ICO Crowd Issue #2 by Ico Crowd

www.icocrowd.com

ISSUE #2, OCTOber 2017

Ether Party Trippki Playkey

THE NEW WAY OF CROWDFUNDING IS HERE

ICOs and the MIGRATION of Intellectual Capital

Igor Khmel BANKEX New Era ICO: Initial Smart Asset Offering Tokenization of FinTech Assets

Price: 0.01 BTC

FOREWORD

ISMAIL MALIK Editor-in-chief DONOVAN OBOSI Head Analyst

The Inevitable Rise of The Token Economy

GIORGIO ANDREWS Deal Flow Director ANNEMIEKE DIRKES Managing Editor PAM TATRO Content Editor TZVI SHISHLER Marketing Photo credit © Shutterstock

If you would like to advertise with us or have any other queries please get in touch at info@icocrowd.com Disclaimer. All opinions and views expressed in this publication are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent the views of ICO Crowd magazine, its Management or Advisors. All content of ICO Crowd Magazine, in particular but not exclusively, photographs, businessdetails, facts and figures, names, adresses and dates, historic details and offers, are the sole responsibility of the author of each artice. Copyright violations by the author are the sole responsibility of the author and ICO Crowd magazine can not be held liable, whether on the whole or on particulars. www.icocrowd.com

by ISMAIL MALIK Chairman & Executive Editor ICO Crowd

Financial collapses, most recently the 2008 crash, have left a long lingering mistrust of traditional financial institutions, which in turn spawned Bitcoin’s origin in 2009 and the associated Blockchain, with the explicit purpose mentioned in the first paragraph of the original Satoshi Nakamoto white paper, to allow two people to send money to each other without a bank involved. Parallel to that, there has been a major revamping around how we do security, and skyrocketing demand for much better ways to handle identity, authorization, verification and validation. The power and potential peril from hackers, including state-sponsored actors (such as TITAN RAIN), has driven demand for the type of security and “unstoppability” of Blockchain software.

And the massive returns on investment has provided the gas to fuel excitement and ditching old careers and quitting existing jobs and selling assets to be able to fully devote one’s time and resources to the cryptoeconomy has enabled an astonishing rate of creation, staffing, and coordination of teams to quickly respond to every emerging opportunity. This creates a TSUNAMI OF OPPORTUNITY for tokenization of everything, and the Internet of Tokens as the newest megatrend and a deeply embedded and irreplaceable culture to deliver on the promised almostscience-fictional potential of the decentralized economy, to supersede the slowing Web 2.0 that has been the main business story of the last 10 years. We are already witnessing the early signs of agile and nimble national economies and sectors and the rise of the token economy, which you can read about exclusively here in this issue of ICO CROWD magazine in Alex Lightman’s Internet of Tokens piece, the first column for our first columnist.

As publisher, I think that the Internet of Tokens will be a dominant feature of the The largely decentralized nature of the global economy for at least the next decade, Internet of Tokens has allowed for a and that all executives, entrepreneurs, policy rapid movement of ideas and intellectual makers, elected officials, and journalists, property and funding to realize these, in even scientists and especially economists parallel with high quality academic research and bankers, will need to invest the time and that is useful (for a refreshing change) to make the effort to understand, as the Internet business and technology. of Tokens is going to touch and change everything. All of these are part of creating a new platform for a more sophisticated economy. I am proud that ICO CROWD, the Disruptive (Think of the sort of “platform” or game Investors Magazine, is able to offer our board you would need to play 5-D chess). readers, who are the first 1% innovators and Instant messaging, especially Telegram, 2% early adopters as defined by the Stanford and an astonishing “operating tempo” Values and Lifestyles curve used to analyze or high frequency of global Blockchain market adoption rates, thought leadership conferences (I have attended over a dozen and a front row seat to see the trillion dollar cryptoconferences in the last two months opportunities at the cutting edge of the and I am not unusual), enables extremely cryptoeconomy, powered by increasingly rapid innovation and early adoption. useful Blockchain software and businesses.

CONTENTS 4 6 7 9 10 13 14 16 18 20 22 24

Advisory Board

Smart contract ICO video pitching platform // PETER LAZOU

Wherevr: Disrupting the home-sharing industry // DANIEL SARTORE

Have ICOs taken over from the traditional crowdfunding model? // ANDREW ADCOCK

StartupToken™ – the Distributed Network of Accelerators // YACINE TERAI

Venture Financing 3.0: Startup’s Newest Opportunity // PATRICK LOWRY

Pesabase: Low cost Remittances, Payments and Banking // NHIAL MAJOK

Energi Mine named as one of the world’s exciting blockchain start-ups as business gears up for Token Sale // OMAR RAHIM Breaking Barriers to Ethereum Mass Adoption with Dether // TAYLOR SMITH

An Advanced & Autonomous Waste Management System // AASTHA VERMA

BIDHash: The World’s Best Blockchain Hosting Service and the Creator of CellCoin WePower Blockchain saving the world // NICK MARTYNIUK

26 28 30 33 34 35 36 38 41 42 46 48 50 52 54 56 58

HAZZA: Off the Starting Block to Democratize Payment // DONOVAN OBOSI

Gimli the decentralized eSports platform // AUGUSTA NYATEDZU

Cobinhood: The World’s First Zero-Fee, High-Frequency Cryptocurrency Exchange Veridium, the Natural Capital Market // AUGUSTA NYATEDZU

FuzeX: The Ultimate Smart All-in-One credit, debit, rewards, and cryptocurrencies e-Card // LU SONG

CommerceBlock & BIP175: Bringing Bitcoin to The Banking World // MATT ARMSTRONG

Advanced Browsing Token (ABT) ABT Protocol & Addap’s Browser // ADI SOSSOVER

A Better World Where the Crypto and Real Economies are Bridged // VALENTIN PREOBRAZHENSKIY

Etherparty: The User-Friendly Smart Contract Creator // KEVIN HOBBS

The Internet of Tokens: Best Business Opportunity in 25 years? // ALEX LIGHTMAN

Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) & the Proof-of-Asset Protocol (PoAP) // MATT ARMSTRONG

Token Economics and Design Across Industries // JASON ENGLISH

The State of the Cryptocurrency Derivatives Market // BHARATH RAO

Hacken: Cybersecurity Ecosystem Focused on Blockchain Security // DMYTRO BUDORIN

Blockchain Meets the Cloud Gaming Industry In a Brand New Ecosystem // EGOR GURJEV

The world’s first public decentralized smart database // NATALIA TOKAR

What is the token economy? // HELEN DISNEY

59 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76

Mayfair & Morgan: Opportunities for Blockchain Professionals // PAUL SKILLEN

Trippki: Making Travel More Rewarding // PAUL SKILLEN

What is Sense? A Conversation with Crystal Rose, CEO of Sense // ALEX LIGHTMAN.

“The Empires of the Future are the Empires of the Mind” KPMG Collaboration Boosts ICO for Construction Payroll Platform Etch // BEN WHYTE

WASTED ENERGY // SANDEEP GOLECHHA

“When Mass Adoption?” – The 21 Million Bitcoin Question // SANDEEP GOLECHHA

The Rebirth of INKCHAIN The Intellectual property asset exchange // DONOVAN OBOSI

Loyakk Announces Vega, a Blockchainenabled Decentralized Enterprise Relationship Platform // RAKESH SREEKUMAR

Advisory Board SUSAN POOLE

BRYANT NIELSON

MATT ARMSTRONG

Founder, BlockBridge Advisory Co-Founder, Blockchain Training Institute

Executive Director at The Blockchain Academy & CapitalWave Inc. Speaker

CEO&Founder of Crypto Camp

SIMON COCKING

BRETT KING

MARC KENIGSBERG

Senior Editor at Irish Tech News Freelance for Sunday Business Post, Irish Times, The Southern Star, Dublin Glob

Speaker, Startup Founder, Bestselling Author, Radio Host, TV Commentator

Founder of BitcoinChaser.com

SEAD MUFTIC

SERGIO A. FERNANDEZ DE CORDOVA

ANDREY GOLUB, PhD

CEO at Blockchain Information Exchange Security Corp

Chairman – P3SmartCity Partners, Inc Private Sector Advisory Group, SDG-FUND, United Nations

Entrepreneur, CEO & Founder @ELSE Corp- a Virtual Retail company

MUKHTAR MUSSABETOV

EMMANUEL R. GOFFI, PhD

THEODOSIS MOUROUZIS, PhD

Blockchain Entrepreneur, Founder at BlockSpace Labs

Associate doctor with Science Po-CERI Research fellow with the Centre FrancoPaix, at the Université du Québec à Montréal

Program Director of MSc in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics at Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM) Research Fellow at UCL Centre of Blockchain Technologies (London,UK)

Pre-Pre SALE

OCTOBER 2017

Smart contract ICO video pitching platform Today, the current Initial Coin Offering (ICO) marketplace is really attracting attention from investors to members of the public, wanting to jump on the digital trail. For those looking to invest, information is starting to be made available but not in a fun and engaging way, because we live in a modern world where we still entertain and work within the guidelines of a traditional, boring and complicated investment processes.

by PETER LAZOU Managing Partner, PitchICO

One of the best things about the blockchain is that, because it is a decentralized system that exists between all permitted parties, there's no need to pay intermediaries (Middlemen) and it saves you time and conflict. It's also much broader because the sustained levels of robust security achieved by public cryptocurrencies have demonstrated to the world, that this new wave of blockchain technologies can provide efficiencies and intangible technological benefits, very similar to what the internet has done. However, blockchains are a very powerful technology, capable of performing complex operations, capable of understanding much more than just how many bitcoins you have currently have in your digital wallet. This is where the idea of smart contracts come in. Smart contracts are already becoming a cornerstone for enterprise blockchain applications and will likely become one of the pillars of blockchain technology. Welcome to PitchICO, the first decentralized mobile app built on the blockchain technology based on Ethereum smart contracts, that enables you to bypass the rigorous and regulated capital-raising process required by venture capitalists and banks. Being simple, secure and transparent, PitchICO enables you to launch your own ICO from pitch to funding in 3 quick and easy steps, in a style you want using a dedicated video channel on our app. You can now showcase your offering to a global investor audience, using 60-second video clips. The attraction of short-form video clips lies in their “snackable” nature because they suit our busy lives, brief attention spans and the need to consume content easily and quickly.

We use pre-defined smart contracts to take you to the next level by offering you the opportunity to run your ICO campaign with the option to create your own tokens to raise funding, making investment decentralized, transparent and self-verified with no possibilities of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference. At PitchICO, we also focus on crawling and aggregating through our inbuilt search engine, where users can have access to the latest, trending and featured start-ups, with the ability to search via keywords or specific criteria. They can like and share through social media channels, participate in community networks, as well as follow the progress of start-ups pre-and post-investment, by monitoring and tracking in real-time through news related articles with the option to deep dive for further data evaluation.

in the firm. ICOs are popular among cryptocurrency and blockchain startups and have exploded in the past few months.

The total amount of money raised via ICOs in April was just under $100 million, but by May this had more than doubled to almost $250 million, according to Coinschedule, a website that tracks such data. In June, ICO funding had hit over $550 milICO TBA lion and it was the first month ever that it surpassed angel and seed VC funding. This was noted by Goldman Sachs in a note released this month.

We use pre-defined smart contracts to take you to the next level by offering you the opportunity to run your ICO campaign with the option to create your own tokens.

Accelerators and incubators now have an extended reach to create and launch campaign events on the blockchain to recruit potential start-ups to join any one of their global programs.

According to a CNBC special report (9th August 2017), there have been 92 ICO’s that have raised $1.2 billion and now surpass early-stage VC funding. ICOs are a way for start-ups to raise money from users, similar to crowdfunding, by allowing them to buy a stake. In return, the user will receive a token or digital currency, which is equivalent to shares

Although ICO’s are now an established and booming funding model for blockchain startups, there is no dedicated investing platform. PitchICO changes this with the introduction of a new environment for participants to visually showcase their ICO campaigns and propel even further the creation of tokens and cryptocurrency assets in a fun and engaging way, made simple.

We bring a globally connected togetherness with the aim of helping you secure funding through our dedicated investor channel on our mobile app. We also offer investors a fast and innovative way to invest in you with a click of a button which is as easy as buying on Amazon. With this space growing there has never been a better time to instill creativity, so let us amplify through our platform whilst you and your team focus on building the product. Let PitchICO become your smart innovative launch partner.

OCTOBER 2017

Disrupting the home-sharing industry by DANIEL SARTORE Co-Founder wherevr

THE RISE OF THE SHARING ECONOMY In the last decade, the sharing economy has grown from a fringe concept to an economic powerhouse, reshaping various industries like tourism and mobility at a lightning pace. The data allow to foresee a dizzying increase in the key areas of this economic model. The market is estimated to grow from $14 billion in 2014 to $335 billion by 20251 and home-sharing is certainly one of the fastest growing markets of this industry. For example, the estimated number of current Airbnb users is about 150 million, with 200 million bookings since 2008.

Just think that it took Hilton Hotels these centralized systems have great 93 years to build 600,000 rooms, while monopoly and control over the maAirbnb added that jority of the marketmany to its platform place. The credit card in just four years2. providers collect their ICO TBA These numbers are fee for enabling the set to increase furtransaction, and the ther and the technolthird parties also take ogy supporting this economy must do their fee from the transaction for ofthe same. fering the service and being the intermediates between the two parties. A MARKET WITH IMMENSE In some cases, the average total comPOTENTIAL, BUT LIMITED mission is as high as 20% (plus VAT), BY THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES which is not a good deal for what is To date, when a user books a home, supposed to be a â&#x20AC;&#x153;peer-to-peer sharunnecessary third parties collect an ing economyâ&#x20AC;?. Actually, users have no often unfair fee for their service, as direct benefits from the growth of the 7

OCTOBER 2017

value of these networks; e.g., they don’t get a piece of the $31 billion USD valuation that Airbnb is now worth. Besides collecting a commission, the platform owners are in complete control of the network, as they also dictate their conditions to the value creators. It’s a centralized platform which is completely controlled by and supports the goals of the company. But it's not just a question of costs: The unjustified accumulation of sensitive data is another serious problem. No person in good faith would like to see their sensitive information in the hands of third parties, often not for security but purely commercial reasons. Entire market strategies are based on algorithms that continuously calculate and manipulate our sensitive data in order to obtain useful information for the sale of products and services. Furthermore, they store customer identities and financial data on their own servers, which can be hacked and leaked, exposing owners to litigation and large liabilities. TIME TO INNOVATE Wherevr is the first decentralized peer-topeer community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique places to stay around the world. By implementing blockchain technology, there is no longer a need for a central authority to ensure that terms and conditions are upheld and that transactions are conducted accordingly. The distributed ledger technology provides smart contracts, digital identities linked to a publicly-viewable user reputation system and digital currency payments, all of which alleviate the need for a central authority. Governance rights are distributed among the network’s participants across a decentralized organizational structure, making it possible to disintermediate the network and allocate voting rights to their participants. THE HOME TOKEN HOME token is the fuel of the Wherevr ecosystem: the cryptocurrency allows users to pay reservations, mint governance voting right, and benefit from the reward system. SAY HI TO A NEW WAY OF BOOKING: SMART BOOKING Wherevr’s smart booking technology is the implementation of Ethereum smart contracts with booking, allowing users to benefit from the power and assurance of the blockchain. Transactions are coordinated by self-executing smart contracts, completely removing the need for a third party. Funds are deposited into an escrow, the program runs the code and automatically validates the conditions, and determines whether the asset should go to one person or back to the other person, or whether it should be immediately refunded to the person who sent it, or some combination thereof. Conditions are stipulated by the host, documents are encrypted and stored on a decentralized shared ledger which gives it a certain security and immutability. 8

For every offer made, a smart contract is automatically created. Both users deposit the same amount of tokens to the escrow as a guarantee for a successful transaction, creating a layer of trust between them, the holding contract will store the funds until the deal is completed successfully. When a guest books a place, Wherevr generates an electronic ticket of the purchased booking provided with QR code, to show to the host at check-in. The host will easily scan it with his/her smartphone using the Wherevr mobile app, to proof the fulfillment of the check-in to the smart contract. COMMUNITY SAFETY User safety is one of the features of our platform. Wherevr is a platform based on communal respect, and thus includes several functions that both hosts and guests can use towards achieving this value. For example, users can create profiles that showcase their preferences, hospitality policies, preferred activities, and send each other messages to clarify booking details. To ensure community safety, Wherevr provides a review (subjective) and reputation (objective) system. Review After a booking and stay is complete, both hosts and guests can rate or review each other. People can also comment on reviews that they have received or viewed publicly. All of this means that other guests know who is safe to stay with, and other hosts know who is safe to book. Reputation The rate of successfully completed bookings, disputes outcome, and behaviour of the user

on the platform constitutes the percentage reputation on a 0 to 100 % scale. The percentage calculated is objective, not manipulable, and fully reliable since that data is recorded on the open distributed ledger of the blockchain. People can use the same persona across multiple DApps, the risk of a negative reputation motivates each party to be fair. Reputation is transferrable, Wherevr allows the transfer of the trustworthy reputation that a user built on one service, to others, so they can get started there quicker. THE FOUNDATION AND ITS GOAL Wherevr Foundation’s mission is to create a peerto-peer decentralized home-sharing platform that is trustless, fair, uncensorable, and easy to use; a system that gives greater choices and fair market value compensation to its users. By decentralizing home-sharing economy services and allowing participants to deal directly with one another, a true peer-to-peer sharing economy is created. Blockchain technology makes it possible to replace the model from top-down hierarchical organization, to a system of distributed bottom-up cooperation. This shift could change the way wealth is distributed in the first place, enabling people to cooperate toward the creation of a common good, while ensuring that everyone is duly compensated for their efforts and contributions. This new type of dematerialized organization is able to perform at such low price ranges, that it will challenge and disrupt current organizational structures. --------------------1-2

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/sharingeconomy_032017final.pdf

OCTOBER 2017

Have ICOs taken over from the traditional crowdfunding model? In the UK the market for crowdfunding, including peer-to-peer lending, started to take off in the years following the financial crisis. According to estimates from innovation charity Nesta, peer-to-peer business lending grew by 99% to £1.49 billion in 2015, with equity based crowdfunding up by 295% at £332 million. by ANDREW ADCOCK Chief Marketing Officer, Crowd for Angels

ICO TBA

However, intervention by governments and institutions into the market, particularly by favoring larger entities for investment and support, is distorting the market and making it difficult for smaller players to operate on a level playing field. In the equity crowd funding space, the situation is even more difficult. Market leaders in equity crowdfunding, Crowdcube, made an operating loss of £5.39 million in the year to September 2016. Research from Beauhurst shows a 4% decline in funds raised for equity during Q2 2017 (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1: BEAUHURST, THE DEAL - H1, 2017

In contrast, data from Coindesk shows that $1.27 billion was raised via ICOs in the three months to July 2017 alone. REGULATORY FRAMEWORK Initial Coin Offerings have recently caught the attention of various regulators around the world including the Financial Conduct Authority, with the UK regulator issuing a warning to consumers over the risks associated in the industry. Perhaps, the issue that is most troubling for ICOs is falling foul of the securities legislation in the various jurisdictions they operate in. The regulations surrounding investment based crowdfunding have been in place for some time and appear to work well. CROWD FOR ANGELS Crowd for Angels, a FCA regulated crowdfunding platform launched in January 2014, has successfully raised

FIGURE 2: COINDESK STATISTICS – AUG 2017

several million pounds for companies via a mix of equity and debt pitches. It therefore seems a natural progression for Crowd for Angels to consider the merits of the ICO market given its close affinity to crowdfunding and its capacity to fund large transactions through the use of cryptocurrency or fiat. We are therefore looking to enter the ICO market and in the first instance for ourselves. We believe we have developed a product, the Liquid Crypto Bond (LCB)

that overcomes the problems associated with ICOs that fall foul of securities laws. Furthermore, by combining the issue of tokens with our debt or equity products, you can ensure that the interest of token holders is aligned with that of equity holders this is something we feel many ICOs are current lacking. Crowd for Angels will soon be launching an ICO. To keep up to date with the launch of this ICO, please visit: crowdforangels.com/ICO 9

OCTOBER 2017

StartupTokenâ&#x201E;˘ the Distributed Network of Accelerators Unless youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been living under a rock for the past six months you will no doubt have heard about the alluring rises of bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as other digital currencies that are flourishing in a new craze which many are saying is reminiscent of the dot com bubble at the turn of the century. After almost ten years of development and dedication from a small group of pioneers, blockchain technology has reached a turning point in its young existence; with the creation of the Ethereum protocol, we are finally able to apply blockchain technology to real-life use cases and the impact could be huge.

by YACINE TERAI Founder of StartupToken

At the heart of this technology lies a financial system to help support and somewhat paradoxical motive. Blockgrow the community. Over the last 12 chain technology exists to disintermemonths we have seen an explosion in diate, to free us from the inadequacies ICO's (Initial Coin Offerings) which of bureaucracy and to overcome central serve as an example of the new capabilpowers by distributing decision-making ities invented by blockchain protocols and incentives on a global scale. Soon we such as Ethereum. It is now possible for will be able to rent computer processany individual or organization to issue ing power and storage from a a digital currency and offer it global community of individto a network of global invesual contributors, rather than tors without any of the regICO TBA having to rely on the packulatory or bureaucratic proaged solutions from propriecesses required in a traditiontary behemoths like Amazon. al share issuance or IPO. In the last year we have seen almost $2b raised by startThe scale of problem solving is greatly ups in the blockchain space through this extended by relying on a global network method of funding and it doesn't look of contributors, and yet the same techlike this trend is going to slow down gonology that shows blatant disregard for ing into 2018. national borders is also bringing people together in local communities like never As one might expect with such large before. This is primarily due to the rare sums of money flowing into the space blend of real innovation grounded in po- and new millionaires being created every litical activism, and an incentive-based week, there are also shady operators

OCTOBER 2017

ready to take people’s money for less than credible projects hatched together in quick time. Whilst investors see potential fortunes to be made in every new ICO, experienced scammers are all too willing to provide a vehicle for those funds to be invested in. In the battle to help investors become more discerning and regain the trustworthy reputation of ICO's, one project is taking the lead; StartupTokenTM is offering a full-package service for blockchain-technology startups wishing to raise money through token issuance, providing everything from legal counsel to technical support and marketing promotion. A project must first pass the qualification test that StartupTokenTM has in place to determine the true innovators from the opportunists with dollar signs in their eyes. They are looking for startups which are utilising blockchain technology for a genuine improvement on 'old-world' processes and offering a token with real utility and benefits for their owners.

ket. He states, "We focus on token economics that make sense for all stakeholders and ensures a sustainable development for the company. I will share my experience gained from Seedcoin and Blockchain Space to help startups navigate the challenges of the early stages of the startup life."

With the creation of the Ethereum protocol, we are finally able to apply blockchain This pairing of established blockchain persontechnology to real-life use cases and the im- alities with relatively unknown startups propact could be huge. vides the new businesses with almost immediWe are working closely with associated policy makers and local partners in Gibraltar including legal & tax incorporation with our partner firms such as Isolas. Together we create a regulatory standard framework to have best practices applied to startups in the StartupTokenTM accelerator.

ate gravitas and reputational substance, easing any potential concerns from prospective ICO investors.

StartupTokenTM is establishing itself as a beacon of light in an otherwise increasingly murky world of ICO's. Their community support extends to offering co-working space, and accelerator programs with seed capital and educational support for founders to help them scale their business in a lean and effective manner. Staying true to the distributed nature of blockchain technology, they are establishing a glob“We are working closely with associated polal presence with operations increasing in Lonicy makers and local partners in Gibraltar indon, Hong-Kong and Tokyo in the coming year, cluding legal & tax incorporation with our partin addition to current operations in Paris. Curner firms such as Isolas. Together we create a ferences and "experts" on hand to exert their in- rently, the Asian Tour sees StartupTokenTM regulatory standard framework to have best showcasing some of their prestigious commufluence over founders of a project. This is why practices applied to startups in the StartupTonity members such as RSK, Dether and EnStartupTokenTM has created the “StartupTokenTM accelerator,” Explains StartupTokenTM kenTM Asia Tour Edition” where it will be takergimine to the increasingly savvy Asian comCo-founder. As opposed to some increasinging a number of successful applicants on a road- munity which now accounts for a significant ly saturating the industry right now, we have a volume of digital currency transactions. show of conferences, meetups and private seslong-term vision of ensuring protection to insions to promote their project and develop the vestors and offering them duly reviewed and in- community around them. This tour combines You can see the StartupTokenTM projects outnovative projects. We are highly selective in the the nous and expertise of blockchain authoriline their product and view of a future world in projects we take on, taking into consideration Singapore on October 17th, Hong Kong on Octies like Eddy Travia, CEO of Coinsilium with their added value, scalability, team and advise a the enthusiasm and exuberance of new blocktober 18th, Tokyo on October 19th and finally streamlined, trustworthy token sale.” chain projects like Dether, Hacken or Pesabase. Seoul on October 20th. Eddy is a global speaker and pioneer VC in the It can be a daunting world for a blockchain Blockchain space and knows firsthand the over- For more information see the StartupTokenTM startup these days, with seemingly endless con- whelming significance on a proper liquid martour presentation: https://startuptoken.com/

OCTOBER 2017

Venture Financing 3.0: Startup’s Newest Opportunity I’ve been there before, standing in front of a room of VC’s, pitching my business idea. I remember the uncertainty, the judgement and the anguish of every “no” I ever received. Attracting investment to any new business idea, even the very best ones, is a painstaking process for any entrepreneur. Luckily, new opportunities for financing are changing the game.

by PATRICK LOWRY MBA & CPA CEO Iconiq Lab

For decades, every entrepreneur has been told to “find a VC” as if it was the only opportunity for their business idea to succeed, even with the clear inefficiencies in the system. Crowdfunding recently began to change this mentality, but the newest alternative for financing, an Initial Coin Offering or Token Sale (“ICO”), presents the first real opportunity to disrupt the venture financing ecosystem by supplanting equity with tokens as the primary financing instrument for startups. I call this Venture Financing 3.0. An ICO is a means in which a startup issues a cryptocurrency, or token, as a source of capital in a crowdsale. Startups receive financing to develop, optimize or scale their businesses, and crowdsale participants benefit from the utility of the coin or token issued. In 2017, ICOs have become the preferred method of financing for blockchain and crypto companies, with the total amount of financing surpassing the amount VC’s have invested in simi-

lar companies. It is clear to see why this has become the preferred fundraising method for many startups, with potential benefits including:

While the benefits are intriguing, an ICO is not for every startup. There must be a tokenizable aspect of the business model that provides some form of utility to the token holders. As• Access to financing through the pects of new, innovative business moddeep, liquid pockets of the crypto els which can be tokenized include sermarkets with roughly $150 billion in vices rendered, access to exclusive conmarket capitalization at tent, enhanced communithe time of this writing ty engagement or even prof• A more efficient means it-sharing rights in some inICO TBA to raise funds, allowing stances. Startups should be for more time to focus on encouraged to deep-dive into business development their business models and assess if to• The ability to maintain strategic kenization makes sense, then explore control over the venture an ICO in parallel with traditional fi• The empowerment, through a digital nancing methods. financing mechanism, of disenfranchised entrepreneurs who are geoMany startup management teams are graphically displaced or lacking the skeptical of the ICO markets; scams network and resources to fundraise and fraudulent ICOs have burned on their own. crowdsale participants in the past year. At Iconiq Lab, the overwhelming skeptical feedback we receive from startup applicants to our ICO accelerator program is they do not wish to be seen as potential scams or money-grabs, such as other “projects”. This is encouraging for us to hear, as viable, sustainable business models are beginning to We at Iconiq Lab are bullish on the explore this space and adopt tokens as ability of tokens to disrupt equity a financing instrument. Coupling this as the primary means of financing mentality towards responsible fundfor early-stage companies, and the raising through ICOs with the inevitalong-term sustainability of the cryp- ble regulation of the crypto markets, we at Iconiq Lab are bullish on the abilto markets. ity of tokens to disrupt equity as the primary means of financing for early-stage companies, and the long-term sustainability of the crypto markets. 13

OCTOBER 2017

Pesabase: Low cost Remittances, Payments and Banking Pushing Boundaries for the Unbanked and Under-banked in Africa Despite global innovation with banking and financial technologies, Africa still has lagged in terms of adoption and usage. This has created a wealth of challenges unlike most continents around the planet. From highest cost remittances to the region and low standards of living, to currency mismanagement, hyperinflation, extremely low financial inclusion, among other issues. ICO TBA

by NHIAL MAJOK CEO and Founder Pesabase, Australia

On financial inclusion, one could argue, not everyone has the means to have a bank account. However, everyone needs some form of access to finance and financial services, frequently referred to as being banked. After all, studies have constantly cited that access to finance and financial services go hand in hand with one’s living standards. Unfortunately, vast majority of the African citizenry are not banked. To give an idea about the magnitude of the problem, 73% of Africa’s 1.2 billion-population is not banked, the same can be said for the 40 million small businesses that account for 58% of employment, and contribute 33% to the continent’s GDP. In South Sudan alone, only 3% of the country’s population has access to finance and financial services. Traditional banking institutions that are predominant in the continent’s finance sector are too costly to run an account in; and not easy to access in terms of proximity. REMITTANCES ARE NOT CHEAP A typical case would be the story of a South Sudanese immigrant waitressing in a restaurant in America. Every pay cycle, she calculates how much tips she has collected plus her pay, how much she can remit back home to her family and at what cost. Such is the case with over 30 million Africans in Diaspora, whose families’ rely

on remittance as a source of income. As a result, over USD40 billion is remitted into the continent every year through formal means, according to the World Bank. Remittances sent through informal means push this estimate to $175 billion. Here’s the problem. The price of remittances is inflated by the incumbent systems, who have limited competition. For every single remittance sent, a whole 9.81% fee of the amount is incurred. It’s worse with intra-country remittances within Africa that cost 22% in fees. As an aside, African countries suffer from inflation as high as 730% as was the case in South Sudan in 2016 and in Zimbabwe it hit 80,000,000,000% in 2008. But it’s worth mentioning that inflation as an existential threat to wealth is slowly forcing a demand for crypto-currencies. As an example, despite the recent Bitcoin price dip, Bitcoin is selling at $7,200 in Zimbabwe, a premier above all global prices. SIGNIFICANT TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS ARE PROMISING Africa might be behind the curve when it comes to bank account penetration, but the region is right up there with developed countries when it comes to mobile phone adoption and internet penetration.

OCTOBER 2017

Today, internet connectivity is growing at 58% yearly. 100 million new connections were recorded in 2016 alone. Not only is internet access rapidly broadening, internet costs have been lowered significantly too, prompting more and more people to shift to internet devices and internet based services. It’s projected that by 2020, the mobile penetration will have reached 79% with more than half of the mobile phones expected to be Smartphones. This opens up huge opportunities to rethink how financial services can be offered across the continent. HOW DOES THE PESABASE PLATFORM BRIDGE THE GAP? With the advent of Blockchain and the many applications that are being built on top of it, the time has come to shift the focus towards more advanced financial service provision. A zero cost price for remittance puts money directly into the pockets of Africans. This goes a long way towards raising their standard of liv-

ing. Pesabase is one such company that will drive the next wave of fintech innovation in Africa. Our rallying cry is simple, “why can’t the cost of remittance be zero”. Pesabase in partnership with To give an idea OmiseGO will look to leverage the about the magniOmiseGO and Ethereum Blockchain tude of the probto offer the following services: 2 Remittance - The Pesabase Remittance mobile solution aims to link users with friends and family locally, between countries and across continents at the absolute lowest service fee. Online transactions will be accompanied with local agents providing cash-in and cash-out facilities. Pesabase Remittance will enable next minute cash-out when funds are remitted. Fiat and crypto curren-

lem, 73% of Africa’s 1.2 billion-population is not banked, the same can be said for the 40 million small businesses that account for 58% of employment, and contribute 33% to the continent’s GDP.

cies will be provided to customers to transact in and out off. 2 Payments - Pesabase Payments looks to extend the remittance user network to businesses, organizations and governments. Payments for goods and services, settlement of bills and payment of salaries and wages can be achieved through the Pesabase platform. 2 Banking – The Pesabase Banking solution will allow qualified customers to access micro-loans at request. Micro-loans will be offered to both retail and small business customers. Receipt of funds as well loan and interest repayments can be all done through the Pesabase eWallet. 2 Bithela Exchange – Bithela will provide a compliant multi-currency based trading platform within Africa. 15

OCTOBER 2017

Energi Mine

named as one of the world’s exciting blockchain start-ups as business gears up for Token Sale

Manchester-based Energi Mine has been named as one of the world’s most exciting blockchain start-ups. The accolade came at the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) Summit in Zurich, where Energi Mine CEO Omar Rahim presented the company’s new Energi Token to a range of supporters. by OMAR RAHIM Business Support Executive

During the last two years, Switzerland has become the epicenter of the ICO revolution. At the ICO Summit in Zurich, delegates shared their inside view of recent dynamics and their vision of cryptofinance of tomorrow while blockchain start-ups presented their vision for the future. At the conclusion of the morning summit, Energi Mine was announced as the winner of the most exciting blockchain start-up. TOKEN SALE As part of its drive to become the first UK business outside London to raise funds through a Token Sale, Energi Mine is now showcasing its Energi To-

ken to a range of global supporters at summits throughout the world.

like the scale or speed required to make a significant difference.

Energi Mine aims to decentralise the $2 Initiatives such as ‘The Community Entrillion global electricity markets which ergy Coalition’ is a UK group of trustit says are closed and coned and influential civic societrolled by a handful of large ty organisations and sustainICO TBA players - with energy compaable energy experts, working nies incentivised to sell more to help enable communities energy at the highest possitake control of their energy. ble price. Their focus is on generating and saving energy together for the benefit of all. COMMUNITY ENERGY Their agenda is to ensure people themA clear indication of how societies have selves have a say and control how enerbecome more ‘energy conscious’ is the gy is generated, how much it costs and rise of ‘community energy’ projects and where it comes from. initiatives. The purpose of ‘community energy’ is to transition to a low carbon It is clear that across the globe, comeconomy by creating a virtuous cycle of munities are already coming together resource allocation for social and envito change the way they think about the ronmental benefit. It encourages large- energy system and their relationship scale community participation, owner- with it. This demonstrates how people ship and responsibility. have become energy conscious enough to feel motivated to make a change. Whilst action-oriented responses to cli- However, progress itself has been limmate change continue to grow expoited due to the lack of the right mechnentially, limited access to finance has anism. hampered the development. Implementation of distributed energy solutions Initiatives are overly reliant on investhave not been established at anything ment in costly infrastructure, as well as

OCTOBER 2017

an over dependency on governments and relevant institutions. Energi Mine believes that although the concept of ‘community energy’ is the right way forward (in that it is trying to empower individuals to take control of their own energy), it has failed due the lack of access to tangible actions an end user can actually make. It requires adoption of additional infrastructure and can only move forward at the speed of associated affiliations. Their model can achieve community energy by utilising existing infrastructure which has a low barrier to entry. These enablers will allow individuals to truly be empowered. INCENTIVISING THROUGH THE TOKEN MODEL The small number of blockchain energy schemes to date have focused on incentivising renewable energy generation. Whilst Energi Mine feels this is a good application for blockchain, the model does not really resolve the key inefficiencies in the market. Energi Mine’s focus is to reduce global energy consumption by incentivising through the token model, leading to: 1. A reduction in global energy consumption 2. A reduction in retail energy prices

3. The creation of an eco-system, including a transparent peer-to-peer platform to trade energy Energi Mine is building an energy eco-system, a new energy market using AI + blockchain at its core. The platform will have two aspects; a peer-to-peer marketplace to buy and sell energy and a reward platform.

The platform will ensure prices are always truly market reflective, as opposed to being kept artificially high by the current monopolies we see all over the world. Furthermore, a reward mechanism will be created that rewards energy-saving behaviour with Energi Tokens (ETK). Actions such as buying energy-efficient appliances, taking public transport and using less energy at home will be rewarded with ETK. The tokens will be used to pay for future energy bills or Electric Vehicle charging.

The peer-to-peer marketplace will connect generators and consumers on a common platform, bringing transparency to a notoriously opaque market. Members will be able to benefit from this disintermediation by connecting directly with each other, without an energy The model is one that works in a global context company/broker in between. and will be implemented across all power markets, which are becoming increasingly deregulated. The Chinese power market, which has always been closed is also opening up in 2018, which will lead to access to a $500 billion market.

. The purpose of ‘community energy’ is to transition to a low carbon economy by creating a virtuous cycle of resource allocation for social and environmental benefit. It encourages large-scale community participation, ownership and responsibility.

In the majority of Token Sales, the tokens being sold are for marketplaces or businesses that have yet to be built. Energi Mine has an advantage in that it is an existing business run by an experienced team of both energy and tech professionals. The company currently focuses on the business sector, and manages over $140m worth of energy on behalf of over 1,100 sites across Europe. 17

OCTOBER 2017

Breaking Barriers to Ethereum Mass Adoption with

Dether Powered by Ethereum smart contracts, Dether is a revolutionary new way for anyone on Earth to buy ether using cash and spend it at physical stores nearby. Unlike existing solutions, a user doesn't need a bank account, only a mobile phone with internet access.

by TAYLOR SMITH English Communication Manager at Dether

ICO TBA

While the Ethereum blockchain opens How It Works the doors to a trustless digital world, its • Users interested in buying ether can hurdle is mass adoption. Buying ether discover ether sellers near them on is currently a long and difficult process. the Dether map, the app’s built-in Dether wants to change that. location system. • Users can view a seller’s ether/fiat For the first time, a decentralized applirate and fees and chat anonymouscation (Dapp) is creating a worldwide ly via an encrypted peer-to-peer ecosystem of ether buyers, sellers and messaging solution to agree on the physical stores willing to trade ether trading conditions and the meeting for fiat cash and accept it as a means of point to carry out the exchange. payment. • On the Dether map, users can even locate physical stores that accept CREATING A PEER-TO-PEER ether as a means of payment, or BRIDGE BETWEEN FIAT who wish to trade ether for cash. CURRENCY AND ETHEREUM • This represents a unique opportuniCRYPTOCURRENCY ty for merchants. As Ethereum popWith Dether, any ether owner can beularity explodes across the globe, come a teller and have an accessible more and more businesses are acway to make money. cepting ether. 18

OCTOBER 2017

• Any individual that has cash is able to buy ether on Dether. Cash is used in all countries across the globe whether or not a person is unbanked. • Any ether owner can officially become a seller on Dether and benefit from a new, profitable activity. • Ether sellers can now become mobile “PTM’s” (People Teller Machines) by being on the Dether map and selling ether for fiat currency anywhere in the world at any time. Sellers are free to set up their own ETH/fiat rate and their own fees. THE GLOBAL NEED THAT INSPIRED DETHER “Our mission is to break barriers to foster Ethereum mass adoption,” said Hamid Benyahia, Dether co-founder. Frustrated at the fact that his family members in Algeria, restricted by the Algerian dinar, weren’t able to interact with the Ethereum blockchain, he searched for a solution that would make Ethereum accessible to anyone on Earth. Inspired by the numerous Franco-Algerians who were already serving as financial go-betweens between the euro and the Algerian dinar on each of their subsequent trips, he was inspired to create an easier solution that incorporated the vast potential of the Ethereum blockchain. And thus, Dether was born. Because a significant number of people around the globe remain excluded from the financial system, it’s either impossible to buy cryptocurrency, too expensive, or nearly impossible with bank transfers to online exchanges. This underlines the need for a solution for this significant part of the population. A FULLY DECENTRALIZED SOLUTION THAT BRINGS MORE SECURITY TO BUYERS AND SELLERS Unlike existing solutions, Dether has a technology roadmap that integrates different key elements of decentralization on each integrated feature, in order to propel Dether towards full decentralization. No central entity has any control over the user’s accounts, funds, or conversations. Conversations are fully decentralized and peer-to-peer. No funds are held, and users are anonymous. “From its outset, we envisioned and built Dether to be a fully decentralized solution,” said Mehdi Amari, Dether co-founder. “We strongly believe that having a trustless solution

“Our mission is to break barriers to foster Ethereum mass adoption” HAMID BENYAHIA, Dether co-founder.

“We strongly believe that having a trustless solution is the key to Dether’s success. Users must be able to exchange and trade with one another with trust, despite not knowing each other beforehand. In other words, we’ve decided to align our strategy with blockchain’s core principles, where the power of its users, and not a central entity, determines its success.” MEHDI AMARI Dether co-founder.

is the key to Dether’s success. Users must be able to exchange and trade with one another with trust, despite not knowing each other beforehand. In other words, we’ve decided to align our strategy with blockchain’s core principles, where the power of its users, and not a central entity, determines its success.” Powered by Ethereum smart contracts, the reputation system is also fully decentralized. Buyers and sellers have their own public reputation rating based on the transactions they have successfully achieved and their volume of transactions. DETHER ALPHA AND WORLD TOUR For months, this team of eight Blockchain and Ethereum enthusiasts have been working on Dether. After much anticipation, an alpha version of the application was released October 2, 2017, and the first wave of reviews has been extremely positive. You can test the alpha at alpha.dether.io. As a part of their go-to-market strategy, The Dether team has been touring the globe since September, in the hopes of meeting with potential Dether users to better understand their needs related to trading and cash usage. In a world full of uncertainty, a new economic crisis is still conceivable and cryptocurrencies will play a crucial role.

Proposing an application that relies on a decentralized infrastructure, while being dependent on a centralized body (app stores) is no longer a viable option. In some countries, institutions sometimes prohibit mobile applications, a practice that violates freedom of speech. Dether was built to be compatible with the Progressive Web App (PWA) format. The progressive web app is a new format based solely on web technologies, allowing a user experience close to native applications, while relying only on a web browser. Dether will also be developing native versions of mobile iOS and Android, up until the point that the UX on the progressive web app is as functional as on the native app, while still pushing the progressive version web app to its maximum potential. This is in order to maintain a viable option without requiring an app store. WHY DETHER MATTERS Dether is at the crossroads of cash usage and increasing smartphone adoption. Its unique solution gives anyone the opportunity to access ether, and thus, the Ethereum blockchain, by spending cash. Dether aims at unleashing the potential of Ethereum technology by providing a quick, easy and secure gateway to the decentralized future. To read Dether’s white paper, and learn about their roadmap, visit dether.io. 19

OCTOBER 2017

An Advanced & Autonomous Waste Management System BACKGROUND Everyday tonnes of waste water deposits such as industrial wastes, oil spills, sea transportation waste, agricultural waste, sewage, plastic, animal remains are dumped as untreated waste into waters. As a result, inland water by bodies such as lakes, rivers and seas (or AASTHA VERMA Chief Operating oceans) are polluted. Officer, Tardid

These untreated waters contain phosphorus compounds, nitrogen compounds, arsenic, sulphide compounds, etc. These chemical components effect the quality of the water, which leads to several endangered aquatic species, marine bio life, marine plants and their habitants and finally it is a threat to human life. At present only, 2.5 % of fresh water is available on this planet. Drinking this polluted water leads to diseases. On average, 15 million children, under the age of five are dying. According to UNICEF, on average globally, more than 3000 children are dying everyday due to consumption of contaminated drinking water. Oil spills into the oceans or coastal waters effects the marine ecosystem. The spills primarily happen due to release of crude oil from tankers, platforms, refinery, storage facilities, underwater pipelines, drilling rigs and wells, which create a significant cost to the operator, environment and people living around this spilling area. For example, the Deep20

ICO TBA

Tardid technologies is a technology company working extensively in Machine Learning and Cognitive Computing. By harnessing the power of Blockchain Distributed Ledger technology and Tardid Brainbox AIP, IOTCHAIN will provide autonomous waste management and treatment solutions.

water Horizon rig suffered an explosion on April 20, 2010 which cost BP about $56.4 billion. Similarly, in Ennore coast in Chennai on January 28, 2017 two cargo ships collided which caused oil to spill into the sea. The oil spill spread was about 34 km. The biggest challenge here is monitoring oil spill then identifying the area of oil spread, subsequently, estimating the damage to the environment. Finally, cleaning the Oil spill to minimize the effect. The challenges to effective and efficient waste management are enormous. At present waste and pollutants are monitored and managed globally through a systematic casual approach. IOTCHAIN is committed to address this situation with an advanced and autonomous solution, which is the Blockchain Drone. The Blockchain Drone can identify real-time pollutant levels quickly and easily. Further, it can be used for cleaning the water bodies to improve water quality. The proposed drone based autonomous waste management system is quite superior in nature with respect to the other solutions available, for treating bigger and remotely accessible areas. Besides that, the monitoring, identification and treatment is done by the drone. As a result, these tasks become highly safe to the personnel involved in this process. The proposed solution is robust and flexible. Therefore, it is easily adaptable for ocean and inland water bodies such

OCTOBER 2017

• Detection and Classification • Chemical Treatment • Human Machine Interface FEATURES Treatment • Physical Treatment • Chemical Treatment • Biological Treatment SMART FEATURES • Smart wireless sensors system • Chemical Leakage Analysis • Oil Spill with Coverage and Drifting Analysis • Floating Debris Clearance • Spray Type Chemical Treatment • Membrane Filtration and Oxidations • Sensor Probes • Automatic Identification of Quality & Residual Processes • Robotic Instructions • Thermo-Scientific EPA 8270D Analyzer • Use of UV Rays apart from Visible Spectrum to Kill Harmful Germs • Sampling and Monitoring • Mapped on Blockchains DLT (everything available in-memory)

as rivers and lakes. Furthermore, the same solution can be easily extended for monitoring of harmful industrial emissions as per regulatory norms.

ligence iBubble with a Haptic Feedback System. It comes with the unique quality, of not only taking the decisions based on the inputs gathered from the Quadaviator, in parallel, it instructs associated slave drones to launch and perform tasks based on intelliThe Blockchain Drone can gent decision support from Tardid Brainbox identify real-time pollutant Cognitive Platform.

IOTCHAIN IOTCHAIN is a Tardid Joint Initiative. Tardid Technologies has entered into a technology joint levels quickly and easily venture to create advanced and autonoQuadaviator is the mous solutions. Tarbrain behind Blockdid technologies is a chain drones. The technology company Quadaviator is an onworking extensively in Machine Learning and board scientific analyser fitted with a capilCognitive Computing. By harnessing the pow- lary tube and sensors. Quadaviator is mounted er of Blockchain Distributed Ledger technolon Blockchain Drones for real-time scientific ogy and Tardid Brainbox AIP, IOTCHAIN will analysis and relays the analysed output to Tarprovide autonomous waste management and did’s Brainbox Cognitive Computing Platform treatment solutions. for deep analysis and in-time decisioning. BLOCKCHAIN DRONE In today’s world Drones have found various applications, but it is still a task to control them and get them to work on autonomous mode. Tardid Technologies plans to integrate Blockchain technology and build a Blockchain Drone, a Corrosion Resistant Amphibious Drone, with the capabilities to operate both in Air and Water, Powered by “Quadaviator”, An Augmented Intel-

DRONE TYPES • Analytical Mother Drones • Slave Drones with Payload and Capillary Tube • Amphibious and Anti Corrosion • Multi-Thrusters with Haptic Feedback System Blockchain Drone is Used for • Waste Recognition • Pollutant Identification

BENEFITS • Even in extreme hazardous environments it can be used without a human interface • There is no human interaction with the waste water • Highly Effective for Remote Sites Where Human Access is Limited • Easily Adaptable for Mining, Oil and Gas Exploration and Pollution Control in Nautical Zones INDUSTRY BENEFIT Oil and Gas Operators – By deploying a Blockchain Drone the segment can be extensively benefited by tracking oil pilferage and drifts and take precautionary actions immediately. Insurance sector– Against pollution damages. Insurance companies can mandate the industries that have a higher rate and risk of pollution during everyday operations. By mandating the Blockchain Drone technology the insurance sector can benefit in the following ways: • Quick clean-up from creeping pollutions • Right-time hazard information can reduce injury to people and property • Saves cost of investigating and defending the company against claims Government and Statutory Bodies– Monitoring and cleaning of rivers and lakes using the Blockchain Drone autonomous technology effectively and efficiently. • Treat hazardous water pollution in humanly inaccessible places • Track industrial harmful emissions in real-time and provide control measures through credit point to chemical, thermal or other polluting industries More details to follow in the next issue. 21

OCTOBER 2017

BIDHash: The World’s Best Blockchain Hosting Service and the Creator of CellCoin CHART #2 How BIDhash will help blockchains sell their products/ services

CHART #1 BIDhash decentralisation model

BIDHash is revolutionizing the Blockchain hosting service industry, with its one-of-akind technology that aims at decentralizing the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem.

ty and positioning by cellphones and encourage broader decentralization of blockchain services. 2 Decentralized Services: BIDHash’s decentralization agenda is better revealed in the second chart. 2 Individual and Merchant ConBIDHash is offering the followThis indicates that cryptocurrency minnections: BIDhash will collaboing services that the cryptocurrenrate with both individuals and mercy community needs, to progress and ers can access other blockchains and cryptocurrencies through BIDHash. chants, so as to expand the adoption expand: 2 BIDHash Smart Contracts: of its cryptocurrency CellCoin. BIDHash will uphold its integrity 2 Providing Hashpower for Other 2 Mining Farm Construction: Minby facilitating only verifiable smart Private Blockchains as a Service: ing equipment manufactured by the by contracts within and outIn a bid to create a purely deworld-renown company, Bitfury will ICO CROWD side its platform so as to centralized cryptocurrenbe used in constructing, at first, 16 ICO TBA guarantee that its system cy world, BIDHash will also nanometer ASIC chips. At the same is safe and secured. be offering Blockchains as time, 7 nanometer ASIC chips de2 BIDHash Management: a Service (BaaS) to private signed by GMO Group, Japan and BIDHash team is composed of exblockchains that desire a safe, scalaSamsung will be utilized for the perts and people who are very pasble, and affordable BaaS. mining farm. sionate about facilitating and put2 Tokens, Hashpower, Hashting the concept of blockchain tech- The dedication of the team at BIDHash peers: Investors will receive tonology into a good use, for the bene- and the new technologies adopted by kens that grant them future hashfits of people and their various com- the company are two unique features power to host their services on munities. that position BIDHash as the world’s BIDHash. Tokens are considered 2 BIDHash Cryptocurrency: The leading Blockchain hosting service proto be “utility”, and not an equity first ever cellphone’ digital signavider. There are ample opportunities for or a security. ture and positioning CryptocurrenBIDHash to expand its scope of opera2 Security and Flexibility of Servcy. BIDHash creates its own crypto- tions as more clients are signed up after ers: BIDhash has already secured currency to facilitate digital identithe up-coming ICO. a hosting facility in Canada, which

is flexible, secured and reasonable, cost-wise. 2 Decentralization of other Cryptocurrencies Here is the possible mind map for BIDhash’s efforts at decentralizing other cryptocurrencies (chart #1).

Pre-Sale & ICO

OCTOBER 2017

WePower Blockchain saving the world Green revolution There are some that still say climate change is not happening but we see signs everywhere with a naked eye. We have all the data that shows what is happening and we know what can be done.

by NICK MARTYNIUK CEO

However, for many years the tools were dirty sources of energy, if you want to not there for us the community to be know how it feels just go to a city fightable to take care of the problem. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ob- ing with smog. We do this ourselves vious we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t live without energy, it and we even pay for it. We do it as we became the driver of our world and eco- do not have a choice. WePower was nomics around the world. When Sastarted on the idea of bringing transtoshi created bitcoin I parency, accountabilwonder if he thought ity and choice to the only what would be energy market. ICO TBA the impact to money markets? Never the Choice starts with less Blockchain has choosing to support impacted many fields in life and will new renewable energy project making a continue to do so no matter what the change in the way energy is produced. regulation will be or how Blockchain With the help of smart contracts, we startups will develop. For now, it is a are bringing safety of investments and very early stage of the Blockchain. guarantees to both parties that interact directly without ever seeing each other. Getting back to the climate, energy has Technology allows getting more from been centralized and produced from the market that the existing one pro-

OCTOBER 2017

vides. Without Blockchain, the unified green energy market is very inefficient and slow with interactions through central points of authority instead of direct interaction.

tion, many countries have over invested in the infrastructure and still do that today. We want to bring transparency to the cost of what you are paying for.

Accountability - sounds strict, however we can show our input this way, we can show how we contribute to climate mitigation. We can start with ourselves and do a good job in that, but how can we check on the companies that products we are buying? There is no mechanism in place today? Do we just believe that a company like Google uses 100% renewable energy as they say they will in 2020? What is the progress now? Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why we have offered to do it for free and we have got the support of the Ministry of Energy of Lithuania to implement the accounting of green energy production and CO2 mitigation systems.

WePower is a blockchain-based green energy trading platform, which is currently developing a platform that will be connected with renewable energy plants and the energy infrastructure. Based on WePower business model, the platform will monitor renewable energy production using blockchain technology and issuance of energy tokens. Energy tokens will represent each and every kWh of energy produced. Since energy tokens will be accounted on the Ethereum blockchain, the public ledger ensures that data about the produced energy will be accurate and cannot be altered. With such technology, the emission accountability can be put at the very top of priorities.

Transparency comes in many different forms, first is the transparency where you exactly know where green energy goâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and there is no double counting as it has happened in some countries previously. Second is the transparency of the CO2 saved, today we know how much investment is done in the renewable sector, but how much does it help us, is it sufficient? The investment has declined in 2016 and 2017 due to change in the way banks see renewable energy projects once more of them started producing energy at the market price and governments stopped supporting them. Last, but very important is the transparency issue and the fact that the grid itself has been designed and operated under a paradigm of centraliza-

WePower was started on the idea of bringing transparency, accountability and choice to the energy market. WePower has already agreed to share its technology with the Government of the Republic of Lithuania and together implement a blockchain-based emission accounting system country wide.

WePower has already agreed to share its technology with the Government of the Republic of Lithuania and together implement a blockchain-based emission accounting system country wide. WePower will share part of its technology without any remuneration not only with Lithuania but with all countries that have joined the Paris Climate Agreement. The code will be open source and WePower will advise interested countries on its implementation in practice. This promise was provided to the United Nations with the call for action. Join WePower to make energy revolution a reality for a better world. 25

OCTOBER 2017

HAZZA

Off the Starting Block to Democratize Payment WHAT IS HAZZA NETWORK? HAZZA is a payment network that aims to solve big problems in today’s payments ecosystem. The founders of HAZZA believe that today’s payments market is highly by fragmented and complex. There are DONOVAN OBOSI ICO analyst too many intermediaries who take high fees along the way. This creates unnecessary friction for consumers and merchants. HAZZA claims that the total non-cash payments transaction value is projected to be worth $70 trillion (!) by 2025. With that in mind, HAZZA believes the market is ripe for disruption. HAZZA aims to create a payment network, scheduled for release in Q3 2018 that leverages blockchain technology to accept a wide range of payment methods, currencies and more. That platform aims to provide lower fees and a better overall experience for consumers and merchants around the world, while giving payment method providers an open marketplace where they can compete. HOW DOES HAZZA WORK? HAZZA is taking an existing, proven enterprise payment platform and aims to migrate it onto the blockchain. They are aiming to migrate the platform in three stages.

not-for-profit foundation with a decentralized structure: the OCTO3 Foundation.

Token Sale October 3rd – Oct 31st

HAZZA’s goal is to create a globally accessible payment platform where merchants who participate in the HAZZA network can offer the payment methods both online and offline that their customers want to use and not forced to use.

The first stage will be the release of open APIs, the second will be the development of smart contracts and the third will be the migration of the core transaction platform onto the blockchain.

The open API model will reduce costs and increase integration. Payment channels will integrate themselves into the HAZZA network using the public API, removing the bottleneck typically associated with adding payment methods to a network.

The end result aims to be the creation of an open access, global, unified payments network governed by the community for the community through a

Meanwhile, smart contracts will be used to facilitate aspects like know your customer (KYC), commercial terms, participant registry and pub-

lishing of services. Merchants and payment participants will be able to use smart contracts to save time and minimize acquisition costs.

Finally, the core processing platform will be adaptable for the future. The website mentions Raiden and the Lightning Network as two off-chain state channel technologies they will be looking at in the future. WHAT ARE THE INTENDED BENEFITS OF HAZZA? For consumers: Consumers will use a larger range of payment methods online and offline, anywhere in the world. They will use multiple payment methods at any merchant participating in the HAZZA network. Consumers will find it easier to use and spend their money wherever they are, with whatever payment method they prefer.

OCTOBER 2017

For merchants: Merchants who want to accept noncash payments will no longer have to engage in a slow and expensive process of seeking out intermediaries who charge high fees on every transaction while only providing access to a limited range of payment methods. Merchants will gain fast, simple access to all payment methods on the HAZZA network while reducing costs and realizing increased revenues from broader payment method access. For payment method providers: Payment method providers will no longer have to compete in a closed, fragmented market dominated by a few major payment method providers. HAZZA will allow payment method providers to instantly compete internationally based on the merits of their product, their quality and their costs.

Real-Time Omni-Channel: HAZZA can cater to all corners of the market with an omni-channel approach to its payment platform. That includes physical point of sale (PoS) machines, mPoS, MOTO, e-commerce platforms, coupons and loyalty programs on a single integrated platform. All major card brands can be supported through the platform and can offer comprehensive coverage of global alternative payment methods (APMs), processing 130+ currencies through the platform. Secure: The platform offers a webbased, secure portal for transactions management. The portal can provide a comprehensive audit trail and access control, encrypted payment card data and PCI DSS level 1 compliance.

For payment networks, issuers and acquirers: Existing payment networks and issuers will not be ignored by HAZZA. The HAZZA network will allow existing companies and card schemes to use the network to lower operating costs and expand their footprint – particularly in developing countries where they may have limited outreach.

There are too many intermediaries who take high fees along the way. This creates unnecessary friction for consumers and merWHAT ARE THE chants. HAZZA FEATURES OF HAZZA? claims that the toThe HAZZA network will be tal non-cash paybuilt on Octo3 Ltd’s prove, existing, payment infrastruc- ments transaction value is proture platform: jected to be worth $70 trillion (!) by Proven: Utilizing a proprietary, cloud-based tech2025. nology with intelligent routing and switching for cost optimization, real-time consolidated reporting and dashboards, and unlimited scalability, among other proven benefits. As mentioned above, the payment network is already in place – it is just not yet migrated to a blockchain.

Payment method providers will no longer have to compete in a closed, fragmented market dominated by a few major payment method providers.

Certified: The existing Octo3 platform is a certified processor for VISA, MasterCard, Discover Card, Diners Club, and American Express. The network is also BASE I and BASE II capable and has a fully functional ISO 8583 Payment Switch that is fully compliant with local and global instances.

WHO IS BEHIND HAZZA AND WHAT IS THE ROADMAP? HAZZA is led by founders and payments industry veterans Ajmal Samuel, Tyrone Lynch and Hans Wong and is backed by a team of professional organizations and industry leaders in their respective fields, including legal, blockchain, payments, marketing, finance and tax. The project launched in July 2017. The not-for-profit organization leading the development of HAZZA is called OCTO3 Foundation Limited. The HAZZA payments network aims to go Live by Q3 2018. THE HAZZA TOKEN SALE HAZZA tokens (HAZ) will be used to access and pay for services as well as for governance of the global payments network. There will be a fixed supply of tokens in circulation. HAZ is an ERC20-compliant token built on the Ethereum blockchain. The HAZZA token sale opens October 3 with tokens to be activated on November 8.

WHERE CAN I FIND MORE INFORMATION? HAZZA is providing a detailed White Paper and presentation. 27

OCTOBER 2017

Gimli The Decentralized eSports Platform

The eSports industry is thriving with 500 million video game enthusiasts watching professional tournaments and amateur competitive broadcasts live on video game streaming platforms. Twitch is the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading video platform and community for gamers with 15 million daily active users.

According to Newzoo, a market rements. However, there is a sense of dissearch firm specializing in digital gam- trust in existing gambling websites ing, there are 148 million "esports enwhich are opaque and private. eSports thusiasts" around the globe. Newzoo fans are left with no viable solutions. estimates that 22% of American male millennials watch esports. This puts the Streamers also struggle to find new viewership virtually equal with baseball ways to interact with and retain their by and hockey among that demographaudience of tens or even hundreds of AUGUSTA ic. In 2016, esports events comfortably thousands of viewers. Their current NYATEDZU sold out KeyArena, Nationwide Arena monetization depends on viewer rein Columbus, Staples tention, through ads, Centre in Los Angeles subscriptions, and doand Madison Square nations. ICO IS LIVE Garden in New York. Gimli is the decentralThis year, the industry ized eSports platform will reach an estimated $696 million in where viewers can use digital tokens to revenue, and that number is projected bet in real time on live games, vote on to surpass $1.5 billion by 2020, accord- the streamers' next actions, fund touring to Newzoo projections. This could nament prize pools, make donations be the year esports secures its place in and much more. the mainstream sports world. This is possible and revolutionary for Just like sports fans bet among friends the eSports industry because Gimli is on their favourite teams, eSports view- entirely built on the Ethereum blockers are striving for ways to bet in real chain a reliable, proven technology that time on stream video game tournais verifiably fair and transparent. End-

OCTOBER 2017

to-end, the betting process, the votes and the donations are all transparent and secure. The Gimli platform will be powered by GIM tokens. Gimli Tokens are listed on the Ethereum blockchain, which means that they can be won, gifted and really owned. They cannot be created, however. Esports streamers will be able to provide bets on their streams, and will decide what percentage fee to retain on every bet made by their fans. Initially, 100% of the fee will be kept by the streamers to entice people to join the service as it launches. Eventually, Gimli is anticipated to take a commission. With the support of pro-gamers, high-profile streamers and eSports insiders as advisors and advocates, Gimli is on track to create a valuable decentralized application. Gimli is currently having a crowdsale of its GIM tokens. Buyers during the initial sale will acquire GIM in exchange for Ether (ETH) and the sale will be administered by an Ethereum Smart Contract. The number of GIM sold during the sale is capped at 80 million, and its minimum financing of 5,500ETH has been reached (1.6Million$). Should the Gimli crowdsale end without selling the full 80 million tokens, then those tokens left over will be burned, along with the corresponding proportion of team and advisor tokens. Gimli is following in the footsteps of another U.S. esports platform Unikrn, which announced its own crowdsale to begin in September as well. Unikrn, is seeking to raise $100 million through the crowdsale, and its CEO Rahul Sood said he is capping the raise at the amount, because "if we don't, it's going to go crazy."

Just like sports fans bet among friends on their favourite teams, eSports viewers are striving for ways to bet in real time on stream video game tournaments.

"As opposed to Unikrn, Gimli is a decentralized platform," explains Gimli co-founder Julien Charrel. "Bets happen on the blockchain, which guarantees that no one can hack the funds in escrow. In addition, Gimli is not a classic bookmaking platform. Gimli also provides its betting services to the streamer as opposed to a centralized bookmaking website. The streamer benefits from a cut of the bet, and thus has a vested interest in Gimli. By aligning Gimli's interests with the streamer's interest, this creates an extremely powerful customer acquisition model. This is also a really healthy way for the streamer to increase engagement and retention which is one of the key pain points in the community today." Part of the strength of Gimli may be in its executives, who have deep roots in the esports streaming community and access to a wide potential user base. Charrel has a double Masters in Finance and Computer Science from Columbia University and has worked closely on esports live streaming at Dailymotion. Another co-founder, David Waugh, graduated with a Masters in Mathematics from the National University of Singapore and formerly worked as an equity derivatives quant in a major New York investment bank. He is a big believer in the simplicity of blockchain technologies and he joined the Gimli Project to build exciting, decentralized open solutions to solve real-world problems. Gimli is incorporated in Malta due to the European country's very generous regulations regarding betting and gambling. No U.S. purchasers of Gimli tokens are allowed during the initial sale. 29

OCTOBER 2017

The World’s First Zero-Fee, High-Frequency Cryptocurrency Exchange

The ICO signals the beginning of the world’s first zero-fee, high-frequency cryptocurrency exchange to be debuted in November 2017 with ICO underwriting service anticipated in 2018. During the ICO, participants can receive bonuses of up to 40% based on the date of joining, as well as 50% off margin trading loan interest. A total of 1 billion COB tokens will be issued, while up to 500 million COB tokens will be available through Ethereum currency starting September 13th, 2017 and will continue until October 22nd, 2017 (40 days). Tokens will then become immediately tradable upon the launch of COBINHOOD’s exchange. Prior the ICO, COBINHOOD has already secured a 5 million USD in seed funding; including involvement from Banyan Capital, Infinity Venture Partners, and other investors. The company also announced the successful completion of its ICO pre-sale, raising another 5 million USD. COBINHOOD positions itself as the next-generation cryptocurrency ser30

vice platform by providing high-quality service, 100% guarantee for cryptocurrency deposits and multi-lingual customer support. COBINHOOD’s exchange will debut in November 2017, with the capability to process more than one million orders per second, achieving real-time trading.

“With nothing available on the market to keep up with the growing popularity of cryptocurrency trading, we created COBINHOOD to meet the industry’s future demands,” said Chen, COBINHOOD CEO. “The top 30 cryptocurrency exchanges charge, on average, 0.2% trading fees for makers and takers, which signifiThe company also boasts zero-fees mar- cantly impact profit margins. Comgin trading with up to 10x leverage— bine this with security and latency which is good news for traders. And issues, COBINHOOD saw an opporwithout relying on trading fees, the ex- tunity to become the financial center change’s revenue will come from its for the blockchain era. We look formargin trading loans interest and ICO ward to supporting crypto traders, underwriting service fees. while also becoming a leading force in taking today’s economies into the Regarding their tech, COBINHOOD future,” added Chen. stated that their system is fully-distributed, highly-available, and auto-scalaIn 2018, COBINHOOD plans to take ble. The company stores 98% of crypto- the platform further by launching an currency deposits in an offline multisig ICO underwriting service. COBINvault, which requires 5 out of 8 geo-dis- HOOD will underwrite high-quality, tributed hardware security modules to promising ICOs that have passed strinopen. Moreover, all assets stored in on- gent due diligence, smart contract code line wallets will be backed by insurance. review, and legal compliance. Founded by Popo Chen, the original founder of 17 Media, Chen intends to shape future economies by creating a financial center for the blockchain era— COBINHOOD.

COBINHOOD believes the evolution of blockchain technology and a decentralized financial landscape will transform capital markets and business organizations with long-lasting impact.

OCTOBER 2017

Interview with Brian Kelly, Veridium Advisor and an expert in global financial markets, macro-economics and digital currencies Q. What do you think will be the biggest driver in the proliferation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? A: Regulatory clarity. Right now, the patchwork of regulations makes it difficult for companies to operate on a global playing field. Once the rules of the road by are established then the entire space will AUGUSTA NYATEDZU grow exponentially.

A: There are already other solutions to the power draw problem, most notably Proof of Stake.

have a battle persuading people about the technology? What have you found as the biggest obstacle when trying to win non-crypto people over? A: Yes, I still have to convince people! But thats a good thing and the reason I do not believe we are in a bubble. In 1999, you didn’t have to convince anyone to buy internet stocks, when the time comes that EVERYONE owns some bitcoin then I will get worried.

Q. Cryptocurrencies have been built on Open Source technologies. How do you see the crypto landscape changing as companies begin to patent blockchain related technologies? Q. Do you think the less 'mature' A: My view is that patenta country's banking infrastrucing blockchains will not work. ture is the more likely the governPatents in general are notoment are to adopt cryptocurrencies? riously difficult to enforce, a E.g. helping the unbanked skip the minor tweak can be used to Q: What are your most banks. circumvent the patent. Adpromising Blockchain proA: It appears to be similar to mobile ditionally, the ethos of the jects and cryptocurrencies phone adoption. Countries that did not cryptocurrency community is that you think will thrive have land-line infrastructure skipped di- unlikely to create demand for over the next couple of rect to mobile. In cryptocurrencies, it is non-open source projects. years? already happening - in countries with litA: Veridium of course!!! But tle or no banking infrastructure, bitcoin Q. Do you think we are in I also really like Cosmos as it I look for three is very popular and useful. a bubble or just natural solves the scaling problem of things when I adoption/growth relative blockchains - I think Cosmos invest and adQ. What do you see as the current to the era and technology will be one of the core protobiggest threat to the cryptocurren- where dissemination of in- vise on projects: cols that will drive the ecosyscy ecosystem? formation and now stores 1) A Good Team tem forward, similar to how A: Bad actors. Given the amount of of value travels around the Ethereum helped the ecosys2.) Solving a re- tem grow. money that is involved this space is world instantly? al-world problem bound to attract bad actors. Scams, ripA: Bubble has such a negaoffs and outright fraud can taint the en- tive connotation, but bubQ: What attracted you to 3.) with a clear tire ecosystem. bles are simply one way to de- use case. VeridVeridium Labs? scribe the ebb and flow of A: I look for three things ium checked all Q. Many current ICOs exclude US adoption. Every market that when I invest and advise on IP addresses. How do you think the has increasing adoption rates the boxes for me. projects: 1) A Good Team 2.) SEC will approach ICOs operating is a “bubble” but bubbles can Solving a real-world proboutside of the US that did not follow expand as well as pop. If you choose to lem 3.) with a clear use case. Veridithis rule? define this market as a bubble then the um checked all the boxes for me. Todd A: Eventually the SEC will need to work better question is this a bubble that’s and his team have the operational expewith other global regulators. Cryptoabout to expand? My answer…yep. rience in the space while the technical currencies do not conform to geographteam is comprised of the best developers ic boundaries therefore the regulations Q. Which company from one of the in the world. Finally, I see the ability to should adapt. major world Indices do you think create EcoSmart commodities as game will be the next to announce full changing for financial markets. Q. Bitcoin is generated via SHA 256 cryptocurrency payment integramining which is now consuming vast tion? Brian Kelly is the Founder and Managing amounts of electricity and other al- A: I think forward looking companies Member of, Brian Kelly Capital LLC. He is gorithms like X11 are exponentiallike Square and Amazon will be the next an investor, author, and financial markets commentator. Brian Kelly has over twenty ly increasing in power draw. Does to adopt. PayPal already has with its years’ experience in financial markets and Veridium see the rapidly increasing Braintree division. is the author of the book “The Bitcoin Big power consumption of cryptocurBang - How Alternative Currencies are rencies themselves as a threat to the Q. So, you managed to persuade PeAbout to Change the World.” business model? ter Schiff to buy bitcoin! Do you still 33

OCTOBER 2017

The Ultimate Smart All-in-One credit, debit, rewards, and cryptocurrencies e-Card VISION: Make spending all forms of currency (fiat, rewards, cryptocurrency), user and merchant friendly You open your wallet and there they are: BTC, ETH, DASH, NEO, SALT etc. So by nice to own, but so difficult to spend. LU SONG

CMO, FuzeX

The real-world usability problems associated with cryptocurrencies have encouraged a number of companies to tackle this challenge. This particular challenge is a worthy cause as real-world usability is a major hurdle in establishing cryptocurrency’s legitima- • Imbed 30 credit, debit, rewards, and the eye-catching futuristic look of the cy as a reliable and widely adoptable cryptocurrency accounts card, merchants would not know the difform of payment. • EMV, NFC, Magnet Stripe, QR Code, ference. and Bar Code for payment options Many of the contenders in this space • E-paper display to view balances We accomplish this by accepting the cryphave approached it with prepaid card • Built in buttons on the FuzeX card tocurrencies FuzeX card users select to solutions. While a logical approach, for authorization, security, confirma- use in our FuzeX Exchange, then release use cases can be limited to just a coution, and payment the respective fiat curple cryptocurrencies and acceptance by selection rency to the merchant ICO Start: a limited number of merchants, thus, based on the market November hampering adoption. Once users have conexchange rate. nected their variFuzeX is looking beyond. It seeks to de- ous accounts to the FuzeX Ecosystem We adopt our FuzeX card to issuer liver an innovative through the FuzeX Wallet app, users will standards and pay merchants in fiat curuser experience as be able to use their FuzeX card without rency. In doing so, we eliminate unreawell as solve the having to pull out their smartphones. sonable overhead and resources required cryptocurrency acfor individual cryptocurrencies to estabceptance problem FuzeX Wallet: lish contracts with individual vendors by introducing the This is the hub for the FuzeX card and for cryptocurrency payment acceptance, FuzeX Ecosystem. accounts management, this app allows thus, bridging the gap between cryptousers to store, spend, receive, and trans- currency payments and fiat payments. FUZEX’S fer tokens with the real-time exchange ECOSYSTEM: rate clearly displayed. FuzeX Blockchain: FuzeX Card: The FuzeX Blockchain enables real time Drawing from exFuzeX Exexchange and functions as our backend perience and exchange: support for our FuzeX Ecosystem. pertise in having The FuzeX Exalready successchange is the Armed with the technical know-how of fully developed, core mechaengineers, blockchain specialists, probrought to marnism bringgrammers along with experienced market, and sold and ing world-wide keting and business developers, the shipped (magnetic stripe and barcode cryptocurrency to reality. Our goal is FuzeX’s team is dedicated to bringing fuenabled) 30,000 Fuze Cards, the smart such that users spend cryptocurrency on ture technology and solutions today. e-card that enables users to imbed up their FuzeX card, as they would on a regto 30 credit, debit, or rewards cards in ular card, and merchants receive fiat cur- To learn more about FuzeX, our team, one, the FuzeX Card will in addition rency (USD, Euro, Yen, any local curren- and our upcoming Token Sale in Novemoffer multiple cryptocurrencies. cy) as they currently do. In fact, besides ber visit www.FuzeX.co 34

OCTOBER 2017

CommerceBlock & BIP175: Bringing Bitcoin to The Banking World CommerceBlock looks to be one of the more innovative token sales this year. It’s combination of a team with wide industry experience (founders from JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch and Zoc Doc), implementing technology widely supported in the crypto community has by culminated in BIP175. While Bitcoin MATT ARMSTRONG has become a worldwide decentralised currency, when it comes to trade or barter we are still dependent on entities such as eBay or Amazon and the central banks. Because of privacy concerns, banks cannot connect private data with a public blockchain; banks are in competition with one another and privacy must be their priority. This problem can be solved through technology developed by CommerceBlock. As API vendors, they are totally transparent and accountable without insisting on any controlling influence. “Our tech is there to bridge the old world with the new” says Nicholas Gregory,

CEO. Having worked in commodities trading and in the OTC space, with support from the Bitcoin community, the CommerceBlock team have developed a contract to hash implementation. The intention is for this to be an open standard application available to other users. The CommerceBlock team have created an open standard BIP which can safely connect private data with a public blockchain. Rather like the intranets of the early 2000s the private blockchains created by banks are unnecessary. Decentralised finance has arrived! “We strongly believe that technological proposals should be peer reviewed” says Omar Shibli, CTO. BIP175 is now

in draft form. The CommerceBlock team and community still have some ground to cover in order for BIP to become an industry standard.

“Our tech is there to bridge the old world with the new”

We are in a new era for ICOs and hopefully more of these types of projects will submit themselves for peer review before attempting fundraisNICHOLAS GREGORY ing. Transparency and peer CEO review are essential for investors to know where they are placing their funds. CommerceBlock can be one of the biggest success stories of the year. They bridge the gap between public blockchains such as Bitcoin/Ethereum and existing financial systems and has the potential to bring cryptocurrency to the mainstream. 35

OCTOBER 2017

Advanced Browsing Token (ABT) ABT Protocol & Addap’s Browser

Our company have developed during the last three years a disruptive browsing technology named Addap’s Browser (patent pending) and a decentralized protocol derived from this technology and its Token named Advanced Browsing Token (ABT). While mainstream browsing actors still focus on Page Rendering based on the Netscape 1990’s concept, we propose a revolutionary competitive solution based on our dynamic multi-browsing technology. by ADI SOSSOVER CEO & Co-Founder

BROWSER Addap’s multi-browsing allows disposing, displaying and managing multiple web-content and web-apps sessions on an infinite scrollable board, all instantly and simultaneously active and visible. Each of these web elements operates as an independent browsing zone. The aggregated web elements form a dynamic personalised online environment that users may save and share.

any browsers, websites and apps in the following fields: - Digital Secured Identity and Login to websites and apps without having to share a social network identity - Creates, Manages and saves Multi web content Boards and Bookmarks with a specific design and meta-data

is a unique ABT capability compared to the ERC223 specification. COMPANY AND TEAM ABT Technologies Limited is founded in Gibraltar. Subject to audit and local regulations, we work with known international and local law firms to ensure acting and operating in respect of business compliances.

The founders, Adi SossoThis technology provides unique benver and Daniel Febreefits such as easy multi-screening and - Domain Name System proro Martin, have multi-tasking displays, smart mulposes a worked together ti-tabs capabilities, instant navigation unique string for over five years. between environments and the abilidirectly resolvComplementary, Adi ICO ty to share environments through soing to a Board or a brings international excial networks. November 2017 Bookmark in a deecutive management centralized way. and software business PROTOCOL development knowhow, while Daniel The ABT Protocol, conceived around - Automatic payment Subscription to has profound software development this technology, is designed to be ina particular service provider allowskills and a wide experience in successtuitive and easy to implement (plug & ing collecting on a regular basis. This ful software projects delivery. play) in a mass-market approach, by 36

OCTOBER 2017

ETH ALLOCATION GUIDELINES

DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP

The company employs eight software engineers and four marketing managers. All software engineers graduated from the Polytechnic University (UPC) Barcelona (one of the best computer science schools in Europe). The team covers competences in Blockchain technology (particularly Solidity) to develop scalable and gas efficient smart-contracts, Javascript and many other languages. ADVISORS Virginie Lazes, Managing Partner at Rothschild Global Advisory, Company Advisory Board Member Yacine TeraĂŻ, CEO StartupToken, Eddy Travia, CEO Coinsilium Group, Blockchain development strategy and ICO INITIAL COIN OFFERING The company expect to launch its ABT ICO with pre-sale early October 2017 and sale by mid November 2017. Our goal is to sell ABT Tokens for US$ 25 Million equivalent in ETH during the entire ICO period. For more information, please contact us contact@advancedbrowsingtoken.io or consult our websites: www.advancedbrowsingtoken.io, www.addaps.com 37

OCTOBER 2017

Valentin Preobrazhenskiy on

A Better World Where the Crypto and Real Economies are Bridged A couple of years ago, universal recognition of blockchain technology opened up amazing opportunities for entrepreneurs around the globe to revolutionize almost every economic sector, from finance and real estate to healthcare and transport. 38

by VALENTIN PREOBRAZHENSKIY CEO

LAToken contributes to the ongoing revolution by adding blockchain to antiquated processes still used for selling assets and investing money. We made hard assets tradable in crypto to bridge crypto and real economies, enable small investors to get access to previously closed markets, like real estate and artworks, and significantly improve user experience of trading. ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT For more than 7 years, I’ve been working for global investment companies and hedge funds. I couldn’t help but notice how old-fashioned the traditional capital markets are. They simply

can’t effectively reallocate money in the economy from the players who are in a situation of overliquidity to those who can use them to create additional value, because of three main reasons. First of all, transaction costs – commissions can be as high as 25-30% - result in tens of thousands of dollar losses every time anything big is bought or sold. Secondly, intransperancy of markets creates asymmetry of information, when investors do not get the full data about the asset that the owners have. It leads to erosion of markets: low-quality assets become more profitable to sell than high-quality assets.

OCTOBER 2017

Finally, many markets are closed to retail buyers - for example, the entrance level for real estate and artworks stands at thousands of dollars. Even if you see an amazing investment opportunity, you wouldn’t be able to invest without a considerable amount of starting capital. All this slows the economic growth, reduces the productivity of companies and entire regions, and deprives many quality ideas of the opportunity to be implemented. The money just doesn’t get to the right place at the right time. The system shouldn’t be like this in the 21st century. There’s huge room for improvement. And we know how to fill it. THE BLOCKCHAIN REVOLUTION To build something big and attractive, you have to have a vision of the way things could be done better. That’s something that the brilliant and still unidentified creator of bitcoin – Satoshi Nakamoto definitely possessed, when he posted a White Paper describing the groundbreaking technology behind the new cryptocurrency. In simple words, it was a shared, trusted, public ledger that everyone could inspect, but no single user could control. It soon became clear that blockchain could transform the whole economy working as a «trust machine», removing middlemen from any transactions, bringing disruptive cost reduction and unprecedented transparency to the traditional processes.

tium, proved that the technology can help facilitate easier interaction in banks’ back-end infrastructures when processing trades. Barclays, already carried out the world’s first trade transaction using the blockchain technology, they cut a process that takes 7–10 days to less than 4 hours.

To build something big and attractive, you have to have I could go on forever with these blockchain success stories. Looka vision of the ing back, we can say that, in many way things could ways, the triumph of the technology was predetermined. If we are be- be done better. That’s something ing honest, we have to admit that the current systems are too clumsy, that the brilliant Bitcoin provided the first example of how the too expensive, and too slow, as well and still unidenoutdated payment process could be revolutionized by replacing banks and other financial as overregulated and opaque. Blocktified creator of chain can change everything. Once institutions with a mathematical algorithm. bitcoin – Satoshi the LAToken team came to that The idea was so attractive, that the capitaliNakamoto deficonclusion and realized that the zation of bitcoin leaped to $70 billion in just whole economy is on the edge of a 9 years, overtaking such giants as FedEx and nitely possessed, PayPal. The rapid take off didn’t go unnoticed, technological revolution, we quickly when he postpicked our slice of the growing crypand after a few years the technology behind ed a White Paper bitcoin finally got the appreciation it deserved, to-economy pie. describing the with everyone from governments and regulaGAME CHANGING PLATFORM tors to global corporations and startups lookgroundbreaking for ways to use blockchain with their prod- Just like Satoshi ten years ago, we ing technology have a vision of the world, where ucts and services. behind the new the new transparent, fast, decencryptocurrency. tralized crypto economy is finalTHE BETTER CRYPTO WORLD Last year, in a vote of confidence for blockchain technology, the Republic of Georgia, in cooperation with blockchain industry pioneer the BitFury Group, decided to implement the technology for validating property-related government transactions. Since the launch of the project in February 2017, more than 100,000 documents have been registered the new way.

ly bridged with the traditional markets.

recent blockchain trial, ING, along with Calypso Technology and R3 blockchain consor-

ing interest. This is the world we are building.

. Barclays, already carried LAToken has already built the first out the world’s multi-asset tokenization platform, where hard assets, ranging from Ap- first trade ple or Tesla shares to gold and real transaction usestate ETFs are already traded for ing the blockcryptocurrency. New asset classchain technoles will be added soon to enable you ogy, they cut to buy a fraction of Mona Liza or a Global corporations have joined the race as a process that well. In November 2015, the world's biggest French castle for just $100 and sell financial institutions formed the R3 consor- it with profit in a few years. Or get takes 7–10 days tium to research and develop blockchain da- cash by selling your house by fracto less than 4 tions to thousands of investors tabase use in the financial industry. They without borrowing money and pay- hours. have already received positive results; in a

The differences between LAT platform and traditional markets are striking. For example, if you were to invest in real estate right now, you’d have to get a large amount of money for the lump-sum mortgage, go through tedious paper work and lawyers, and you’ll also have to bear a massive burden should the real estate market fail. With LAToken, you can buy tokens – the analog of “shares” of the physical assets instead of paying a huge money upfront which is a massive gamble. This means you can potentially buy a fraction of an asset instead of buying the whole thing. The same goes for almost any assets. We make the markets liquid, transparent and safe, and bring transaction costs to a minimum (0,001-0,1%). This way we give the cryptoholders an opportunity to diversify their portfolio without converting to fiat. Owners of illiquid assets, such as real estate or works of art, can tokenize them and sell by fractions with a liquidity premium estimated at 10-40%. Fiat traders can prefer LAToken to NASDAQ due to lower transaction costs and 24/7 availability. Thanks to the advantages of LAT Platform and the easy process of creating new tokens backed by real assets, assets worth $1.2 trillion can be tokenized and traded on the LAT Platform by 2025, while the total crypto market capitalization can reach $5tn, according to LAT Crypto Research, conducted by four McKinsey and Deutsche Bank alumni. We believe crypto will dominate the global economy. 39

OCTOBER 2017

Etherparty:

The User-Friendly Smart Contract Creator Blockchain technology, with the application of well-programmed smart contracts, has the capacity to significantly improve control, security and privacy over the exchange of digital assets and information. The problem, however, is the complexity of writing a smart contract. Smart contracts must be coded in Solidity, a contract-oriented, high-level language that is well known, currently, by just a small percent of developers worldwide. And while that figure is most likely increasing by as each month passes, it’s a considerable KEVIN HOBBS CEO barrier to entry for the vast majority of the general population of computer users leaving businesses and less computer-sav- ESCROW ment should not be the main preoccupavy individuals marginalized from this new Escrow is when a financial instrument or tion of a blockchain project; planning and and exciting emerging technology. digital asset is held by a third party on be- designing the business model for what half of the other two parties in a translies ahead should be. A Deloitte survey conducted this year in- action. An Etherparty escrow dicated, “Nearly 40 percent of surveyed smart contract takes the tradiThe Etherparty platform will senior executives still have little or no tional legal concept and autobe expanding smart contract knowledge about blockchain, mates and enforcoptions offered to users with while other executives place es it via the blocka fully-formed suite of temit among their company’s plates to choose from. A beta ICO IS LIVE chain, with the highest priorities for 2017.” terms written and version of the platform has tailored within been made available as of “Nearly 40 perNevertheless, accessibility to smart conthe digital contract itself. Cur- cent of surveyed Oct. 6, 2017 with a full vertract creation is upon us. The Etherparrency, securities, funds, and sion of the platform slated for senior executy platform, currently nearing the end other assets can all be held in launch in 2018. tives still have litof its FUEL token crowdsale, is to smart escrow. tle or no knowlcontract creation what Wordpress or From peer-to-peer wagering edge about block- to supply chain management, Squarespace is to web development. TOKEN CREATION chain, while other real estate agreements, insurCreate an ERC-20 token in executives place it ance and more, the EtherparEtherparty is, at its core, a smart conmere minutes. An essenamong their comty platform will offer a wide setract creation tool that will allow any user tial, perhaps even foundato create an executable smart contract on tional element, of any blockpany’s highest pri- lection of smart contracts that the Ethereum blockchain. In effect, the chain-based venture is the cre- orities for 2017.” will range across multiple inEtherparty platform will enable anyone, ation of a unique, digital todustries. even those without any programming or ken. The Etherparty platform coding experience, to harness the powtakes the complex development process Etherparty is powered by the use of its er of distributed computing by making and condenses it into a simple online in-app currency, FUEL to run the consmart contract creation as simple as fillform, in a bug-free, fully audited smart tract library, the dashboard with moniing out an online form. contract. toring tools, and for ability to deploy to the Ethereum or Bitcoin blockchain (via The early version of the platform will inCROWDFUND Rootstock). clude an escrow contract, a token creaCompile a token crowdfund contract in tion contract and a crowdfund contract just a handful of clicks. What is typicalFor more information, and to take part in for beta users to test and use. Here are ly a four- to six-week endeavor is simplithe FUEL token crowdsale before it clossome additional details for each available fied into a single-sitting at the computer es, visit etherparty.io. The token crowdsmart contract option: with the Etherparty platform. Developsale ends Oct. 29. Join the party! 41

OCTOBER 2017

The Internet of Tokens: Best Business Opportunity in 25 years? There is a specter haunting the world, the specter of the Internet of Tokens.

There are about 7.5 billion humans who live in 2017. Those who own one or more Bitcoin are estimated at only 600,000, fewer than 1 in 10,000, or 0.000008%. Out of 18.5 million developers, only about 5,000 are skilled in Blockchain development, or 0.00027%. There are over 100 million corporations, and only a few thousand Blockchain companies. All cryptocurrencies together are worth about $150 billion.

We normally wouldn’t expect such tiny numbers of owners, developers and companies, in a world with a $75 trillion a year in Gross Global Product, and by over $350 trillion worth of assets, to ALEX be so impactful, as everything crypto LIGHTMAN should be almost invisible at this early point in the growth of the field. And yet we do notice all the impact of Bitcoin and the other 1,000 to 2,000 cryptocurrencies and tokens. We can’t help it: the news is loud, and its everywhere. We see stories about Bitcoin’s price rising (to over $5,000) and falling. We hear that if we put $100 into Bitcoin in 2010 that it would be worth over $10 million today, and we see that Bitcoin was the best performing currency of 42

the year most years since 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto published his famous white paper. We hear Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J. P. Morgan Chase, the largest commercial bank in the United States, claiming that Bitcoin is a fraud, and that if any of his employees are trading it, they will be fired, even as social media responds by showing J. P. Morgan trading Bitcoin and other financial instruments that track Bitcoin. BlackRock’s Larry Fink says that the rise of Bitcoin, “identifies how much money laundering there is being done in the world”, an attempt to get regulators to attack Bitcoin.

But also hear stories from wise people away from the headlines – that the powerful people in China have been told cryptocurrency will create over a trillion dollars in wealth, and we learn that the Communist Party will reopen the exchanges…after making sure that Party members are in control of Roughly half the the new exchanges. Can’t have a trillion dollars wind entire world’s In- up in the hands of non-Parternet Protocol ty members – that would be (IP) traffic went destabilizing! At least, that through the US, will be the story told and retold by government.

and roughly half the US traffic went through the Washington, DC area

We see the government of the Peoples Republic of China engaged in frantic activity with one hand, subsidizing electricity for Bitcoin miners so that they pay less than the equivalent of 2 cents a kilowatt-hour (vs. 16 cents a kWh on average in the US), and on the other hand, crazily, demanding all but two exchanges shut down, and banning initial coin offerings (ICOs). We see the Republic of Korea (South Korea) ban all ICOs.

We also see small nimble innovative governments, like that of Estonia (population 1.5 million), seeking leadership in electronic identity using the Blockchain. We see Gibraltar and Malta, proud of their ability to generate government revenue from gaming, seeing to become regulatory leaders in token sales. And we see the US Securities and Exchange Commission taking the middle path – not banning ICOs, but from time to time seizing exchanges (and currency worth over $1 billion) and selling far

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below market (an average of $320 per Bitcoin from federal sales) and issuing warnings about the DAO, and sometimes calling entrepreneurs and telling them to give back the proceeds from their coin and token sales, and issuing press releases that only 820 people paid their taxes on Bitcoin wealth a few years ago. Meanwhile, every day there are three to seven new ICOs or token sales. Some question the quality. Brock Pierce, one of the most successful Blockchain investors and the Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, has repeatedly said in public presentations, “19 out of 20 ICOs are crap” and warned token entrepreneurs to be extremely careful of the securities laws “to avoid wearing orange”, a reference to prison garb color made popular by the prison TV show Orange is the New Black.

The wisdom of the smart crowd seems to have reached the consensus that the technology, economics, finance, and political implications of the Blockchain world, will be the most transformative of any industry since the dot com explosion of the mid-1990s, a once in 25 year opportunity to make vast fortunes and change the world, for better or worse. It’s worth looking at the dot com explosion for context of how big the Internet of Tokens could become.

Gibraltar is very well positioned, as it has Universities are starting to offer classes in the the best of both worlds – tiny size that lets it tailor its regulations almost to individual Blockchain and cryptocurrencies to belatedly try to fill a fraction of the demand for devel- companies, but direct access to the world’s opers that sees 13 out of 14 jobs unfilled in a financial capital, London timely fashion.

What can we conclude from all this? That governments, universities, corporations, mass media, investors, and the general public all expect that cryptocurrencies will change the world. That’s a little general, so let’s be more specific. The people paying attention expect this to be bigger than the dot com boom.

The Internet has been around since the days of Dr. Larry Roberts at DARPA, who required universities that received grants for integrated circuit research to share their computational resources, in 1968. In 1973, Vint Cerf and Dr. Robert Kahn announced the specs for Internet Protocol version 4. But it wasn’t until Prof. Larry Smarr, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, asked Mark Andreeson (for the princely sum of $12 an hour) to create something called Collage, later Mosaic, and still later Netscape Navigator and then Internet Explorer, that the web browser created an “interface breakthrough”, allowing the average non-technical person to access nearly the full power of the Internet. The market cap explosion of the dot com era was impressive. In aggregate, the dot com companies were valued at over $7.2 trillion, about $6 trillion of that in the US alone. While many companies failed, we know from Thomas Jefferson’s favorite economist, Jean-Baptiste Say, who coined the term, “entrepreneur”, that “quantity creates its own quality”. In other words, if you want to find a prince, you have to kiss a lot of frogs. If you want to create massively valued companies, you have to create a lot of companies, and be willing to let most of them fail. Out of the “dot com bust” that got so much bad publicity, we got FANG, Facebook Ama43

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zon.com, Netflix and Google, which are worth something like $3 trillion in the future. Amazon.com alone might be valued by the market at over $1 trillion, and is changing retailing; with apparel now the no. 1 category online, and historic highs of retail store closing in the US occurring in 2017. Governments in the world’s 215 nations look with envy at what happened in the US as a result of the dot com explosion, at least, while times were good. The US government had invested $50 million in the Internet, mainly via DARPA and the US Dept. of Commerce. And what a windfall return it received. In the year 1990, US federal tax revenues were $1.1 trillion. Just ten years later, in the year 2000, federal tax revenues were $2.1 trillion! An extra trillion in revenue. MIT professors who studied GDP growth concluded that roughly half the GDP growth of the US in the 1990s was directly or indirectly related to the Internet. So $50 million investment by Washington, DC returns over $500 billion each and every year. A million percent return…every year. That’s the greatest ROI in history. The early spending on the Internet had a few interesting results. Roughly half the entire world’s Internet Protocol (IP) traffic went through the US, and roughly half the US traffic went through the Washington, DC area (mainly because of Metropolitan Area Ethernet – East or MAE-East), handing the US government the ability to do electronic surveillance on a silver platter, and boosting the area wealth so that the richest counties in the US are the ones in Northern Virginia near Washington, DC, with a disproportionate number of telecom and Internet companies. But the seeds of failure were planted by making the agency responsible for electronic surveillance, the NSA, also responsible for cybersecurity, and creating a perverse incentive to fill the world exclusively with broken locks. Thus the opportunity to reinvent cybersecurity via the Blockchain. WHAT GOVERNMENTS LEARNED FROM THE DOT COM ERA WAS: 1. There is massive revenue to be made from being ahead of the curve and creating a safe reliable environment for entrepreneurs to be able to conduct legitimate businesses, without unreasonable fear that capricious, arbitrary and (as in China) self-serving government officials would change the rules retroactively and put entrepreneurs in jail or steal their franchises in the broader sense. 2. To get big successful companies, government must allow and even encourage massive experimentation, and be ready for investors to experience widespread losses. This sober realization is driving the US to try to limit participants in ICOs and token sales to accredited investors, those with net worth of $1 million or person annual income of $200,000 or joint spousal income of $300,000 a year – a 44

I think it’s reasonable to expect that the cryptocurrency/ Blockchain boom will result in the creation of over $10 trillion in wealth. We are only 1.5% of the way there (with aggregate market cap of about $150 billion, of which about 47% is Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash), so there is plenty of growth. tiny fraction of the total number of people who would like to participate in cryptocurrency offerings, defeating the original vision of cryptocurrency as a great equalizer that allows people to send money to each other without banks in the middle. 3. The small companies can get big quickly, and start to make political demands, and to throw their weight around, and it’s important (for governments) to show the CEOs and boards who is boss while they are still small. From all of this, we can conclude that there will be a tsunami wave of regulation in 2018 as national governments (and in a few cases, municipal governments, such as New York, London, Singapore, and Tokyo) rush to put together policy frameworks that are “Goldilocks” – not too hard (or Blockchain entrepreneurs will decamp to other countries) and not too easy (or scammers will flood the market, and create a stench in the air from failed ICOs, causing the market to seem tainted), but “just right”.

In theory, the Blockchain has the math to handle this, as it incorporates an elegant solution to the Byzantine General’s problem – how do you determine who is lying or providing false or faulty information? Gibraltar is very well positioned, as it has the best of both worlds – tiny size that lets it tailor its regulations almost to individual companies, but direct access to the world’s financial capital, London, even as London enters into a phase of great interest and receptivity to new policies as the City of London gets ready to adapt to life post-Brexit, when it cannot count on being the biggest financial market in the European Union, but will need to

survive based on responsiveness to new market opportunities. WHERE DOES ALL THIS LEAD US? To the Internet of Tokens, in which any person or suitably advanced bot, sim, agent , daemon, or artificial intelligence can buy, sell, borrow, loan, or swap in any of thousands of parallel currencies or tokens with any other. Tokens in the near term are eye-candy, but they have a deeper greater value that will only become apparent after sufficient infrastructure is in place. Here are the top ten changes we can expect will lead us to the Internet of Tokens. Every one of these is a big financial opportunity for thousands of people. 1. Better wallets – Coinbase has mixed reviews, but it only handles Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Jason King has estimated that he has over 200 cryptowallets. We need wallets that will handle any tokens, securely and simply. This is a gating factor to the growth of the Internet of Tokens like no other. 2. Better security – an estimated 10% of all coins and tokens issued in 2017 have been stolen by hacker and malefactors, an outrageous statistic. Imagine if Elon Musk announced that 10% of all 80,000 Teslas were stolen between the factory and delivery. The company stock price would collapse. In theory, the Blockchain has the math to handle this, as it incorporates an elegant solution to the Byzantine General’s problem – how do you determine who is lying or providing false or faulty information? If we can figure out who the bad actors are, and banish them from the network, that’s worth quite a lot. 3. Better exchanges and more exchanges – Exchanges are necessary for liquidity and clarity about the value of crypto assets. Exchanges will need to be set up to replace the ones shut down in China, possibly by the army of exiles Beijing is creating by telling

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exchange creators to get out, or beg for a job with the party-connected officials who are permitted to replace them. 4. Better education for Blockchain developers – Moe Levine and Jason King are doing an ICO to raise $80 million for the Academy for Blockchain Technology, using the statistic that only 1 in 14 corporate approved and funded projects for Blockchain are able to attract adequate Blockchain developers to meet the timeline and budget. It will take months to ramp up, but if this project succeeds, it will remove the biggest bottleneck. 5. Better policies for ICOs and token sales. Still in process in many nations, but 2018 will be the year we see polished policy packages. The Republic of Korea was showing great promise with its policy programs published in 2017, until it panicked and just banned all ICOs. Most urgent for regulators: a uniform approach to AML (anti-money laundering) and KYC (know your customer) that works for holders of cryptocurrency comparable to the way that banks know people who have accounts with them. There’s just no way around this, though many people with cryptowallets are used to being able to imagine they are and always will be anonymous…which is not a reasonable expectation. Science is offering the first incubator ICO and went the extra mile to make it a security in compliance with SEC regulations, and it’s possible this will be the norm for the future. 6. Better due diligence – Tom Peters, author of many business books, says it’s useful to “fail fast” and learn to do better. If Brock Pierce is correct and 19 out of 20 ICOs are crap, then let’s hope the bad ones fail fast, so we can all know what characteristics, what “corporate DNA” separates the winners, the survivors, from the losers that go out of business. 7. Better trading platforms – currently there are projects to make it more simple, secure, and straightforward for traders of currencies, commodities, and securities to be able to trade cryptocurrencies. Initially this will be about better interfaces, but eventually this will need to include well-integrated wallets, exchanges, bank accounts, all compliant with CYA/AML. 8. Tokenized real estate – Real estate is worth over $217 trillion and will be utterly transformed by the Blockchain because chain of title is so crucial, and distributed ledgers are tailor made for title. In late September 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that Propy (which concluded a successful ICO that raised $14 million) assisted

Tech Crunch founder Michael Arrington in in solar from individuals, making it unnecthe first transfer of a non-virtual asset using essary to have public utilities, and coal and the Blockchain, the purchase of real estate nuclear power plants. in Kiev, Ukraine (the emerging center for low cost Blockchain software development). 10. Tokenized business models for maThe big weakness of real estate as an investchine-to-machine and DAOs 2.0. The Interment class is its illiquidity. If Propy (and Alnet of Tokens will enable business models tanti and Hip and others) succeeds, buying that charge small amounts for utility comand selling real estate anywhere on earth puting and cloud-based storage. Google, Inand being able to transfer title securely via tel, Microsoft, Amazon and others have inthe Blockchain will enable massive liquidivested vast sums for storage. Storj (proty to come to real estate, creating vast fornounced “storage”) had a successful ICO for tunes both from property and the supportits storage business plan, and Block.One has ing technology. announced it will be using EOS tokens to pay for storage in its cloud offering. The In8. Tokenized financial assets. At the World ternet of Tokens is a way to give an allowBlockchain Forum in London, late Septemance to all the emerging intelligent softber 2017, several speakers talked about toware, so that it can buy its way into well-run kenizing the $100 trillion in equity and debt secure parts of the Internet, leaving spaminstruments. Liquidity (say, a private valuamers and scammers out of the walled gartion vs. a publicly traded valuation) can gendens and future developments. Bad actors erate a 30 to 300% premium, so the Interneed not apply: their money will be no good net of Tokens, if it makes it easier for anyhere, where “here” is the Internet of Tokens, one to buy, sell, borrow, loan and swap, will and good citizenship is a prerequisite to begive holders of financial assets a significant ing able to interoperate. The DAO is the Digbump up in value. ital Autonomous Organization. Hopefully we’ve learned how to do DAO right this 9. Tokenized commodities and energy. One of time, after the hack in 2016 derailed this the more interesting innovations deriving promising 21st century advance. from the Blockchain are the solar providers, such as Sun Exchange, which is doing a If you add up all these possibilities, I think it’s fall token sale that promises to “use the sun reasonable to expect that the cryptocurrency/ to stream cryptocurrency to your wallet” Blockchain boom will result in the creation of from individual solar panels that you “own”. over $10 trillion in wealth. We are only 1.5% Given that Stanford’s Tony Seba says that of the way there (with aggregate market cap of there is a $100 trillion opportunity to tran- about $150 billion, of which about 47% is Bitsition from this world of 81% fossil fuels to coin and Bitcoin Cash), so there is plenty of one that is 100% powered to solar, wind, hy- growth. dro, and other clean green energy, and that at least $50 trillion of this will be for solar, The path to growth for the Internet of Tokens it’s possible that one of the killer apps for is clear. May you participate and help to build Blockchain is to enable massive investment a new world.

Alex Lightman is an MIT graduate (’83), attended graduate school at Harvard, and is the winner/recipient of four global technology awards, including the Economist magazine Reader’s Award for the “innovation that will most radically change the world” for this decade 2010-2020. He is a co-founder of Token Communities Plc., a Gibraltar corporation that invests in tokens; the CEO of a publicly traded energy company; and advisor to seven ICO/token sales, including Propy, Science, and Academy for Blockchain Technology mentioned in this article. He is the author of the first book on 4G wireless, Brave New Unwired World and the co-author, with Brett King, of the Amazon.com bestseller, Augmented: Life In The Smart Lane, which was no. 1 in seven different categories in 2016. 45

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Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) & the Proof-of-Asset Protocol (PoAP) In the financial markets, rules have always been written by financial institutions and clients have been forced to adapt to the constraints and inefficiencies of antiquated technologies and infrastructures. We are at a fork in the road where banks and clients will soon be able to obtain customized products and optimized liquidity across asset classes. BANKEX has emerged at the forefront of the fintech space integrating blockchain and smart contracts into by traditional financial services to revoluMATT ARMSTRONG tionize banking. BANKEX plans to be the catalyst for bringing the antiquated banking system into the digital age and providing transparent and frictionless markets. 46

BANKEX ECOSYSTEM: Liquidity is the ability to sell or buy assets quickly without significant change in its price. Higher liquidity alleviates the trade-off between the price of an asset and the speed of the sale. People prefer liquid assets; such a theory was first introduced by John Maynard Keynes1. Many theories and empirical studies suggest that low-

er liquidity results in understated asset valuations2. Thus, optimizing asset liquidity will help unlock their true value. The key to liquidity optimization for traditionally illiquid and non-fungible assets is through tokenization, through BANKEXâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Proof-of-Asset Protocol and their Banking-as-a-Service platform.

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Matt Armstrong of ICO Crowd sat down with Igor Khmel, the founder and CEO of BANKEX to learn more about their platform.

tional Banks start to understand the potential applications of our technology, but it won’t disrupt their core business model or their customer base. In fact, BANKEX will make Banks even more client-centric since they will be able to quickly provide customizable new products to meet changing client demands across complex and challenging asset classes.

Matt: Why did you start BANKEX, and what is your mission? Igor: I was running the Innovation Lab at Sberbank and I realized that there was a huge gap between the technological knowledge in the fintech space and the financial knowledge Matt: I understand the BaaS model, but in the banking sector. The knowledge gap is can you give us an example or a use case even more serious when you talk about block- for the Proof-of-Asset Protocol? chain technology. I decided to field a team of Igor: So, the best way to understand the ex Bankers, which is part of the reason for Proof-of-Asset Protocol is by understanding the name, and also top blockchain engineers tokenization. The crypto community is familand developers. BANKEX’s iar with tokenization for inimission is to revolutionize tial coin offerings, but there banking and financial servicisn’t yet a viable platform TGE TBA es without actually disruptfor tokenizing real-world ing banks. assets. BANKEX is bridging the world of physical asMatt: How can you revolutionize without sets and blockchain technology through the disruption? I would think something that Proof-of-Asset Protocol. A simple example is is revolutionary would also be disruptive? that of tokenizing lithium. Imagine someone Igor: One of our core models is called Bankowns a lithium mine in Chile and they want as-a-Service (BaaS), and it is specifically deto attract investment from the global comsigned to be complementary to existing bank- munity to finance extraction. A third party ing systems and products. We also developed will go to the mine and using special equipthe Proof-of-Asset Protocol (PoAP). Both are ment determines the amount of lithium to revolutionary in that we can optimize the libe tokenized, the quality, and difficulty of exquidity of non-fungible and traditionally illiq- traction. The data from the assessment is uid assets, but not disrupt traditional banking. then integrated into the BANKEX exchange. Basically the business model is a customizaLithiumToken is created and is instantly liqble global banking API. A bank that partners uid to investors all over the world. An inveswith us can offer customized products to their tor in China meets the ask for the token and clients based on our technologies. We are also pays with BANKEX tokens and they can be in the process of developing proofs of concept sure their lithium futures will be in the same for several financial firms. So, there might be condition presented in the smart contract some initial mental disruption as the tradispecifications for the token.

Matt: That sounds intriguing when will some of these use cases be ready for real world application? Igor: Well we have completed real-world use cases in KYC and the tokenization of gold. We are also developing several proofs of concept for large financial firms in multiple countries. We are in the process of finalizing the dates for our upcoming ICO, and once completed we should be able to immediately start delivering all sorts of customized use-cases. The reason BANKEX exists is to develop and customize these use cases for all variety of partners and investors. The potential here is unlimited, the Proof-of-Asset Protocol can be used for basically any physical asset that would benefit from enhanced liquidity and reduced risk through tokenization on the blockchain, car buying and car sharing, rare commodities, anything you can think of we can develop a process to tokenize it. Matt: What do you see as the most promising technological frontier in the crypto space? Igor: I think the IOT, the internet-of-things, and blockchain are two technologies that once they are running synchronistically, will completely change the world and we can already see this happening. Blockchain provides a secure transparent platform that basically allays the concerns of those who are nervous about machines talking to each other and making decisions. We can build constraints and immutable safety mechanisms into smart contracts and integrate these with data from the IOT, which will completely alter the way the physical and digital world interact with one another, in a positive way. 47

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Token Economics and Design Across Industries New digital currencies are now coming out faster than one-hit wonders in the 80’s. At last count, we are ready to surpass more than 5,000 unique forms of digital coins or tokens — a long way from the days when bitcoin, Litecoin, and dogecoin were the only such operating protocols on the market. One aspect of the rapidly-progressing movement toward fluid, decentralized forms of value exchange is tokenization.

by JASON ENGLISH VP of Protocol Market at Sweetbridge

rather than offering a centralized control mechanism or telling people what to do.

came a long-standing example of a traditional asset token. A dollar tokenized on the blockchain should have a value of about a dollar. But given the inFrom a supply chain perspective, a stantaneous rate of exchange possible crypto-economic incentive process that in a distributed network of servers, like positively changes the behavior of all blockchain, even minor fluctuations in players can solve system-wide problems price over time can create arbitrage opand benefit suppliers who have lowportunities between the value of a toer margins and more fragile businessken and the asset it represents. es. Incentives in our model include reducing the cost of capital and finance Tokenization has become a hot topic charges, enabling faster settlement of largely due to the recent phenomenon payments among partners and across of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Toborders, and eliminating intermediarken Generation Events (TGEs). In these ies who “tax” the supply chain and do events a company will issue a new crypTokenization is the process of defining not add value. tocurrency, digital coin, or token that a unit of value to represent a specific investors can purchase as an investasset. Within the blockchain and cryp- We believe if tokens are built responsi- ment in the company. Consequently, tocurrency space, tokens act as a combly into this system, it will increase the the company can raise millions of dolputing protocol in which developers quality of raw materials, resulting in lars in capital without using the concan digitally assign a token to become better finished goods and fairer prices ventional VC funding model. a medium for value exchange within a for end consumers. network of users. The rapid growth of the cryptocurrenThough tokenization has recently becy industry has been attracting more The critical differentiator for any tocome a buzzword, it’s far from a new and more investors and founders who kenization effort is designing a crypconcept. As recently as 1950, the U.S. want to be a part of the next big thing. to-economic reason for the token to was home to thousands of functioning It has also attracted the attention of exist and have real utility, beyond its forms of tokenized currency. Individu- more and more government regulatory speculative trading value. Crypto-ecoal banks would issue banknotes; indus- agencies around the world. There is still nomics is about aligning incentives of trial and agricultural trading companies a need for more clarity in how tokens using a token system to encourage ben- would issue “scrip” to help streamline should be designed and represented to eficial behaviors among all participants. transactions; and government, retail, potential buyers. and property brokers would offer alterUser adoption of any system — nate forms of currency to replace illiqIn this environment, it is more benefiwhether a national economy or a uid government-issued currency. cial to the industry for companies and blockchain-based token system — investors to focus on the value of the moves much faster when interests are For instance, the U.S. dollar, after mov- token within its network. Tokens that aligned with the outcomes you want, ing off a gold-backed standard, beare intrinsically designed to support

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the specific business purpose of the project are more likely to be on the right track for longterm growth. Serious blockchain project founders — engineers — are interested in advancing tokens as a new way of exchanging economic value to build decentralized networks and are not concerned with the price or market valuation of their tokens. Tech investor Nick Tomaino believes tokens can be broken down into four different categories: traditional asset tokens, usage tokens, work tokens, and hybrid tokens.

Within the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, tokens act as a computing protocol in which developers can digitally assign a token to become a medium for value exchange within a network of users.

Crypto-economics is about aligning incentives of using a token system to enTraditional asset tokens are the crypto rep- courage beneficial behaviors among all resentations of standard fiat assets. Usage to- participants. kens provide access to a digital service. Bitcoin is considered a usage token because users are granted access to a virtual payments network. Work tokens, meanwhile, offer users the right to contribute work to a decentralized organization. For example, Maker, a work token, serves as the backstop in a collateralized debt system. Finally, hybrid tokens are a mix of usage and work coins. They can be used for multiple purposes; one example of this is Ethereum tokens backed by the Proof-of-Stake algorithm where creator of the next block is determined in a pseudo-random way. A user’s chances depend on the amount of wealth they hold in their account.

While tokens may seem new, most people understand the idea of assigning value to an asset, whether that is a dollar, product, or house.

Tokenization has become a hot topic largely due to the recent phenomenon of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Token Generation Events (TGEs). In these events a company will issue a new cryptocurrency, digital coin, or token that investors can purchase as an investment in the company.

We are used to the idea of paying for the use of services such as cell phone plans, Netflix accounts, or gym memberships. Similarly, we also understand the idea of paying to work. You may rent an office in a specific location, pay an ownership fee to join a certain legal or medical firm, or buy a special license to operate a particular vehicle. With respect to the hybrid model, we can grasp that people pay dues to a professional organization or union in order to obtain work and have the ability to take advantage of shared services and data. The biggest impact of moving tokenization onto blockchains and decentralized networks is creating a significant increase in the ease of value exchange across all these dimensions. It allows trades to be fairer, transactions to be faster, and costs to be lower. Applying this to the supply chain industry, tokenization provides units of value exchange that cut costs and increase efficiency at every stage of the process, from the second a customer places their order, to the end state when the order is delivered and all suppliers are paid for their contributions. Tokens move much faster, and accomplish much more than money, when they are purpose built for the industry or network they support. If tokenization delivers on its promise of recapturing liquidity not only for currencies — but also by digitizing the value of all assets, time, and work in a more flexible, fair exchange — then that’s an exciting prospect. And given the vast amount of work that still remains, it’s fair to say that tokenization is still very young. 49

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The State of the Cryptocurrency Derivatives Market A well-developed derivatives market is a major pillar of a healthy financial asset. Although some players treat derivatives trading as a form of speculation, a liquid derivatives market is essential for price stability. By providing a secondary market outside of simple spot trading, merchants, industry players, and traders alike can manage their future risk exposure to assets by taking a “long” or “short” position on its price into the future.

When there is an active derivatives market for the future value of an asset, it provides an important price signal to the broader market and facilitates a more stable outlook among participants. Countries without grain futures, for example, are likely to see by huge price fluctuations causing disrupBHARATH RAO CEO of Leverj tions in their markets compared to nations with robust commodities futures markets.

be invested in other areas. Finally, the knowledge that you don’t need to panic buy/sell in a spot market to adjust risk exposure has stabilizing effects on prices. This has a virtuous effect on the financial assets ecosystem as a whole.

The cryptocurrency derivatives market is still quite immature. The first BTC/ USD futures contracts came on the scene in 2013 with very little trader interest. Now in 2017, the market reguIn the cryptocurrency markets, if you larly exceeds $1 billion in daily notionare a bitcoin or Ethereum miner with ex- al volume. This volume is significant pected future cash flows in BTC or ETH enough that it often makes up a 25 to and need to pay electricity in dollars, 50% share of the spot market’s volume you can sell a futures contract represent- for BTC/USD. ing the electricity bill’s value and lock in the USD value. It also allows speculators Currently, this derivatives volume is octo utilize leverage to take a directioncurring on a few centralized exchangal view on price and profit off their exes and only covers bitcoin. Altcoins pectations, an order of magnitude more like Ethereum are instead traded using than with simple spot trading. spot exchange order-books or over-thecounter one-to-one asset swaps. Derivatives in general enable market participants to manage large risks at Currently, most Ethereum projects for low cost. Instead of incurring the costs exchanges are focused on decentralizing to engage in spot trading to adjust risk spot trading, so traders can use ETH or exposure, derivatives simplify the pro- an ERC-20 token to transact value trustcess by allowing single type of collateral lessly, without margin, on the Ethereum to be pledged. Additionally, the power blockchain. This is a valuable first step of margin trading allows users to risk for the community to be able to engage a minimal amount of capital to achieve in unleveraged simple trading without a given position, freeing up capital to trusting an intermediary.

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Ethereum, despite a market cap that’s nearly half of bitcoin’s, currently does not have any ETH/USD inverse futures using Ether collateral. Traders are currently unable to use pure ETH collateral to take long or short positions on ETH/USD futures to manage their risk. The only margin trading is available on Poloniex, Bitfinex, and Kraken, and that requires daily interest payments to finance the margin provided. With futures contracts, the margin is implicitly provided between counterparties, so there are no financing charges, no matter how long you hold your position. The cypherpunk end goal of cryptocurrency is to establish a financial system that is outside of the control of the state and banking system. Providing risk management tools like derivatives, using purely Ether for collateral and profit and loss settlement, is essential in the growth path of bringing cryptocurrency adoption to the next level. Imagine never having to sell your ETH into USD. Instead of trusting an exchange with your ETH and selling into USD, and trusting the exchange to honor your USD balance, imagine that you could trustlessly hedge your Ether in USD terms with counterparties on Leverj. Derivatives markets are dramatically different in every aspect of trading and operations than a spot market. Traders need to master the appropriate amount of leverage for their positions and trades. This flexibility is crucial for traders to have control over their risk manage-

The cypherpunk end goal of cryptocurrency is to establish a financial system that is outside of the control of the state and banking system.

With a significant amount of trading activity becoming decentralized and moving to the blockchain, one wonders if is it possible to manage leveraged trading risk on the blockchain. Empirical risk management is not feasible in a decentralized context. A system user who can take over losing positions is never going to be trustless. Leverj is one of the few exchanges that measures risk precisely and mathematically eliminates systemic risk, as already demonstrated on its Bitcoin platform. Bringing this model to Ethereum makes trustless leveraged trading with Ether a reality.

If the ETH/USD futures volume is proportional to Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization, then there is potentially a $500 million per day market that is cur- Just as Bitcoin has been undergoing substantial growth since 2013 with the development rently untapped.

ment, and a trading platform is not complete without providing such rich features. From an exchange’s point of view, a comprehensive risk management policy is critical or they may end up with a systemic crisis where a large move could put many traders into a negative balance. Most risk management is empirical — for example, a guesstimate on how much leverage can be offered based on median volume, spread, and other characteristics.

of financial instruments aiding merchants and holders with risk management, so too will Ethereum begin to experience these developments. With a total estimated value in October 2017 of $30 billion, there is a significant amount of market risk that individuals have both hedgeable interest to manage and volatility on which to speculate. If the ETH/USD futures volume is proportional to Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization, then there is potentially a $500 million per day market that is currently untapped. Not only will Ethereum have proper derivatives products on professional exchanges launched by 2018, but they will be tradeable in a trustless, decentralized, custodial manner. 51

OCTOBER 2017

Hacken:

Cybersecurity Ecosystem Focused on Blockchain Security Hacken builds the next level of application security and makes perfecting your code and network architecture more affordable by uniting the best European and global human expertise with advanced cybersecurity machine learning.

by DMYTRO BUDORIN Lead Manager and CFO of Hacken

We provide a personalized service en Ecosystem via a token sale schedbased on the peculiarities of the clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s uled for Mid-October 2017. The total code and cybersecurity perimeter, by supply of HKN will be 20M tokens with offering wide customization options for no future emissions currently planned. each bug bounty proDuring the presale, gram, that we help which took place on TGE Mid-October 2017 September 18â&#x20AC;&#x201D;25, our clients to organize and manage. 2017, Hacken distributed over 800,000 toCurrently the primary focus of Hacken kens, including a 30% bonus and thus is blockchain technology that offers pro- raised $650,000. This amount includes digious promise to global finance and a 33 bitcoin reward received as the even state governance, while still being prize at the global leading blockchain supported by a volatile infrastructure. conference, d10e pitch contest, where 26 blockchain startups presented their Hacken is determined to become the me- ideas and business models. dium of cooperation between the blockchain community and global cybersecuOn September 30, 2017 Hacken organrity experts, whose expertise is based on ized HackIT Cup Final, which was the fithe real life defence and penetrations. nal event of the first bug bounty hackathon in Eastern Europe, coming from difThe Hacken Ecosystem consists of a ferent countries and backgrounds. The constellation of businesses and comkeynote speakers were Steve Wozniak, munities: the co-founder of Apple, and Phil Zim2 HackenProof bug bounty marketmermann, the creator of PGP, Silent Cirplace; cle and Dark Mail Alliance. The event 2 Unreported Zero-Day Remuneration was hosted by Hostomel Air Base of the Platform; Ukrainian Air Force by Antonov Corpo2 Hacken Cybersecurity Startups Inration on board of its An-225 Mriya stracubator; tegic airlift cargo aircraft, currently the 2 Cybersecurity Analytics Center and longest and heaviest aircraft ever built. 2 HackIT Conference. Hacken and the organizing team of HKN is the cryptotoken enabling us HackIT plan for the HackIT Cup and to get sufficient funding for the HackCTF competition to be conducted annu-

OCTOBER 2017

ally, attracting the best white hat hackers from all across the World.

er of the T-64 tank), Kremenchuk Automobile Plant and many others. Prior to launching a private cybersecurity consultancy firm, Yehor was doing a PhD in data analysis and particle physics in DESY, Hamburg, Germany.

The Hostomel Air Base event, also marks the launch of the HackenProof alpha version. HackenProof is a brand-new bug bounty platform envisioned by three long-time friends and colleagues, Dmytro Budorin, Yehor Aushev and Andrii Matiukhin. All of them had earlier been hired as employees or independent contractors, by the government of The alpha version Ukraine. Their task was performing an assessment of the Ukraini- of HackenProof is an defence industry to cyber espi- being developed right now and it’s onage and cyber attacks.

already been used

Andrii Matiukhin assisted Yehor on various technology issues. Andrii has over 13 years of experience in cybersecurity, having started his career as system administrator in several Ukrainian major banks and developing his skills into CTO of different cybersecurity projects. However, the trio soon discovered they were lacking connections in the ‘hacker’s world’, working on the defence rather than attack side for most of their careers. That’s how they met Nikita Knysh, Volodymyr Taratushka and Yevheniya Broshevan from Kharkiv.

The findings of the trio were disap- for the pilot bug pointing. The whole system needbounty program, ed to be built from scratch, but conducted by the the Ukrainian government lacked international resources and expertise to perwhite hat hackers form this. Dmytro Budorin, who attending Hackhad 8 years of experience in fiNikita, Volodymyr and Yevheniya IT Cup. nance, working as an associate for were running HackIT — a somewhat Deloitte, started looking for the exotic cybersecurity conference in possible sources of financing and knowledge Kharkiv, a city dubbed ‘the technology capital capital in late 2016. of Ukraine’ for its high concentration of engineers and developers. HackIT attracted hackers The task of Yehor Aushev by that time was to from all across the World, running tech panels launch a computer emergency response team during the day and wild rave parties at night. (CERT) for Ukroboronprom, the state-owned The Hacken team was particularly interested enterprise overseeing the entire defence indus- in the HackIT Cup because it attracted the core try of Ukraine, including various Soviet-era leg- audience of the future bug bounty program. The ends like Antonov, Malyshev Factory (the mak- initial interest developed into a partnership.

The scope of further development of the Hacken Ecosystem depends on the amount of financing it will manage to attract via the HKN token sale. The presale indicates there will already be enough money to launch at least the HackenProof bug bounty platform. The alpha version of HackenProof is being developed right now and it’s already been used for the pilot bug bounty program, conducted by the international white hat hackers attending HackIT Cup. The systems to be examined were real life websites of major Ukrainian online businesses. Hacken Accelerator also launched its activities as a joint venture between Hacken and 1991 Open Data Incubator. On September 29, 2017 the first 10 teams pitched to be accepted to the acceleration program, that would last for a month, in early 2018. The plan is to make the acceleration program a bi-annual event with separate acceleration sessions each Autumn and Spring. On October 2, 2017 Hacken announced its Advisory board, which will initially consist of 7 advisors: Phil Zimmermann, founder of PGP Moe Levin, founder of Keynote Andrii Zamovsky, founder of Ambisafe Brad Yasar and Mike Costache, founders of Blockchain Investors Consortium Patrick Salm, founder of SmartOne Yuri Olentir, founder of Crypto.Group 53

OCTOBER 2017

Blockchain Meets the Cloud Gaming Industry In a Brand New Ecosystem Every year the game industry requires more powerful hardware which, due to the high prices, is not available for all gamers. Monthly Steam research proves that top new products often require hardware specs higher than what most can afford to have: The interest decline towards constant hardware updates seems like a new by trend. It is not surprising, if someone EGOR GURJEV CEO wants to play a game in its maximum settings, he or she will need to update their video card — it will cost additional $300–500 per year for a new model. SO WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? It is Cloud Gaming services aka games that work through streaming services. Gamers could finally play up to date games using almost any existing hardware. With cloud gaming, gamers don’t need to save money for a new processor or video card. They can play via the internet. 54

However, these services were continuously opening and closing due to two fundamental problems: Internet quality and service difficulties. If the first problem was improving over the years, the second was causing some serious difficulties that stopped the development of this technology for a while. In addition to that, Cloud gaming requires expensive and rare GPUbased servers. Although, Playkey found a solution.

2 120 servers in London, Moscow, Amsterdam and Frankfurt 2 Agreements with Ubisoft, Capcom, SEGA, Wargaming, Bethesda, and others 2 The place in markets in EMEA and CIS countries 2 More than 150 games of AAA Class 2 Office in Europe that is working on the development of service

PLAYKEY + P2P + BLOCKCHAIN For a long time Playkey was using exPLAYKEY IN NUMBERS pensive GPU servers. Now the team Playkey is one of the cloud gaming pirealized how to do it differently. The oneers. The Project was established service team decided to create an abin 2012 and as of today is one of the solute new client using the general leaders in the cloud gaming sphere. It decentralised system. By using it, the proves its commerce efowner of an upgradficiency and technology ed gaming PC (for insuccess. This is proved stance, GTX 1080 or ICO is Live by the following staanalogue AMD) would tistics be able to rent it to someone. Other gam2 2,5 million unique visitors of ers would have access to it for a low playkey.net website every month budget cost. This technology will give 2 More than 500,000 paying users users an opportunity to create more

OCTOBER 2017

cloud services which will decrease the cost of that service. Eventually, the number of users willing to use it will grow as well. The fact that users bought their hardware for mining or specifically for gaming is not important for the service. Renting their computers to other gamers would be more profitable compared to mining crypto currency. A Playkey miner can earn approximately $10/day while a profit of broadcasting is only $1.50/day you can calculate it here - https:// etherscan.io/ether-mining-calculator. Playkey creates a unique gaming platform where everyone becomes a potential power provider. It could be for crypto enthusiasts as well as owners of mining firm and big crypto centres. This approach makes possible the biggest cloud gaming platform in the world with potentially hundreds of millions of users and people with services. So to summarize what miners and gamers will receive. Miners will... 2 Get the opportunity to utilize their hardware in a way that is more efficient, more stable, and less risky than cryptocurrency mining Gamers will... 2 Play the best AAA-games wherever they want using any hardware: old PC, MAC, Smart TV, etc. They will not have to download any game client. 2 High class of service, low ping and perfect image quality due to the wide range of p2p-servers 2 Lower expenses compared to buying a per-

sonal PC: top PC costs $3000 while this is equal to 3 years subscription of Playkey 2 Game developers and publishers will expand their client base The P2P solution of Playkey will allow owners of top video cards to earn more, compared to mining crypto currency and gamers will be able to play anywhere with an Internet connection. This formula is therefore, more profitable than buying and upgrading their own PC.

If someone wants to play a game in its maximum settings, he or she will need to update their video card — it will cost additional $300–500 per year for a new model. Playkey creates a unique gaming platform where everyone becomes a potential power provider. This past summer there has been more than 2.8M invested in Playkey. Also, the ICO (Initial coin offering) is going to be another source of revenue for the P2P project.

In the future Playkey could build a wider game ecosystem in which users will create, sell, and buy every service related to games. This will strengthen the position of the whole ecosystem and will provide the maximum possibilities for business development, providing the lowest cost for gamers, thus increasing the interest towards tokens. PROJECT BUDGETING This past summer there has been more than 2.8M invested in Playkey. Also, the ICO (Initial coin offering) is going to be another source of revenue for the P2P project. The special tokens PKT (Playkey tokens) are going to be created for the ICO and remain the only currency for this service. Gamers are going to buy tokens with physical currency for the payment for servers from miners. Miners will earn these tokens with their modern PC’s and make an automatic agreement with gamers. This mining approach is easier than cryptocurrency mining. This will become a secured ecosystem. According to statistics, there are approximately 2 billion gamers today with a market worth $109 billion dollars. The team believes in the great potential for development of a decentralised p2p-gaming platform, which can become one of the main expenditure for gamers, in spite of current spendings on the constant upgrade of hardware and purchases of new consoles. The ICO campaign has already started, while the token is expected for release in November. The team actively communicate in their Telegram https://t.me/playkey_io answering all questions about the project’s present and future plans. 55

OCTOBER 2017

The world’s first public decentralized smart database I have been to nine different conferences in eight cities around the world over the last 4 months, and I met a lot of talented teams that are developing their own dApps.

by NATALIA TOKAR Co-founder & Head of Business Development at Ties.Network

Each of these teams wants to attract millions of users to their platform. Some say they need 10 million users to prove that their concept works. Others need 50 million users. My question has always been - “Where are you going to store millions of these profiles?” Ethereum can’t handle it today. Each of these users will change their avatar regularly, upload pictures, texts, videos, make transactions and send tons of messages. Where and how can dApps store and organize all this dynamic content today? Storing alone is complicated but searching across data is impossible today. There is no “google” on the blockchain that can find any file in nanoseconds on the blockchain. And the result is that dApps use centralized solutions. This is why we are developing Ties.DB the First Decentralized Smart Database that will help all blockchain projects scale, grow and add value to the community of millions. It can store, find and organize huge amounts of data. With millions of operations per second (vs. max 300 on Ethereum), it’s a true innovation that will change the way dApps operate. And it is fully decentralized, which

means each user owns their records and no one can harm or delete their data. You can become part of the Massive Decentralized Data Project too!

My question has always been “Where are you going to store millions of these profiles?” Ethereum can’t handle it today. There is no “google” on the blockchain that can find any file in nanoseconds on the blockchain.

Ties.Network is adding value to every blockchain project by bringing this open-source database to the community. Just like anyone can use Ethereum today, anyone will be able to use Ties. DB - the smart database. The token sale is in progress, and it’s ending in a few days! Become part of the innovation. Support infinite scaling 1 TIE token is 0,24 UDS today. Make sure you get the best price. Get your TIE tokens here: TGE.ties.network

OCTOBER 2017

What is the token economy? To put it into layman’s terms, the ‘token economy’ feels a bit like what kids did for fun at primary school in Britain in the 1970s: hanging out in the playground trading in stickers for our sticker albums. If you were starting a new album you would happily trade a whole unopened packet of stickers just to fill up a few more pages.

by HELEN DISNEY Founder & CEO Unblocked Events

By the time you got close to completing your book, if someone else had the coveted sticker you needed to fill in an important gap, it might trade for up to several unopened packets. Who knew that football stickers as a form of currency was an early introduction to the laws of supply and demand and the tactics of peer-to-peer trading with digital tokens?

many different types of blockchain tokens, each with varying characteristics and uses. Some blockchain tokens, like Bitcoin, function as a digital currency. Others can represent a right to tangible assets like gold or real estate. Blockchain tokens can also be used in new protocols and networks to create distributed applications. These tokens are sometimes also referred to as App Coins or Protocol Tokens”. So what happens

The humble kids’ sticker craze is not that dissimilar to the when there are current trend for buying into When you purchase the latmany different Initial Coin Offerings or token ter form of tokens you are types of tokens all buying them on the promsales. Such sales are a form of being issued and crowdfunding facilitated by ise that they may be usethe rise in popularity of peer- traded on differful to you in the future or to-peer exchanged cryptocur- ent platforms? else on the assumption you rencies and blockchain-based can trade those tokens for applications. Imagine buying a token in some other digital asset of value. Due an ICO as a bit like trading an unopened to a statement from the US Securities packet of those football stickers –it’s esand Exchange Commission issued in sentially a bet on the future. late July 2017, and various more recent statements by other government agenSo what is a digital token? To borrow cies, there remains some uncertainfrom a primer created by Coinbase: “A ty about which types of tokens will be blockchain token is a digital token creclassed as securities and which will not. ated on a blockchain as part of a decen- Nevertheless, enthusiasm for token tralized software protocol. There are sales continues seemingly unabated.

OCTOBER 2017

So what happens once we have large numbers of such tokens being bought and exchanged online? ICOs have already exceeded projected expectations. Earlier this year, industry commentator William Mougayar suggested ICOs would raise at least $1 billion by the end of 2017 – at the time of writing (Oct 2017) the figure stood at over $2.3bn and rising. These massive numbers are attracting attention - even from ICO sceptics - and raising questions about the impact such volumes is having on fees, transaction speed and scalability of the Ethereum blockchain where these ICOs take place. ICOs are also raising questions about the ‘democratisation of investing’. Just as the internet suddenly allowed anyone to start a blog and become a journalist, so tokens will allow many ordinary people all over the world to become investors. This comes with both great advantages and potentially also with huge risks for the uninitiated (or even for so-called experts in what remains a very volatile and rapidly-evolving marketplace). So what happens when there are many different types of tokens all being issued and traded on different platforms? The number of digital assets on the Ethereum blockchain is increasing rapidly due to the growth in implementation of smart contract-based use cases. As this trend is only likely to continue, demand is likely to grow for users wanting to exchange assets or balance a portfolio consisting of many different tokens. Decentralised order books have sprung up to meet this demand but there are also options for peer-to-peer trading on a decentralised asset exchange. In their whitepaper, Michael Oved and Don Mosites , the c0-founders of AirSwap, the implementation of the peer-to-peer Swap protocol for trading Ethereum (ERC20) tokens, argue that such a system would increase liquidity, as well as improving scalability and privacy. Centralised cryptocurrency exchanges essentially came into existence due to the need to exchange cryptocurrencies like bitcoin into local currencies – since these currencies are still not widely in use by merchants and consumers. You still can’t easily pay your mortgage or your bills with cryptocurrencies, for example. The early exchanges like Mt Gox have become infamous for what went wrong. Yet those were the early days and many established centralised exchanges continue to operate successfully.

much liquidity they can offer. And it is not always easy for users to know, however, whether an exchange can be trusted and how much risk they are being exposed to – be it credit risk, security (for example, when an exchange is vulnerable to hacking, as in Mt Gox’s case) or lack of protection in case of disputes.

a few. Some of these exchanges facilitate the exchange of digital tokens to traditional (fiat) currencies while some are only designed to exchange different types of digital tokens. They also divide up into platforms which operate on the blockchain and those which operate socalled ‘off-chain’ systems.

Decentralized exchanges are exciting great interest because they promise to potentially address some of these limitations. Examples include 0x, which uses a decentralised order book; AirSwap, which allows users to trade peer-to-peer; and KyberNetwork, to name just

The future of the token economy will see a dizzying array of digital assets trading on a variety of platforms, revolutionising the way we trade in the future. And these waves of new funding pouring in to the start-up community are already spawning a new form of ‘Blockchain Silicon Valley’ with decentralized innovations of every kind springing up – what Laura Shin of Forbes has called “cloud computing meets the sharing economy meets the Fed”.

To borrow from a primer created by Coinbase: “A blockchain token is a digital token created Their survival tends to rest on the quality of on a blockchain as part of a decentralized softmanagement and consumer service, on wheth- ware protocol.” er they can establish good relationships with the traditional banking system and on how

If you're interested in the future of investing and the future of business, it’s time to take more than a token interest in what’s happening in the token economy. Helen Disney is the CEO of Unblocked Events, a hub for Blockchain events, information and networking.

OCTOBER 2017

Mayfair & Morgan:

Opportunities for Blockchain Professionals Dubai has an established reputation of leading digital innovation for the world. For the first time, Dubai will be pioneering the application of Blockchain technology for smart cities, and sharing it with the world. Dubai will be the first Blockchain powered government, driving the future economy.

“Adopting Blockchain technology Dubai stands to unlock $1.5 billion in savings annually in document processing alone — equal to one Burj Khalifa’s worth of value every year.” by PAUL SKILLEN CEO of Mayfair & Morgan

The Mayfair & Morgan Blockchain Strategy establishes a roadmap for the introduction of Blockchain technology for Dubai and the creation of an open platform to share the technology with cities across the globe.

year, illustrating how demand is booming for people with the skills to harness the technology. Demand for Blockchain expertise is far outstripping supply, making it one of the hottest areas for technology opportunity. The best Blockchain engineers can command a salary above $250,000 - on the high side of what a talented consultant or software engineer can earn.

The Mayfair & Morgan Blockchain Centre of Excellence is a professional serPaul Skillen, CEO of Mayvices platform that facilifair & Morgan says “The tates the fulfilment of conICO TBA Smart Dubai Initiative tracts from a growing client is poised to create thoubase, ensuring skilled prosands of highly paid Professionals are assigned to fessional Service jobs in Dubai in the professionally managed projects. Facilcoming three years. Mayfair & Moritating Blockchain Professionals from gan are at the heart of this initiative around the world to create their own and our Centre of Excellence is idealbusiness. Additionally, the platform ly positioned to facilitate a Gig Econo- provides an Academy facility with acmy model to attract the brightest and cess to the most relevant training matethe best from across the globe. Disrial and CPD. Members will build their intermediating the large professional profile by combining an overview of services corporations, we will put con- skills, training and experience and will trol and revenue in the hands of the be verified and rated by the communiindividuals and the professional comty of professionals in their peer group. munity.” This ensures professional standards are driven forward and we can confidently Job adverts for Blockchain-related posi- match Professionals with well-paid astions has more than trebled in the past signments.

OCTOBER 2017

This is unique in the professional services industry, where a few major players, historically, have dominated the market. The Gig platform disintermediates the large corporation that are a cost centre and a drag on the agility of professionals and clients alike. Clients and Professionals are brought closer together. Professionals are in control of their own business and can select which assignments they want to participate in.

centives in order to make the operations run smoothly. Swarm allows for, swapping service for service and issuing cheques as instruments of delayed payment, and provides for various escrow conditions and for internal audit.

“The Smart Dubai Initiative is poised to create thousands of highly paid Professional Service jobs in Dubai in the MMBT Tokens are used to secure contracts, coming three years. Mayfair & Morgan pay professionals, open membership accounts are at the heart of this initiative and our and participate in CPD. The platform will pool a small percentage of each transaction to pro- Centre of Excellence is ideally positioned to facilitate a Gig Economy model to vide Professional Indemnity insurance for Members and to underwrite fixed price guarattract the brightest and the best from antees for clients. Purchasers of MMBT toacross the globe. Disintermediating the kens are buying into a professional Serviclarge professional services corporations, es Market that is growing in excess of 65% we will put control and revenue in CAGR. Purchasers of MMBT Tokens today can expect to see the value of those tokens rise the hands of the individuals and the rapidly as the platform gains momentum. professional community.”

Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned Blockchain infrastructure providing a modular architecture with a delineation of roles between the nodes in the infrastructure, execution of Smart Contracts and configurable consensus and membership services. Mayfair & Morgan believe the advantages of Hyperledger has a number of compelling advantages to the architecture, including: • Permissioned membership • Performance, scalability • Data on a need-to-know basis • Rich queries over an immutable distributed ledger • Modular architecture supporting plug-in components • Protection of digital keys and sensitive data

The Technical Architecture of the Platform integrates a proven Gig economy platform with Blockchain, embracing Swarm and Hyperledger. Swarm is a distributed storage platform and content distribution service built on Ethereum. It allows users to pool their spare resources to capitalise on them. We aim to make this a core block of the architecture. This layer aims to make the platform DDoS attack-resistant, zero-downtime, fault-tolerant and censorship-resistant. It aims to be self-sustaining owing to a built-in incentive system which harnesses peer to peer accounting and allows trading resources for payment. It offers ways of creating in-

So why a token offering? The simple answer is time and community participation. Organic growth will occur; however, a well-funded team will be better positioned to disrupt the market dominated by the Big 5 Professional Services Companies. Through an ITO we can offer the community of Blockchain Professionals and investors to participate in the business opportunity from the beginning.

PAUL SKILLEN, CEO of Mayfair & Morgan

“Adopting Blockchain technology Dubai stands to unlock $1.5 billion in savings annually in document processing alone — equal to one Burj Khalifa’s worth of value every year.”

MMBT – Mayfair & Morgan Tokens can be bought on the waves platform. Our Web site: http://www.mayfairandmorgan.com/blockchain/ 61

OCTOBER 2017

Trippki

Making Travel More Rewarding Finding and booking accommodation has never been easier. Visit any large Online Travel Agent (OTAs) and you’ll be presented with a disorienting amount of offers. But what on the surface seems like a great service has come at significant cost to both the hoby tels and customers. Hotels suffer both JOHN BLUNT @TheBluntBaronet financially and in terms of brand degradation, while the customer isn’t presented with the best offers. Hotels want to have a direct relationship with their customers, that’s how they can offer their guests the best service and the best deals. Reward systems offer an answer, but hotels are struggling with how to implement a reward solution that really works, something that creates true value and ultimately builds loyalty with their guests. While loyalty reward systems help to establish a relationship with a customer, in practice they don’t deliver. Points are hard to redeem, are not interoperable and are hard for the hotels to maintain. The Trippki loyalty reward system is powered by a crypto-token, TRIP, that enables a new level of customer experience, and doesn’t require maintenance on behalf of the hotel owner. TRIP is a cryptographically secure and decentralized token, a crypto-asset that is robust and redeemable at the holder’s discretion. TRIP token value comes from the access to a cost-efficient universal loyalty points travel economy. Over time customers build reputation within the platform, allowing hotels to tailor bespoke offers to them. Trippki, unlike any other OTA, is designed to generate network effects, because it is scalable and open. The distribution of TRIP ensures the economic incentives align quickly to achieve the necessary tipping point. TRIP is not inflationary, only 200 Million TRIP tokens will be minted, 40% of which are available through the Token Sale and 40% of which are locked into a Smart Contract called The Vault, and are released as the system scales. At predefined milestones The Vault reduces 62

the overall supply of TRIP by buying it from the market and burning it. FIXING THE BROKEN REWARDS SYSTEM There are a lot of fragmented travel rewards systems out there, many on a global scale. The idea behind Trippki is to create a more versatile rewards program that empowers guests to travel more often without sacrificing the security of their personal information.

other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. This broadens the versatility of reward points and increases the transferability of points to better serve the customer’s needs. Travel reward programs mainly aim to benefit the guest, but with Trippki the hotels also benefit. Current loyalty membership programs require a large amount of maintenance on the owner’s behalf.

Trippki utilizes the distributed ledger of blockchain to dramatically decrease the amount of money and time reLoyalty rewards programs are everywhere; from craft stores to gas stations. quired to establish and sustain customer reward programs. AdThere are some estimated ditionally, by using TRIP, 3.8 billion loyalty program PRE ICO is Live hotels incentivize guests memberships in the US, to promote them on sobut 54% of these accounts are inactive, according to a study by Col- cial media, refer them to friends, and so forth, expanding their reach. While loquy. The travel industry is no differthe current travel rewards system is ent. There certainly are benefits to providing a loyalty program to your custom- desperately in need of creating a new, more flexible system in order to be er base, however, the current structure able to cater to the needs of individuhinders its potential. Rewards function independently from each other, making al guests, it also needs to reconsider its handling and storage of guest’s personit difficult for guests to truly benefit. If one was to cash out their points to book al information. a hotel, they are often limited in terms Current travel rewards programs, of hotel locations, dates, and length of through both individual hotels and their stay. In addition, many rewards programs set these points to expire after third party online travel agents, store massive amounts of personal informaa certain amount of time, leaving customers frustrated. This results in a high tion in data silos. These silos are at risk of security breaches, putting guest’s inrate of inactive or lapsed loyalty memformation at risk. By using blockchain bership accounts. technology, Trippki aims to fix this by These broken rewards systems are what utilizing an open protocol powered by an Ethereum-based token, instead of inspired the team to develop Trippki. the traditional closed silo model. We want to provide a new kind of travel rewards program that Our goal is to build a decentralized travallows points to be redeemable at the holder’s discretion. el rewards protocol that will help re-establish the line of communication beTrippki will accomplish tween hotels and their guests, instead this by leveraging the power of cryptocurren- of relying on online travel agents, divercy and blockchain tech- sify the redeemability of travel reward points and secure individual’s data. nology, with our native token, TRIP. TRIP will be rewarded to guests in the form To learn more, visit our website at of a kickback after staying at a Trippki.com where you can read our white paper. participating hotel. TRIP can be applied to a wide range of hotel amenities to encourage the guest to book spe@TheBluntBaronet cialty services, tours, dine at on-premThe world's most notorious Chairman. ise dining, etc. For the guest, TRIP has Created what has become known as one immediate utility as it can be used to of history's most extreme cases of stock pay for hotel bookings and services on market boom and bust. Loves ICOs & Tokens. Trippki as well as be exchanged into

OCTOBER 2017

What is Sense? A Conversation with Crystal Rose, CEO of Sense, with Alex Lightman. Alex Lightman: What is Sense? Crystal Rose: A way to share your knowledge and to earn from it. Sense is also a protocol for human intelligence, and a token that allows you to get rewarded for your human capital. A token is a value holder or placeby holder for all the things you can conALEX LIGHTMAN tribute, a very granular way to keep track of all the knowledge you share, big and small, across the digital world. Your slogan is â&#x20AC;&#x153;Rewarding Human Capital.â&#x20AC;? How does that work? 64

Human capital is something we deWhat are the parts of the Sense fine as all your skills, life experience, ecosystem? your knowledge. Everything you con- There are three parts. Sense, a token of tribute digitally (some code posted value for human capital. The applicaon Github, giving recommendations tion layer, on which Sensay is the largon Facebook, answering AMAs, com- est application currently running, with menting on Reddit, or contributions three million active users and growto conversations on Teleing faster now that we angram) is rewarded by getnounced Sense would be ICO is Live used on this application layting Sense, which is a token. The more Sense you er. The third part is Humans. have, the more knowledge you can re- AI, which is a protocol for Human Intelquest with Sense. Sense allows you ligence, and developer tools for accessto gift knowledge and be gifted more ing a neural net of human data, and acknowledge in return. cessing live actual humans.

OCTOBER 2017

What are the different smart contracts that Sense makes use of? There are smart contracts in chat and they can be extended to any application. The first smart contract is the token itself, which is a value exchange. The second one is knowledge attribution, which includes what you have contributed to centralized and decentralized applications (like Reddit and Steemit). If I have told Sensay the bot everything about the Blockchain that I know, that can go into the knowledge attribution contract. And the third one is the knowledge access contract, which includes all your digital knowledge online. You get rewarded every time that you allow a human or bot to access that knowledge.

be on the network. Sense is a reward system that makes you feel good about both sharing and transacting, and you don’t have to feel as though you are forced to give away everything you know to everyone for free all the time. How much are you raising and how will that money be used? We have a cap of $25 million. We have a billion tokens and we are going to be selling 275 million of them. 30% are reserved for current developers and communities. 15% is reserved for future developers. 27.5% each will be sold in the token sale and reserved for the organization. I am excited to use the money to build out the Sense ecosystem. My primary goal now is to get as many developers as possible building out what we could call “the Collective Consciousness”. What is the Collective Consciousness? It’s everything we have in our minds that we are willing to share or hold in common. It’s the global human network. To me, it’s what we love about the Internet, all transacted through the human network, but personal, and instant. There are aspects that are the same as The Matrix, in that expertise can be downloaded. Neo said, “I know Kung Fu.” I want anyone to be able to instantly download and grasp expertise in any field he or she chooses.

Where does artificial intelligence play a role with the Sense ecosystem? We believe that the future of intelligence is human, not just artificial. We think of artificial intelligence and human intelligence converging, and want us to think of AI as Augmented Intelligence. We have machine learning, so that an AI can understand the value of the knowledge when we are doing knowledge attribution, and this is done today via conversation analysis. We can know a lot about a person on the platform we call Humans.AI, which is a protocol accessible by developers and on the Blockchain. Developers can build, for instance, a dating bot. The developers can use the knowledge of the community and find all the people who share interests in, say, Game of Thrones, cats, and strategy games. To access all this, the developers would pay Sense. Who is your market? We are a consumer-focused Blockchain application that gives value to people for something they use every day. Everyone uses messenger applications, social media, and other platforms like blogging, but most people get buried beneath search engine optimization. There are 7.5 billion people in the world and 4.9 billion with mobile phones, and 3.6 billion with access to the Internet. 2.8 billion are on social media and 1.2 billion are on Messenger. What’s the point of all those stats? To me, that nearly everyone is one line, and we should be better at connecting and sharing knowledge, intelligence, information, wisdom and good work. We as humans could transfer information faster and learn faster if we could connect to the right people at the right time. If we want to add brains as nodes on the network, we would have to have two things: brains that were good actors and had the desire to

The more Sense you have, the more knowledge you can request with Sense. Sense allows you to gift knowledge and be gifted more knowledge in return. My primary goal now is to get as many developers as possible building out what we could call “the Collective Consciousness”.

There’s another aspect to this, related to the Blockchain. Operating with transparency leads to operating with integrity. We have to get better at working for the good of groups, communities and the whole. That’s a beneficial effect of working in decentralized communities and industries. My experience is that over-centralization leads to overemphasis on self-interest that is misaligned with other interests and parties. So I would like the Sense-centric Collective Consciousness to have people want to contribute to the global better human network. Why is so much good work done for free, considering all the charitable and volunteer work? We want to bring about a convergence of interests and maximize incentives to do good work for good reasons, and have a way of keeping track. That’s Sense. Are there specific ways that developers can participate? Yes. We appreciate it, when we can find and collaborate with developer communities that have benevolent values and are making contributions that improve society and could be called good work. We also offer to help developers who have advances in software and who want to find communities to offer their software to.

Neo said, “I know Kung Fu.” I want anyone to be able to instantly download Thank you, Crystal. We wish you success and grasp expertise in any field he or she with Sense, Sensay and building out the chooses. Collective Consciousness! 65

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“The Empires of the Future are the Empires of the Mind” (Churchill’s words before a Harvard audience in 1943) Indeed, Churchill’s vision is needed to see beyond the current angst about the application of securities laws to ICOs or heavy-handed Chinese officials banning token offerings outright.

Today, he would see the use of blockchain to create an impact, to create shared wealth in Africa, Latin America, India, South East Asia for one reason. As AOL founder Steve Case recently said, ‘An African proverb says: if you want to go fast, you go by ICO CROWD alone, but if you want to go far you go together.’

ing anyone to buy, sell, borrow, barter and save in traditional or virtual markets using a Token. The size of the investment doesn’t matter. Hedge funds seeking alpha in a total addressable market of $2.6 trillion can cohabitate with an African worker saving $3 a week. Harmony of contradictions.

IT ALL STARTS WITH INCLUSION In that spirit, our story is one about inclusion, not by design but by necessity. Our mission is clear: to connect all citizens around the world to a network of centralized exchanges, allow-

Our blockchain journey started on March 3, 2016. We went through the code IBM had donated to the Hyperledger Foundation. Our team was a total of two. What we had was a bookkeeping system on a network of com-

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puters, dense papers on treacherous Byzantine generals and 3 nodes eagerly waiting for instructions by chain code. On May 8, 2016, we ran a test of the issuance of T-bills and bonds with the Central Bank of Somalia in Mogadishu. A second node made trades in London and D.C. and could audit the ledger whenever it suited them. Our first deal wasn’t Wall St. but Somalia. If we could make it there, we could make it anywhere. The summer continued as we added a couple of nodes and included Israel as the next stop, a week before we were granted the green light to test in Lebanon. An American law firm helped us with compliance and sanctions, because that is just the way the blockchain community works. Somehow this blockchain world was different. It reminded me of a story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The town of Macondo is very dull, just like blockchain bookkeeping, but once in a while, an outbreak of the supernatural stirs it all up. ‘What business are you in?’ soon was met with the answer ‘Magical Realism. You?’ We knew the blockchain worked. In December of 2016, we were privileged to meet a quiet team of gravitas in East Africa with the fastest high-frequency trading platform in production. A Joint Venture we established with them is the first of its kind. It is a fabric of regional, low latency trading exchanges with centralized clearing and blockchain integration. The platform was launched starting with Depository Receipts to be followed by a broad offering of structured products, FX, ETFs, Sovereign and Corporate Debt.

NOW COMES THE REGULATION Let’s get over the shock that the United States, which has had the same securities law since 1933, pretty much said in late July that if a promoter sells a coin for cash that a prospectus is needed.

We ran a test of the issuance of T-bills and bonds with the Central Bank of Somalia in Mogadishu. ‘What business are you in?’ soon was met with the answer ‘Magical Realism. You?’

Now we span 5 continents and speak over 30 languages - an international group of senior executives and entrepreneurs with experience in The nonconventional singularity of our team is building new markets through a strategy first and foremost its diversity: Now we span of shared value complemented by 5 continents and speak over 30 languages expertise in the use of blockchain, big an international group of senior executives data, and cybersecurity. and entrepreneurs with experience in building new markets through a strategy of shared value complemented by expertise in the use of blockchain, big data, and cybersecurity. The dynamic nature of our Network enables us to move together quickly yet with coordination. backgrounds and fields. THE D.A.O. It was a lot of work to file in the US, get FCA authorised and publish prospectuses on Protected Cell Companies. One move we made was to create a D.A.O. It was no more than an LLP with a membership agreement always giving investors the right to vote. Every legal vehicle now, Jersey ILP, Delaware LLC, French and Luxembourg partnerships allow the right to vote; so, a slight hesitation was Mauritius. Smart code? Well, it is dual French and English law. Fortunately, French law prevails.

We can’t ignore the world’s largest economy and issuer of the global reserve currency because of what the SEC was bound to do. Yes, it’s more expensive to hire a lawyer to file a form S-1 and an auditor to check out some projections but compare that to the value of a freely traded token? Already GIFTz has a SAFT for its`` ICO – or initial crowdfunding offering. HERE IS A GUIDE • Delaware has the blockchain initiative • Nevada, Illinois, Arizona, Wyoming and Vermont are blockchain enablers • Accredited Investors require a memorandum • An investment advisor’s permission is needed under the 1940 Act if you are launching a fund > $150 million • A full-blown ICO requires an S-1 • All the Cayman, Mauritius, EU, UK require a prospectus if over a certain amount • MAS and Hong Kong have unique rules We are proud of the quality of our team: a team that builds products and markets, and combines a technology to serve them and liquidity to grease them. Our team opens the door for cooperation with other teams and groups - our partners - that is our way to co-create wealth in five continents. We are using blockchain to create an impact, to create wealth, through shared values; harnessing technology as a bridge to address pressing human nihilism in ‘failed states’ as we move from the digital age to the cognitive era. We believe that the Fourth Wave has arrived preserved by the immutable blockchain. News and details on the project will be released soon... 67

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KPMG Collaboration Boosts ICO for Construction Payroll Platform Etch Etch (www.etch.work), a UK business hosting an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that runs until Wednesday October 18, 2017, has announced that it is receiving support from one of the world’s ‘big four’ accountancy firms, KPMG. ICO is live

Chris Mills, Head of Blockchain for KPMG UK said, “Etch is a superb initiative because it provides guaranteed payments in real-time for all work completed, something that no other platform is currently known to achieve”. by BEN WHYTE Etch Community Manager

“There are clear and immediate benefits, particularly for low and average income workers, who make up the clear majority of the population”. “Etch stands out as it leverages blockchain, mobile and digital technologies in a customer-friendly way. It uses smart technology to power intuitive apps that deliver exactly what’s needed in a simple and neat format for those most in need of cash flow”.

“What’s also noteworthy is that Etch has an exceptionally strong delivery team who are well placed to deliver long term growth plans.” Etch is the first approved decentralized app (Dapp) created with the support of the London-based Construction Blockchain Consortium, a group of leading UK champions of disruptive technology who are transforming the building environment. The Etch platform is particularly applicable to the construction industry where the payment system can be complex and late payments can cripple otherwise successful businesses. Headed up by Welsh-born, London-based technology entrepre-

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neur Euros Evans, Etch, is a new blockchain-based payroll system that allows employers to pay workers second by second. The start-up is raising £5million to develop the platform. KPMG is also advising on the best business practice for the current ICO phase, encompassing valuations, tax implications, risk framework, governance and controls. Recipients of the Etch technology will be paid in the currency of their choice and can arrange for part payment to a family member at home or abroad. It uses an innovative payroll card that will be accepted at millions of locations worldwide. Additionally, the system allows those who do not have bank accounts to be paid securely. The Etch system will use its own token, called the Etch Token (symbol: ETCH). Euros Evans said, “Billions of the world’s population, live paycheque to paycheque, a situation that can lead to mounting debt, stress and poor health. The Etch solution enables employers to pay their employees in real time. If, for example, they don’t have any money at the beginning of the day, their morning’s work will mean they have enough money for lunch and other purchases. “When people are being paid as soon as they’ve earned it, we can reduce the need for payday loans and other such instruments to plug spending gaps, as well as improving employees’ peace of mind.

“We will use Ethereum blockchain technology to unify payroll and remittance services to create a platform that not only benefits employees, but reduces business inefficiencies, saving them time and cost in payroll.”

“Etch is a superb initiative because it provides guaranteed payments in realtime for all work completed, something that no other platform is currently known to achieve”.

Etch comprises a team of highly-skilled innovators including Etch CTO Tomasz Mloduchowski, a former MIT student of computational physics and supercomputing. Tomasz has been involved in blockchain since 2010, has worked on a number of technology projects and is also a technology consultant for several financial institutions.

“There are clear and immediate benefits, particularly for low and average income As well as Euros and Tomasz, Etch has a talworkers, who make up the clear majority ented technical team including engineers Joshua Richardson and Denis Lukianov, and of the population”. “Etch stands out as it leverages blockchain, mobile and digital technologies in a customer-friendly way. It uses smart technology to power intuitive apps that deliver exactly what’s needed in a simple and neat format for those most in need of cash flow”. CHRIS MILLS Head of Blockchain for KPMG UK

digital entrepreneur Ben Whyte. Joshua is a blockchain engineer and programmer who deployed his first commercial software at the age of 13. Denis created a prototype for Bitcoin futures exchange and invented Compact Confidential Contracts in 2015. Etch Community Manager, Ben Whyte ran his first business at the age of 14 and later became a blockchain consultant and business developer. For more information about Etch and the token sale please visit https://etch.work. Etch White Paper https://etch.work/static/ files/Etch_White_Paper.pdf Construction Blockchain Consortium https://www.constructionblockchain.org/ KPMG https://home.kpmg.com/uk/en/home.html 69

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WASTED ENERGY STATE OF AFFAIRS One Bitcoin transaction consumes as much energy as 7.55 homes in the United States for 1 day, compared to one Ethereum transaction that consumes as much energy as 1.34 homes in the United States for 1 day as of this by article. SANDEEP

GOLECHHA Founder & Chief Executive Officer

In 2015, Bitcoin consumed as much energy as Ethereum does today, however, given the rising price and demand for cryptocurrencies the energy consumption for Bitcoin has skyrocketed. Ethereum is on the same track as Bitcoin, given the flexible ERC20 contract that most ICO’s use to launch their respective product. The Ethereum platform is already trying to reduce its energy consumption by implementing a proof-of-stake algorithm instead of its less efficient proof-of-work predecessor. This however won’t be enough and we must start thinking about scalable, environmentally responsible solutions to minimize our global impact. INTRODUCTION 4NEW Limited is the world’s first blockchain integrated, Waste to Energy public utility treatment plant. 4NEW will take over the waste disposal process, where instead of putting waste in the ground the waste is used to generate energy. This will revolutionize Waste and Energy industries and will have a direct impact on the environ-

ment. By offering token-as-a-service dom, 4NEW will be completely inyou can trace your waste and see how stalled and operational by December much energy is created in return. To31, 2018. Given the short gestation pekens can be utiriod, 4NEW will lized to buy back quickly position this energy and itself in a crowded Pre-Sale: create a full waste ICO world as one October 17th – 30th to energy ecosysof the most statem. ble and liquid digICO: ital assets availaNov 1st – SOLUTION ble to the commuDecember 15th 4NEW’s platform nity. After the sucsolves two of the cessful pilot this biggest social isproject will be exsues of our time. 4NEW collects the panded globally to countries like [india/ waste from households, processing it korea/china/…]. Due to their large popthrough its waste conversion treatment ulation size we foresee that these counplant, turning it into electricity. Electries will produce massive amounts of tricity is then sold back to the housewaste and have a high energy demand. holds, where the waste was collected from. Alternatively, electricity can also Coin Price Stability and Liquidity be sold to the national grid or aggrega- The constant growing demand for tors that would be regarded as industry 4NEW services within its ecosystem peers, or data servers to support future will directly correlate to liquidity for blockchain platforms. the 4NEW Coin. Additionally, with the ability to determine future sales and SCALABILITY revenues, 4NEW is equipped to have a With a global plan to scale this localized clear and transparent outlook for supsolution addressing the waste surplus ply and demand for its coins at any givand the energy shortfall crisis, 4NEW en time. This supply/demand predictwill not only revolutionize the blockability facilitates price stability for the chain network but also standardize dig- 4NEW Coin. ital assets as a means to transact business within a conventional setting. OFFERING SCHEDULE 4NEW Limited is scheduled to launch With three sites already identified to its Pre-sale round starting October run the first pilot in the United King17th, 2017 through till October 30,

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2017. Additionally, the Live Launch will occur November 1st, 2017 through December 15th, 2017, with a subsequent listing on exchanges by December 18th, 2017. HISTORY Our modern day technological revolution has been fueled by our ability to extract energy from our surroundings. Mankind has historically used and abused fossil fuels to sustain the Industrial Revolution over the past 200 years. However, as we have finally realized, Newtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Our impact on the world and environment to pacify our hunger to fuel this unsustainable need for energy in order to support our modern lifestyle has come with an equal and opposite push back from planet Earth. Weather channels across the world will confirm an increasing number of record heat years in various parts of the world, in addition, mind numbing category 5 hurricanes and typhoons around the world causing destruction in metropolitan cities with large populations, or the disappearing ice-caps causing a severe threat of rising sea levels. RISE OF DIGITAL ASSETS In the midst of this great and grand energy gap that currently exists, allow me to introduce the next revolution, in case you were living under a rock over the past 12 months. Digital Assets such as cryptocurrencies, officially transitioning onto the Main Stage after years of being in the shadows, have finally been acknowledged by the world as a dis-

One Bitcoin transaction consumes as much energy as 7.55 homes in the United States for 1 day, compared to one Ethereum transaction that consumes as much energy as 1.34 homes. 4NEW collects the waste from households, processing it through its waste conversion treatment plant, turning it into electricity. With the ability to determine future sales and revenues, 4NEW is equipped to have a clear and transparent outlook for supply and demand for its coins at any given time.

ruptive, scalable and flexible solution that is here to stay. This year alone, close to USD 4 billion in ICOs are currently on their way to adding value to this network and many more are to follow prior to the end of the year. Some may regard this mania as a bubble ready to burst, however, in our opinion, this movement marks the birth of a new asset class, namely Digital Assets, which have never existed before. Observing the birth of an asset class is truly a celestial event, having occurred only a few times in the course of human evolution. THOSE WHO DO NOT LEARN FROM HISTORY, ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT Nevertheless, we cannot afford to ignore the lessons of the Industrial Revolution that eventually led to the Technological Revolution, which is to be cognizant of our energy consumption while we fuel our growth. What the new entrants into this crypto-world have not realized is that the blockchain network using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are unsustainable in the long run given the voracious energy consumption required by the networks to perform either a single Bitcoin or Ethereum transaction. It is our responsibility as the founding cryptocurrency community, to deal with all facets of our existence and be self-critical. It was shown here, and there is no shying away from it anymore. It is our responsibility to deal with our waste and if we can help the world a bit in the process all the better. 71

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"When Mass Adoption?" –

The 21 Million Bitcoin Question Whether you've been into Cryptocurrency for a while, you're a Crypto Master, a sceptic, or a complete newbie to the whole idea, but thinking where does this go?

One thing that is probably the most speculative is…when will Cryptocurrencies become "the norm"?

by NATHANIEL COLE Co-founder BTC Bros.

From its inception in 2008 to implementation in 2009, Bitcoin and the Blockchain were met with an appraisal by many Internet groups, hackers, deep web communities and technology experts as the next best

thing, if not better than cash and the FIAT monetary system. Being worth almost nothing (to non-adopters), the technology and overlaying currency was initially touted as an "Internet craze", in the general and soon after mainstream media. Banks, online merchants, traders, retailers, financial experts and the general public either had never heard of it or passed it off as another "fad". When hearing first about Bitcoin, I was drawn to a similar conclusion myself, however, lack of understanding and knowledge left me to continue for some time on this belief. Maybe that's why I decided along with my long-term friend and business partner Jonathan, to eventually start a company educating and consulting on all things Crypto. Anyway, back to the subject…

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Fast-forward to 2013, Bitcoin is now listed on the Mt. Gox exchange and it rockets, making it worth $22 (thanks to Coinbase), then $74 and rising to over $250 per Bitcoin, before dipping again and settling at around $48. A wealth of millionaires across the globe were made, however, the question seemed to still be the same. When will people be using Bitcoin, or Cryptocurrencies in the same way as cash? I first became seriously interested and involved in Cryptocurrencies at the start of 2015 and along with Jonathan, we started to see just how things worked and how much the entire world could benefit and be changed through the use of Bitcoin, the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. #Thought… If only it was mass adopted… we first started by looking at mining and algorithms, how the Blockchain works, how Cryptocurrencies are denominated, how they are valued and more… After stacking up amounts of Satoshi, Litecoin and Dash we started looking for ways to make more…and how to spend it. At the time there were not many services, or ways to use Crypto in the UK apart from peer-2-peer, which I suppose is the point anyway, however, we still were researching and mass adoption seemed like light years away, maybe even a far-fetched concept altogether. We stuck at it though and after missing out on the near cost double of Bitcoin around the halving in 2016, we certainly knew mass adoption was imminent... errm…maybe… Move on a bit further and we are in 2017, insiders of the Crypto-communities have seen Bitcoin grow and the community along with it. Bitcoin's growth over the past year, or so alone has been from just over $300 to over $450, over $800 then over $1000 (in 2016), now as we are only a

few months away from the close of 2017, Bitcoin rises ever so slowly to the $5000 mark. It seems everyone and their granny is excited, the "Cryptopians", the hackers, online groups, even the banks and governments. There are now tons of Cryptocurrencies, with 200 ICO's a week being created, government bans,

major money laundering, bad headlines (despite the good ones of lives and livelihoods all over the world being totally transformed). Crypto has made miallionaires, changed complete monetary and technological systems, gave people a financial standing and created hundreds of thousands of jobs across the globe, with further changes to come. Still, the one thing that we see is a PATH to mass adoption, however, we're still not quite there. I mean if you've milled about in the Crypto forums, joined a few

groups on Telegram, or decided to jump into a Slack channel for a project you hold of interest, then I'm sure you would have seen the question being asked by newbie's, genuine adopters and fly-by-night crypto-crazed investors alike…"When mass adoption?" To which the reply is normally, but justly, "Read the whitepaper". I mean, what kind of answer do people expect, asking

about mass adoption is almost akin to asking for the time, date and place of judgment day. Despite the growth of the communities and recent publicity, the majority of the world still seems to be totally clueless about Bitcoin, the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. The average person may have heard something about it on a news report that they incoherently took a keyword or two from. This tells us that mass adoption still is not here, but could actually be implemented at any time, seeing as Blockchain technology is already being implemented in the back end of life itself, going by the large corporate and government interests. Personally, I think a state of mass adoption better applies to Cryptocurrency on a whole rather than just Bitcoin, being that only 21 million will ever be created and as I believe that between 2020 and 2025, it is most likely that we will all be using a Blockchain based system and, or Cryptocurrencies in some fashion. Taking all of this into account, many still believe that mass adoption will never occur. Crypto-communities and insiders know it will, or do we? When it comes to the crunch and mass adoption is almost certain, will it all go wrong? Would all of our endeavours be wasted following a flawed "leap" in technological boundaries? Will we all just be 50/50 on the subject in time to come? I guess even then the question will still be asked, "When mass adoption?" 73

OCTOBER 2017

The Rebirth of

INKCHAIN

The Intellectual property asset exchange To begin with, let us start by bringing to light a few home truths. Since the beginning of the creative industry, artists have been getting ripped off, either through ridiculous percentage cuts from their IP, the theft and redistribution of their work, or simply not getting what they were owed. Why?

Well, I presume it’s because they are too leged that Spotify had unlawfully disbusy focusing on producing amazing tributed copyrighted music composipieces, therefore, they leave the selling tions to more than 75 million users, and business aspects to someone they but failed to identify or locate the ownbelieve they can trust, someers of those compositions for one who will give them every payment, and did not issue a penny of what they are owed. ICO TBA notice of intent to employ a by It turns out, that the majority compulsory license. DONOVAN OBOSI ICO analyst can’t be trusted. Earlier this year, The Carpenters who In 2014 a lawsuit was brought against sold millions of records and won three Led Zeppelin, by the estate of forGrammy awards in the 1970s sued Unimer Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe. Miversal Music over unpaid royalties. The chael Skidmore, a trustee for Wolfe's pursuant claimed Universal Music had estate, claimed the band stole the intro only paid the band a "minuscule fracto 1971's "Stairway" from Spirit's 1968 tion" of the money they were owed song, "Taurus.”. In 2015, a lawsuit was from downloads on sites like iTunes brought against Spotify by vocal artist and Amazon. Examples like this are rights advocate David Lowery. It was al- easy to come by, but with the advent of

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the Blockchain, tokenisation and decentralisation, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel.

plementations of different components, and accommodate the complexity and intricacies that exist across the economic ecosystem”. The public blockchain platform they are using is Qtum. INKCHAIN has produced a Blockchain concept INKCHAIN may be one of the most innovative that will reshape the content value chain as we projects to run on Qtum, whose projects inknow it today. The goal is to tokenize the include: Agrello, BitClave, Energo, Bodhi, Vevue tellectual property of artists, allowing them to and Spacechain to mention a few. receive complete remuneration for their work, that in some cases, may have taken years to The tokenization process allows for an artcreate. ist to retain a percentage that he/she is happy with, it works by storing the digital assets on REBIRTH INKCHIAN is not a new company (new in crypto means 3 seconds ago), they previously conducted an ICO in China. Their ICO was a hit raising $21 million and sold out in 8 hours, in fact, it was more like a couple of hours, but ICOAGE had some technical difficulties during the ICO. Then came the BAN, this meant that the team had to give back a majority of funds to in- The pursuant claimed Universal Music vestors, leaving them with just enough to keep had only paid the band a “minuscule the dream alive; it is clear to see that failure is fraction” of the money they were owed not an option for the INKCHAIN team, as this from downloads on sites like iTunes and did not stop them in their tracks. In the true sense of decentralisation, they just hopped on a Amazon. plane and picked up where they left off. HOW DOES IT WORK? Due to the proprietary nature of the assets, INKCHAIN will use a redesigned hyper ledger fabric private chain infrastructure, with an added Ethereum token issuing layer. To quote their website “Hyperledger Fabric is a platform for distributed ledger solutions, underpinned by a modular architecture delivering high degrees of confidentiality, resiliency, flexibility and scalability. It is designed to support pluggable im-

Then came the BAN, this meant that the team had to give back a majority of funds to investors, leaving them with just enough to keep the dream alive.

the blockchain and issuing tokens that represent the assets. Therefore, the tokens become ABS (Asset Backed Securities), where the asset becomes the intellectual property, so anyone who wants access to the IP must by the token, tokens will be issued via the INK smart contract that is developed in-house. LET’S ALL WORK TOGETHER INKCHAIN is not the first company to come up with this idea, but they understand that it is much better to work together than against each other (with all this money flying about, this is a fact that many in the space seem to have forgotten). This is why they have begun to build the Global Blockchain copyrighting alliance. There are currently three members at the time of writing, these include BigchainDB (Germany), PO.ET (America) and Ziggurat (China). TOKEN DETAILS Total Token Amount: 1,000,000,000 (100%) Tokens distributed during ICO: 435,000,000 (43.5%) Tokens previously allocated to private investors: 130,000,000 (13%) Tokens held by team: 435,000,000 (43.5%) Token Price: £0.09 Market Cap: £50,850,000 (Proposed Circulated supply * ICO price) Softcap: 7,500 BTC Hardcap: 15,000 BTC

Therefore, the tokens become ABS (Asset INKCHAIN, have a stellar team and soon they Backed Securities), where the asset will be conducting their ICO to help realise becomes the intellectual property. their dream. Stay tuned for more news on this exciting project. 75

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Loyakk Announces Vega, a Blockchain-enabled Decentralized Enterprise Relationship Platform Loyakk’s Enterprise Relationship Platform, Vega, aims to impact the multi-billion-dollar market for enterprise applications through blockchain-based decentralization. Its game-changing platform will transform how enterprises interact, transact and engage with their customers, channel partners, distributors, and suppliers.

by RAKESH SREEKUMAR Chief Marketing Officer

Loyakk, the provider of enterprise relationship management applications, announced Vega, the world’s first and only blockchain-enabled Enterprise Relationship Management platform. Loyakk was founded by a world-class team with established credentials with technology giants such as SAP, IBM, Oracle-Siebel, VMware and HP in the areas of both technology and business management and is backed by a global advisory team of seasoned luminaries with notable global companies as customers. Vega is on an exciting mission to transform enterprise ecosystems for the decentralized economy. To realize this vision, Loyakk launched a token crowdsale which kicked off with an oversubscribed private pre-sale on September 25, 2017. The public crowdsale opens on October 29, 2017. For more information on Vega and its mission, the platform, the team, the applications portfolio, use cases, and white paper, visit Loyakk.io. BUILDING ‘ENTERPRISE VALUE WEBS’ AS MODERN DIGITAL, DECENTRALIZED ECOSYSTEMS Loyakk’s mission is to help companies across the globe succeed in the new decentralized economy by reinventing the way they drive business and value across their fast-growing ecosystem of customers, channel partners, distributors, and suppliers. Loyakk is building transformative ‘Enterprise Value Webs’, which are decentralized, distributed, digital ecosystem structures, powered and protected by blockchain technology, and where

multi-dimensional relationships are securely managed to create, deliver and move value to meet projected business demand.

lationships and deploy innovative business models to acquire & retain customers and revenues in the new decentralized economy.

“By reimagining how businesses inter"Enterprise Applications have been left act and move data and value between untouched thus far by the power and organizations, blockchain has the popotential of the blockchain, which is tential to disrupt the ironic given the billions broader business appliin value that move becation space. Loyakk tween enterprises each ICO Start: Oct 29th has the required techniday. Loyakk's vision to ICO End: Dec 10th cal and business manbring together secure agement expertise and data movement coupled the enterprise software DNA to deliver with a much more tightly connected ecoon this audacious goal of building enter- system of value chains is a very compelprise value webs,” Jonathan Becher, exling vision and holds the potential for Chief Digital Officer of SAP and also an rewriting the rules of enterprise softadvisor to Loyakk. ware,” Patricia Hatter, ex-CIO, McAfee. The blockchain-powered Vega Enterprise Relationship Platform offers a secure, data repository on consortium Blockchain that will power Value Webs, where Enterprises can share sensitive business data and insights across their business ecosystem. The Vega-powered Value Webs will ensure permission access for data sharing, value movement, and automated business processes via smart contracts so that enterprises can seamlessly conduct business with anyone across the world as long as they contribute value to the end customer. This will help businesses across the globe expand their ecosystem, efficiently forge new re-

ABOUT LOYAKK Loyakk is based in London, UK with a presence in Palo Alto, California and is reimagining how enterprises engage securely and seamlessly across their business network leveraging the power of blockchain. Loyakk is run by a bluechip team with rich enterprise-software DNA having been an architect of ETrade's Options Trading Platform, developed High-Frequency Trading Platforms at CMT and Penson, built infrastructure analytics solutions for large enterprises and ran multi-billion-dollar solutions and marketing efforts at SAP, Oracle-Siebel, and VMware.