work as a bridge with other blockchains for currency transaction. It also released its own exchange structure, UniXchange, which will allow for the conversion of UTNP to UTN tokens. Now, this is important. Since Universa runs its own blockchain, it can operate its tokens, UTN, on its own. However, since the blockchain is not operational yet, they have designed a mirror coin which is an ERC20 token, that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. These tokens, named UTNP, will act as placeholders for the actual UTN tokens.

Two smart contracts were designed to mirror this particularity and process the burning of placeholder tokens when the investor decides to exchange one for the other. This is made possible by the Universa Reserve System, also launched last week, which serves to assure the correct distribution of tokens as well as the free conversion between UTN and UTNP. All this has become particularly relevant as Universa has just announced last week the beginning of the token distribution for investors. That is to say, Universa is evolving at neck-breaking speed.

All of these developments serve the purpose of putting together a blockchain structure that is cheaper and faster than the ones that exist today through an innovative iteration into the designing of smart contracts.

Universa is trying to accomplish this by limiting the information inscribed in the blockchain and confirmed by the nodes to the current state of the contracts and the current account balances, rather than all the transaction history in the network, as currently happens with Bitcoin, for example.

The rest of the information is stored in the Universa Secure Signed Document Service, which the team has dubbed Notary Cloud. This cloud can be called upon to verify all the transaction history and original contract. This means that the nodes in the network can perform a much quicker confirmation of the current state of transactions.

Perhaps the greatest cut the project envisions from the traditional blockchain architecture is the lack of need for mining. The Universa team has established a network of verified partners that are the de facto owners and operators of the nodes, rather than leaving it open to the public. These partners are then rewarded via transaction fees for their work, foregoing the need to mine as well as the massive electric power consumption that that practice demands.

The team’s strategy is based on the design of simple smart contracts that can interact with each other, rather than the compiling of massive contracts that try to do all at once. In that way, Universa provides a platform where users can create flexible smart contracts that can support digital assets that go beyond currencies, like car smart keys, digital passports or intellectual property documents. In this way, the platform has the potential to take blockchain technology applicability to the next level and, at the speed the team is working, that might happen sooner than expected. Stay tuned for our upcoming interview with Universa’s CEO!

The post Universa ICO Successfully Concluded as Team Moves Ahead at Fast Pace appeared first on ChipIn.

Ælf, a blockchain technology company developing a new ‘Cloud Operating System’ that will act as a central hub for all Blockchains, has announced the company has raised 55,000 Ether (the spot price was USD 450 by then) in a private-only token sale from an all-star lineup of investors. The company stated that none of the investors received discounted rates or bonus tokens for their investments.

A New, Decentralized ‘Cloud Operating System’ for ALL Blockchains

The current challenge preventing large scale commercial adoption of Blockchain technology is its inability to meet the requirements of various complex business scenarios. The “one size fits all” Blockchain faces tough dilemmas to balance needs from different business scenarios. For example, digital ticket issuance or payment processing would require high number of transactions per second, while digital legal contracts would emphasize high security and reliability. In a perfect world, there would be one blockchain that would have high efficiency, flexibility, adaptability, and compatibility.

However, the fundamental nature of technology development doesn’t normally accommodate for one complete solution for everything. Specifically, with blockchain, it’s currently not possible to provide all of these solutions due to a number of issues, including: Block Inflation, Dilemma of Protocol, transaction rate and scalability.

Ælf has proposed one platform that would serve as an operating system for all Smart Contracts without performance interference. For example, if Cryptokitties is running on one side chain of Ælf, other Smart Contracts would be running smoothly on other chains. In addition, operating system usually features powerful computational power to handle complex transactions. Ælf achieves that target via enabling nodes to run on a cluster of computers, processing transactions in parallel instead of linearly.

One of the first private-only token sales’

In an announcement, the company has stated that they have raised 55,000 ETH from a group of all-star group of investors, including: Alphabit (UK), Block Tower (U.S.), 1kx capital (Germany), Hashed (South Korea), Signum Capital (Singapore), FBG Capital (Singapore), Galaxy Partners (U.S.), and more. The company also mentioned that the sale was oversubscribed 5x by private investors.

The project is being developed by Hoopox a software development firm which has received $5.2 million in funding already so far in 2017 for the project. The current fundraising round was led by FBG Capital out of Singapore.

To incentivize community involvement, Ælf has indicated that 12% of all tokens will be allocated for marketing activities and airdrops and suggested users to follow their social channels for future announcements.

The post Ælf raises 55,000 Ether in a private-only token sale appeared first on ChipIn.