Moneybox

moneybox

Great Expectations: Chapter VII

Table of Contents 1. Introduction: All About Investment 2. What Are Investment Apps? 3. Investment App Usage Over The Years 4. Best Investment Apps for Beginner Investors in 2021 5. The Future of Investment Apps: The Fin Tech Analysis Introduction: All About Investment Making money comes naturally for techies: saving and investing on the other hand, can be like walking on a tightrope for some of us. This is partly because of the rising cost of daily living and also due to the many investment scams all over the globe. Investments are assets acquired with the hope of increasing in value over a period of time or generating income. When you invest, your end goal is making a profit. Over the years, there have been numerous forms of investment. People have been putting their money in stocks, bonds, real estate, businesses, cryptocurrency, etc. However, with the recent advancements in technology, people do not have to physically visit financial institutions to invest: investments can be made from a tap on a mobile device app. What Are Investment Apps? Investment apps, otherwise known as micro investing apps, are mobile applications that enable users to save and invest their money for a given period of time. These applications are usually designed to help you make small investments by an automated saving and investment system. These apps may require a debit or credit card linking, as well as your email address and some user verification. However, they help you invest small amounts of money that eventually round up to larger figures in the long run. Investment apps could let you start investing from $1, $5, $20, etc and the commission fees are usually lower compared to that of the traditional financial investment platforms. Micro investing apps also take into consideration your investment risk level and provide financial education on investing: this may come in the form of tutorials which are very helpful for beginner investors. Investment App Usage Over The Years People have always invested their money, however they have not always used investment apps. The development of micro investing apps was as a result of the increasing need to invest and the high cost of living that resulted in no savings for many. A 2016 Financial Times Report from the company website showed that according to The Money Charity, about 9.61 million households in the UK had no savings. Money Box, an app designed to help young people between the ages of 18 to 35 invest as low as 20 pence was set to be launched, following the US and Australia micro investing app launches. In 2018, the US Today disclosed that apps like Robbinhood, Acorn and Stash were blowing up in the stock market fluctuations. The beginner investors shared their worries initially, but they received enough encouragement to ride through the financial storm. 2021 has the best investment apps from Acorn to Webull and the famed TD Ameritrade. These apps offer small investment plans, automated investments, user tutorials and investment risk plans. Beginner investors, low risk investors and investors with small capital actively use these apps. Best Investment Apps For Beginner Investors in 2021 Based on online discussions and popularity, here is a list of five best investment apps for beginner investors in 2021. : The Investing and Trading App which has a 4.3 rating from over 16,000 users on the Google Playstore enables users to invest from $1 in the United States. The app offers you $10 in Bitcoin for your first crypto trade: the fees are as low as 0% for active trading and 1.25% for cryptocurrencies. 1. SoFi Sofi : offers users a clear view of the stock market. You can trade stocks, ETFs and options from your mobile device. You can view your portfolio and receive price alerts to monitor your trading. In addition, you can view up to seven years of tax documents and ten years of statements on the app. 2. TD Ameritrade TD Ameritrade : is a new app designed for trading stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies. There is also the option for a fantasy stock trading game and when you play with your friends, you stand the chance of winning from a pool of $100,000 of virtual cash. Although Wealthbase is not so popular, it has a lot of potential for investing in the FinTech space. 3. Wealthbase Wealthbase : provides its users the opportunity to access market performance, see the most active stocks of the day and track a waitlist. You can also deposit checks into your Merrill account or Bank of America account by just snapping a picture. There are available tools designed to make the trading and investment process easier for beginners. 4. Merrill Edge Merrill Edge : is a popular app rated 4.5 by over 17,000 users that allows users to spend, borrow and invest with the tap of a finger. The app allows users to watch their portfolios, create new portfolio templates and access helpful automation tools that make beginner investing an enjoyable experience. 5. M1 Finance M1 Finance The Future of Investment Apps: The FinTech Analysis Investment Apps are becoming very popular among young people: with time, these apps have become dominant in the FinTech Space. They are convenient to use and the financial education services they provide make usage for beginner users easier. There have also been some controversies about the investment apps: in 2017, reported that Acorn was making 6.2% every year from over 50,000 micro investors. This may not seem much, but for a user with a balance of $241.13, the annual fee would be $15. The Sydney Morning Review Investment apps have their benefits: they provide a platform to invest with little capital that eventually adds up to a worthwhile investment. However, the fees can add up with time and for users who have security , they may not be the best option. In years to come, investment apps will be used by people of all age brackets and provide more features offered by financial institutions. concerns Disclaimer : This article is for informative purposes and not tantamount to financial advice. If you want to invest with a micro investing platform, do your own research, or consult a finance professional.

The 5 Best Investment Apps For Beginners In 2021

Have you heard or perhaps even tried new ways to purchase stuff you see on TV? You know, the ones that invite you to buy things you see while your favorite show is being aired? They offer you to shop through various user interaction mechanics that range from scanning a QR code shown at the corner of the TV screen to pressing a set of navigation buttons on the remote control to receive a text message with a link to the product. What a maze, I have to say. Come on, people! Do you really think the user can enjoy such an effortful shopping experience? I would change my mind to purchase something a number of times before completing the "hell of navigations" like this... Let me spill the tea here. We are often compared to such products, and when it happens, it devastates us. We Are Different If you missed the previous articles about our technology, I recommend you familiarize yourself with what we've been working on and how it all started before reading this one (it will make more sense to you then). How We Taught Artificial Intelligence to Sell Where Can Dreams Take You? The Art of Teaching Associative Thinking to Machines Online Advertising in The Time of The Consumer Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Syndrome (ADHD) Different by Concept Inspired by computer games, cyberpunk, and HUD interfaces, we imagined a wholly digitalized and full of AR-based interactions world where every object would allow you to get information about itself and there were no boundaries to purchase it. That's how we started to develop our internally called "seamless sale" concept that would create an opportunity for the user to buy goods directly from the open-world when interacting with the object or viewing the content where the object was. No visit to the store's website or another place is necessary. Effortless! For us, LensAI, the fundamental quest was to solve inefficient web traffic monetization by installing our ads in any graphic and video content regardless of its release date. In "techy" words, we had to train the machine not only to detect all types of objects in the content (that vary from cats and dogs to a spaceship) but detect these objects instantly. To execute it instantly was essential criteria as we wanted the machine to show only relevant to the content ads at the very same moment when the user is viewing that content. To solve the before-mentioned problems, we first had to become conceptually different by technology, and everything else was second. Our conceptual difference is not recognizing objects and then searching for similar ones, but the machine's ability to begin to understand the cumulative meaning of all three types of content: visual, textual, and audio. Feel free to explore more details on the challenges we faced in the article . Where Can Dreams Take You? The Art of Teaching Associative Thinking to Machines Different by Technology The foundation of the world's digitalization lies in the classification of all possible entities, objects, events, actions, and relationships between all of them. It reminds me of creating a game engine where particle interaction (physics) is replaced with a comprehensive advertising graph with a detailed description of how every entity relates to and influences each other. When creating our relevance model of advertising, we combined various taxonomies (taxonomy "is the practice and science of classification of things or concepts, including the principles that underlie such classification"). [1] In the model, our AI detects every entity and how entities influence each other. This approach gave us a clear understanding of how everything found in the image correlates to its context. The understanding we’ve gained opens up almost endless possibilities for both displaying ads and accomplishing more specific tasks. Different by Capabilities Our technological differences get us the access to previously inaccessible opportunities. Advertising Selection for Any Object Case #1: The advertising goal is to sell products from the eCommerce catalog by selecting the fittest ones for ad display from 5,500 advertising categories from Google Products and advertising feeds/APIs of top US marketplaces. Tasks: - Detect objects images or video frames.
- Determine which the objects are suitable display advertising.
- First, each object that was determined suitable display advertising, select relevant advertising e-commerce categories, marketplaces, and then specific products (that range anything like pet goods to aircraft parts).
- Lastly, select the fittest products ad impressions based on:
       -- the product availabilities, the rotation impressions, and other parameters that affect the decision to display a particular product,
       -- the context analysis,
       -- the similarity analysis. in of for for as for from for of Product Display Ads: Cross-Sell & Upsell Case #2 The advertising goal is to sell products from the eCommerce catalog. Tasks: - Detect objects images or video frames.
- Determine which the objects are suitable display advertising.
- Select the fittest eCommerce advertising creatives to render on a user in of for 's screen depending on the product availability, rotation of ad impressions, and other parameters that influence the decision of ads being fetched. Case #3 The advertising goal is to sell products from the eCommerce catalog. Relevant Ad Selection Regardless of The Initial Content Release Date Tasks: - Detect objects images or video frames.
- Determine which the objects are suitable display advertising.
- Select the fittest eCommerce advertising creatives based on associative thinking algorithms. in of for Associative Display Advertising Selection Case #4 The advertising goal is to boost brand awareness, traffic, and conversions. Tasks: - Detect objects images on the site.
- Determine which the objects are associatively suitable to use displaying advertisements various plans the internet, cable TV, or telephone.
- Select the fittest advertising creatives among others provided by an advertiser (there are many such creatives).
- Embed advertising creatives. in of for of for of New Opportunities for Advertisers New Opportunities for Publishers Different by Ad Format: Visualization & User Interaction At the early "birth-of-an-idea" stage, we dreamt of AR smart glasses. We were inspired by interaction with the outside world and the instant "getting-to-know-it" process: the possibility to obtain all information about the object as soon as we focus our attention on it. The cost of consumer attention rises every day. Rapid embedding of our ad formats straight into the graphic/video content that had caught the user's eyes seemed to be the most promising. Alongside, we enlivened the picture with animation, added bindings, and tried to cause no significant interruptions to the main content. Initially, we craved to implement a spatial positioning algorithm that would consider objects' perspective in the frame to make our ads shift relative to other objects while the video was being watched. The old geek wisdom saved me from troubles (at least for now): "Do not develop new functions until you have not sold the old ones." Having developed a completely new #MoneyDot format, we endowed it with great flexibility and settings for various uses based on advertising goals and advertising creatives currently available on the market. #MoneyDot Ad Formats Our ad formats support the following advertising goals: Brand Awareness Traffic Mobile App Downloads Video Views Conversions & Message Displays eCommerce Catalog Sales We work with Publishers according to the following scenario: Publishers install LensAI scripts to their websites. The installation process is similar to Google AdSense. Publishers may configure or use default settings. Scripts extract visual content once user traffic is recorded. LensAI servers analyze the content of the web pages, identify images and videos, and detect objects in them (e.g., a dress, chairs, a microwave, etc.) LensAI algorithms find matching product categories for the detected objects and then products themselves. A user comes to the website. (*Optional Step) The LensAI scripts that were pre-installed (see #1) look up the user's interests through cookies. Based on that particular user's interests, content and context analysis, ads of the most relevant products are embedded into the objects of visual (video and image) content. LensAI receives a commission from marketplaces/advertisers for ad impressions and purchases made by users on Publishing Partners' websites. LensAI shares its earned commission with its Publishing Partners. The Cases Demonstration of Technology on The Verizon FIOS TV Platform (In-Video Ads) For this demonstration, the following tasks were set: - Show advertisements various Verizon for 's services, including the Internet, cable TV, and phone.
- Show other advertisements for products found in video content. The demo shows the performance of our advertising format for both Verizon plans and products available from various U.S. marketplaces. Desktop version Mobile version Demonstration of Technology on The TechCrunch Platform (In-Image Ads on Website) For this demonstration, the following tasks were set: - Show advertisements various Verizon for 's services, including the Internet, cable TV, and phone. 
- Show advertisements for other products found in the content. The demo shows the performance of our advertising format for Verizon plans only. The demo shows the performance of our advertising format for Verizon and other advertisers. Demonstration of Technology on The AOL Platform (In-Video Ads on Website) For this demonstration, the following tasks were set: - Show advertisements various Verizon for 's services, including the Internet, cable TV, and phone. 
- Media advertising for other advertisers.
- Show advertisements for other products found in the content. Desktop version Mobile version All advertising goals and various display advertising options can be combined and customized based on the . specification Brief Information About Settings Our ad format has a flexible system of settings that enable publishers to fine-tune their advertisements. 1. Platforms Mobile Desktop 2. Ad Placement Area.  The setting enables publishers to choose if they want to embed ads all over the entire site, on an individual page only, or even in a particular area of that page. There are two ways of how ad slots can be created: Ad slots that are generated by our system automatically. Ad slots that are hand-picked by publishers. 3. Content for Ad Placement. For ad placements, we use visual (graphic) content that our system detects on sites. After content analysis, AI selects the most relevant ads to show in it. The following formats are supported to use for embedding our ads: Images: jpeg, jpg, png, webp, gif Videos 4. Context for Ad Placement (IAB Standard). Along with graphic content, our system analyzes any accompanying textual content. This additional analysis is performed to help AI to make the rightest selection for ad display. 5. Placement Position. The setting enables publishers to choose the position of content (in which ads will be embedded) on the site.  It relates to visibility/significance. Here is a list of ad placement positions to choose from: above the fold, below the fold, header, footer. 6. Ad Placement Density. The setting enables publishers to choose the frequency of ads to be embedded: For images, publishers can set the frequency of ad displays per page. For videos,  publishers can set the frequency of ad displays per video stream. 7. The Number of Ad Placements. The setting enables publishers to set the number for simultaneous ad placements in the content. For images,  publishers can set the number of ads to embed per one image. For videos,  publishers can set the number of ads to embed per one video frame. 8. The Order for Ad Placements. The setting sets the rules and describes specific placement parameters for advertisements on the platform as a whole, its part, or its content. 9. Ad Placement Categorization. The setting specifies what categories of Google Product Taxonomy as well as brands can be advertised and what advertising purposes can be executed on the platform as a whole, its part, or its content. Advertising Purposes Categories Brands 10. Ad Placement Classes. The setting enables publishers to choose specific classes of objects among detected ones to use for ad display on the platform as a whole, its part, or its content. 11. User Data Parameters. The setting allows publishers to choose the characteristics of users to target for ad displays. Browser Data Device User Data (IAB):Interests &Purchases 12. Types of Ad Format. We developed various ad formats to be placed straight into the graphic content. The setting allows publishers to choose which ad formats to use for display. Here is a list of currently available ones: #MoneyDot #MoneyBox #MoneyLens Abar classic Vbar 13. Display Methods. The setting allows publishers to choose various ways to display ads: Animation Elements Interaction Dimensions Display Logic 14. Other Settings Is there a need to implement more "meanings" into technology? Is there a need to implement more "meanings" into technology? If you read to the end of this article, you are a rock, and we share the same blood! :) Join us, invest in us, do business with us.

Our Quest To Solve Inefficient Web Traffic Monetization

Crypto Market Recap: 21, October 2018 Its a kind of chill Sunday in the crypto markets, no big moves with just a bit of sway. The weekend saw green, albeit smaller than some people would like. The altcoins are coming back up after a series of disappointments and indiscriminate drops. Not enough to recover but just enough to float. The market capitalization has crept back up with a $2 Billion addition to the money box and now at $211.5 showing a 1% growth on the day. The 24-hour volume has dipped a bit at $9.4 Billion as is usual with weekend volumes. The Bitcoin dominance is still inching lower in very small increments and now at 53.5%, a good news for altcoins trying to get back up on their feet. Bitcoin has gained a minuscule 0.73% on the day. It was a bit higher in the Asian trading sessions but not by much. Currently, on Binance, it is at $6623 and has been sideways since Tuesday. It doesn’t look like it’ll go either way in the short term and we may be stuck in the sideways business for a while before it either pushes up to break its resistance at $6900 or drop down to support at $6300. As some analysts have pointed out, the volume of Bitcoin trading at $3.1 Billion is a yearly low. Ethereum performed better with a 1.04% gain on the day. Price wise, it’s still way below a recovery price. Currently, on Binance, it’s at $209 barely scratching the $215 initial resistance much less fight against the heavy defense at $220. Current support is at $205 where buyers might appear but as it is, it might be just following along with its big brother Bitcoin. As in the previous day, the altcoins are still showing some positive price action although the gains are very small. Bitcoin Cash is leading for the day with 2.17% and trading at $452.28. A bit higher than last Sunday’s $450 but not by much. We have Monero, who was on the negative yesterday, moving forwards at 1.56%, and EOS, moving at 1.50%, trading at $5.48. The rest are at 0–1% gain on the day. The Top 25 played well in the Asian trading sessions but made a bit of a pullback this Sunday morning. Dogecoin is starting to bark and has been consistently green for the past two days. It has earned 2.30% on the day and trading at $0.00459. OmiseGo is at 2.25% with Zcash at 1.63%. The rest are at 0–1.5% gains on the day with very little change. As is usual when altcoins are beginning to feel confident enough, some coins would go pumping. Ravencoin is back on the board with a 28.69% pump, and Nexo and Bytom are both at 13%. The rest have a middling growth but the rest of the Top 100 altcoins are mostly green. Because yesterday’s pump is today’s dump, Cybermiles, Basic Attention Token (BAT), and Digitex Futures are of special mention in the other end of the tunnel. So that’s it for our market recap this Sunday, if you’re trading today, be chill and trade safe. Otherwise, spend the rest of your remaining weekend wisely. Have a great day! Originally published at dna.coinve.st on October 21, 2018. CoinDNA is an educational website that aids users in research, the first step of their investment journey, providing insights to help navigate investment decisions, including market data for individual tokens, a daily market report, and custom frequently-asked analytics.

Chill Sunday on the Crypto Markets, Bitcoin Dominance Starts to Drop With BTC Volume Reaching a…

Disclaimer: The author is not a financial advisor or an expert in blockchain technology. This article does not provide any investment advice and should not be seen as such. The author is an advisor to Trust Wallet . “What do you think about ?” my father asked me on the phone a couple of weeks ago. It was a stunning question to hear from a person who struggles to keep his email in order or change basic preferences on his iPhone (sorry, dad!). Apparently, my father heard about Bitcoin at one of the New Year’s Eve parties and felt that it might be an opportunity to make a solid investment. Bitcoin “It is not an easy question,” I responded. “The [blockchain] technology has tremendous potential but today Bitcoin is an extremely risky investment.” The idea of investing in cryptocurrency has penetrated into many parts of our society. It is mind-blowing to think that people would be willing to invest their hard-earned money in something they can barely understand, but that’s exactly what seems to be happening in the crypto world. One of the perks of living in Silicon Valley is hearing about new things and technologies in a casual conversation earlier than anyone else in the world. Whether or , you will find out about it if you hang out around coffee shops, bars, and streets of San Francisco. it’s a vending machine a robotic coffee bar I can’t recall the first time I heard the term . My guess is it was Summer or Fall of 2016. As the hype about the crypto market was growing, my curiosity won over. I started actively reading and researching the blockchain technology and its applications. Initial Coin Offering (ICO) My understanding of ICOs didn’t feel complete without participating in the process. Soon, I opened a Coinbase account and invested a few thousand dollars to see how the “system” works. I subscribed to crypto newsletters and ICO alerts. In the next few months, I participated, sometimes successfully and sometimes not so much, in a few ICOs. ICO is a process of issuing a public coin or token. It is similar to companies entering an initial public offering (IPO) by listing their stock (or shares) on a public stock exchange, such as the NYSE or NASDAQ. Coins or tokens are issued on blockchain, which means they are unregulated. They can be easily traded, but this is where it gets tricky. Unlike stocks, which reflect ownership rights to the company, tokens represent the utility or assets that are valuable within a particular network created by the company issuing it ( ). In other words, tokens do not represent ownership, they constitute value created by the network itself. The success of the company or project increases the utility of the token, causing its value to rise ( ). read more about the difference between coins and tokens WTF is an ICO? Before we continue, let me recommend a few resources to learn the basics: Bitcoin whitepaper Ethereum whitepaper Beyond The Bitcoin Bubble by New York Times The Phil Ferguson Show: and Part 1 Part 2 Master Crypto Investopedia List of article compiled by A16Z 1. Getting Started: You almost have to start with Coinbase Before you can invest in an ICO, you have to buy Ethereum. There aren’t many places to buy ETH with dollars (or fiat, in crypto-speak). So the default and easiest route is to use Coinbase. The company enjoys its position as an early entrant. As the hype about Bitcoin in particular and cryptocurrencies in general skyrocketed, Coinbase reaped disproportional rewards by being one of the earliest players. ( ). Last year Coinbase generated over $1B in revenue There are other options, such as , . While Gemini’s fees are lower, it can take a couple of days to complete the purchase of the coin, which is an eternity in the crypto market, where prices change in a matter of minutes. Gemini owned by two brothers from the Facebook saga Frankly, Coinbase isn’t much better when it comes to transaction speeds. Sometimes, delays are due to a slow network that’s confirming the transaction. Sometimes it’s because of maintenance on the Coinbase side. Concerns are growing in the community that Coinbase can to manipulate prices since they hold a large market share among companies that bridge dollars to crypto ( ). read more Here are a few options for buying Bitcoin or Ethereum with dollars: : Market leader, easy to use, has mobile app Coinbase : A good option but more limiting Gemini : Never used myself BitPanda : Never used myself CoinMama 2. Setting up MyEtherWallet Since most of the ICO are based on Ethereum smart contracts, your crypto wallet has to support receiving tokens. During an ICO, you send Ethereum to the company issuing a new token and receive the amount of tokens based on the announced exchange rate. For example, a company’s exchange rate is ETH = 1,000 X coins. The ICO market is like the wild west — there isn’t a single set of rules or policies. Often the company that issues the ICO limits the amount of coins a person can buy. Setting up a seems strange when you do it for the first time because you don’t create usernames. You create a passport and download the Keystone file, often referred to as a private key. MyEtherWallet generates a public address for your wallet and your private key is the only way to access it. Your public address is anonymous but everyone in the network can see it. In other words, everyone can see transactions that happen in your wallet but no one knows it’s yours. MyEtherWallet Example: Bob wants to send money (Ethereum) to John. First,Bob needs to know John’s bank account number (public or wallet address). John’s account number is 1325. Bob sends $1 (1 Ethereum) to John’s account. Everyone in the network can see that account 1325 received $1 (1 Ethereum). Now, John needs to use his private key to access his bank account (wallet) to withdraw or send money (Ethereum). If John loses his private key he will never be able to access his bank account (wallet) and his money will be lost forever. That’s why you secure your private key. Unlike your bank account login, which you can reset by proving your identity in person or with state issued identification, a lost or compromised private key in crypto is equal to a death sentence. You will never be able to recover it. The horror stories of losing private keys are cautionary tales for all of us ( .) MUST ‘I FORGOT MY PIN’: AN EPIC TALE OF LOSING $30,000 IN BITCOIN Tip: There are a few ways to secure your private key. You can use a hardware wallet, an encrypted device that stores private keys for all the coins you own. You can store an encrypted private key on a flash drive and keep it in a secure box at the bank as a backup. You can also use encryption software, such as 1password, to store your private keys. If you trade regularly, you will need access to your key often, so encryption software is a safe option. 3. Finding and Researching ICOs It was shocking to find out how many ICOs were happening almost simultaneously. How do you pick which token to buy? Even if you can analyze a white paper that goes with each ICO, how do you decide what white papers to read? You can’t possibly read all of them. Is an ICO investing or gambling? Let me take a step back and explain my philosophy on investing in ICOs. Actually, investing might be the wrong word. ICOs today, seem more like pure gambling — a game of chance. I don’t believe any so-called experts that find a rational explanation to irrational beliefs (Yes, James Altucher, I’m talking to you). We, including so-called crypto experts, are prone to what Nassim Taleb in his called a narrative fallacy — a tendency to construct stories connecting and linking facts that are unrelated. A narrative fallacy prevents us from looking at the facts without weaving an explanation into them. For example, this token will be successful because Vitalik Buterin is on the board of advisors. book Black Swan Of course many so-called crypto experts want to capitalize on emerging markets. Selling shovels in the gold rush is usually a much safer and more profitable business strategy. What’s more alarming is that many ICOs are issued without a product or even a prototype. How many VC or angel investors would invest in a company that has no traction and no product in sight? Sounds crazy, but the ICO market is full of companies raising millions of dollars that are missing both. My primary goal in investing in ICOs was to research and understand how this new market is working now. It is overhyped and it looks like a bubble. Nonetheless, the blockchain technology and decentralized ecosystems are likely to change how our societies operate ( ). this article provides a few examples Still, I didn’t want to throw money around randomly. My first step was to narrow down my list of potential investments to a manageable number of five to 10. To compile a short list, I looked at three aspects: 1) basic concept; 2) team; 3) interest or hype. Below is a list of questions that will help you: Basic Concept Can you understand the value of the token at least in theory? Is it easy to explain and understand? Team Who is the behind the company? Does the team consist of real people? What are their backgrounds? Where are they located? Interest or Hype What is their hype rating on ICO Drops? How many people do they have in their Telegram channel and other social media channels? Then, I would try to scan their white paper for more information about the solution. Honestly, I rarely found them insightful. Often, it’s due to my lack of knowledge. Sometimes companies don’t invest much time and effort in explaining what they want to build. A few even plagiarize and copy their papers ( ). Tron is a good example These are my top two favorite resources to learn about ICOs: ICO Drops is hands down my favorite place to research ICOs. The layout is simple and clean, so it’s easy to find active and upcoming ICOs. They rate ICOs based on hype and interest, which saves time. They even tell you if the ICO is available in all. countries. ICO Drops ( ICO Drops ) ( )ICO Alert is my second favorite alternative to ICO Drops. ICO Alert ICO Alert Other resources: ( ) Coin Schedule Coin Schedule ICO Rating ICO Tracker ICO List Token Market Tip: Sign up for a whitelist of the ICOs that you are interested in. Often you have to be on the whitelist to pass your customer (KYC) process. More on this later. 4. Signing Up and the Know Your Customer (KYC) Process The first ICO is kind of like losing your virginity — you are terrified and excited at the same time. I lost mine with a small coin called ALIS. It was difficult to figure out what to do and how. ALIS provided an address on their website with the exchange rate. You had to use your wallet and send Ethereum. Coinbase does not accept Ethereum-based tokens so I had to transfer ETH to MyEtherWallet. In a couple of days, I received a few hundred dollars worth of ALIS coins in my Wallet. ALIS didn’t have a know your customer (KYC) process. KYC is the way a company verifies the identity of the customer (or in case of the ICO, the investor). With so much hype about anonymity in the crypto world, I was surprised that the KYC process often includes sending a copy of your passport and a picture of you holding your identification document. As ICO becomes more and more popular, regulators are forcing the KYC process on companies to prevent money laundering or tax evasion. We should expect more regulations in the crypto world. 5. Switching to Trust Wallet ALIS ICO was relatively quiet. The process wasn’t rushed and ICO wasn’t completed in minutes. That’s why I picked it — I wanted to have plenty of time to learn the process. By the way, my $300 in ALIS coins turned out to be worth about $1,200 when I sold them a couple of month later. At least, I didn’t lose anything. Over the next few months, I successfully participated in Bread ICO and Bloom. Bread ICO ended in about an hour. You could use their own app to send ETH and receive BREAD coin. I invested a few thousand dollars in Bread at about $0.80 per token. I sold 50% a week later at about $3 per coin, recovering all of my initial investment. I sold another 25% of my original stake a month later at about $1.8 per coin and decided to keep the rest for the long term. My ICO experience includes: — invested, and returned my money + ALIS BREAD — invested, and returned my money + BLOOM — successful, and holding them — was late to ICO Bluzelle — failed transaction during ICO DADI Tip: if you are a novice in ICO (like me), read about the importance of setting the right amount of gas for your transaction. Gas price tells the network how much you are willing to pay for a unit of work and the gas limit gives the maximum amount of work you are willing to pay for to complete a transaction. In order to complete a transaction, miners on the network have to process it and you need to have enough ETH to compensate them for their work ( read more ). Setting your gas price and limit is very important when participating in a very popular ICO, where many people are trying to buy the token. This can cause the network to overload. Usually, the ICO will let you know ahead of time what to set gas price and gas limit to. If you set more or less than the recommendation your transaction either will not go through or be heavily penalized. When you are planning to participate in a popular ICO, timing is everything. Depending on your location and the location of the company, the ICO process can start anytime — early morning, late night, or middle of the day. The primary challenge with MyEtherWallet is that it’s web-based. You have to carry your laptop around. Also, I wanted something more secure. After a while I settled on Trust Wallet, a secure and easy Ethereum wallet for mobile device that supports Ethereum-based tokens. Trust Wallet has a nice UI that’s easy to use. Aside from that, it’s a more secure version of a soft wallet. Security and Safety When I participated in ICO, I used to transfer ETH from Coinbase to MyEtherWallet, and I kept a portion of my portfolio on Coinbase. But after some research, I realized that Coinbase is not a decentralized wallet, and if by any chance it gets hacked your money might be gone forever. This is what happened with . Coinbase keeps your private key on their servers. Coincheck when they got hacked Trust Wallet, on the other hand, does not store your private key. It is stored locally on your device. Unfortunately, even with the most sophisticated security algorithms, the weakest part of your crypto fund protection is you. Phishing attacks are the Achilles heel of web-based wallets like MyEtherWallet. Nothing prevents scammers from imitating a web application to get access to secret information. With Trust Wallet’s dedicated mobile app, phishing attack risk becomes minimal. Mobile apps are more prone to viruses and keyloggers, a software that illegally records all the keystrokes on a keyboard. The only way someone can access your funds is if they get your device, somehow find the password for it AND figure out the password for the Trust app itself! Trust Wallet is open source, and it provides transparency and the ability to contribute. A community of engineers regularly assesses app security. Anonymous Coinbase knows who you are and collects personal information about you. Why does that matter? Recently, Coinbase was ordered to give the IRS data on its users trading more than $20K ( ). On the other hand, MyEtherWallet and Trust Wallet do not ask or retain any of your personal information. read more I imported MyEtherWallet to Trust Wallet, and transferred a portion of ETH that I wanted to keep long term from Coinbase. Today, I participate in ICO using the Trust Wallet mobile app. It’s much more convenient than MyEtherWallet. 6. Tokens on exchanges After the ICO madness is over and you receive you tokens, everyone is waiting to know what exchanges will list the token. I have tried multiple exchanges but now I primarily use just two: and ( ). Recently, Trust Wallet launched a decentralized apps browser that enables you to use decentralized exchanges like and to trade tokens. Bittrex Binance Binance KyberNetwork Bancor Tip: The best resources to check all the prices on many exchanges — Coin Market Cap What have I learned while investing in cryptocurrency? 1. It’s a gamble most of the time ICO and cryptocurrency remind us of the dot-com bubble, when anyone with a Powerpoint could raise millions of dollars without customers or even a product ( ). Change dot-com to ICO, substitute Powerpoint for whitepaper, and multiply the hype and you get an idea of the ICO market today. how ICO market has grown 2. Invest money you can afford to lose If you could buy a $500 ticket that gives you a 5 percent chance of winning $10,000, would you buy it? It is helpful to think of ICO investment in terms of this problem. How much money would you be willing to lose with a small chance of reaping a large reward ( a book by Daniel Kahneman, provides many examples of how we decide on gains and losses). Thinking Fast and Slow, 3. Do not borrow or use credit to buy crypto Since ICO is a risky investment, borrowing money and using credit to invest in Bitcoin or ICO is crazy. Prices for all cryptocurrency are tied to the price of Bitcoin or ETH. Since there are only few places where you can exchange major coins into cash (Coinbase is the largest) the market is prone to a rapid sell off. During the sell off, networks are overloaded and transaction times increase. Coinbase becomes one of the biggest bottlenecks. 4. Avoid being scammed Scammers are part of the ICO process. If you’ve participated in the ICO process, you know how crazy the Telegram channel becomes. Scammers try to appear as admins or company representatives and lure you into sending coins to the wrong address. Some create admin-like posts in public chat in hopes that someone will get confused and send their funds to the wrong address. Learn the rules of the particular ICO and double and triple check everything, especially if the ICO is at night. The Telegram channel is the preferable way to communicate during the ICO. Most companies announce ICO rules and policies using pinned messages in the group. 5. Improve security Your private key is the only way for you to ever recover your wallet (and your funds) — period. Minimize the use of centralized wallets such as Coinbase. Use a decentralized wallet, like Trust, that doesn’t store your private keys on their servers. Use encryption software, like 1password, to protect your private key. 6. Regardless of craziness, blockchain technology has a great potential. The dot-com bubble didn’t kill the internet and internet startups. Yes, many companies died and many investors lost their money. It happened because founders, investors, and other players on the market forgot about the fundamentals — customers, product, and revenue. This is what happens now in ICO. People invest in companies that don’t have products, customers, or revenue. What even most important is that we invest in ideas we hardly understand. And we do that only for a small chance (or hope) of making a quick buck. To learn more about ICO and cryptocurrencies, check out an amazing list of articles and resources gathered by the Andreessen Horowitz team . I’m looking forward to more stable and mature ICO markets, where legitimate companies will build legitimate products by improving technology and applications behind blockchain. More great resources: Coindesk Cryptocompare BlockGeeks Bitcoinist Coinsutra If you like this article please recommend and share. . Follow me on Twitter , Medium , Quora , connect on Linkedin or send me email with comments and questions: myk@myxys.com. Subscribe to my newsletter

How To Invest in ICOs and What I’ve Learned Investing in Five ICOs

Why a News Blackout? (If you’re already convinced or don’t care about my specific reasons, skip to the methods and findings) I’ve been a news junkie for a decade. The addiction began during my final year of high school as a blend of historical research and discovering left wing news sites. My consumption varied a lot over the years, with my commentary touchstones becoming Ta-Nehisi Coates blog at the Atlantic, Matt Yglesias’ Moneybox at Slate, and Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog at WashPost. I followed those guys and the people in their circles from about 2008 until the present. I watched Coates study WW2 and the Civil War, publicizing his education, learning from the Horde, and become the author of Between the World and Me. I watched Matt and Ezra morph from college bloggers to founding (with Sarah Kliff, an awesome talent but who I didn’t know pre-Vox) a new powerhouse. I obviously followed a lot of other writers over the decade, but these guys always updated me daily on how to interpret events and their context. I would expect my media consumption to be pretty similar to a lot of folks’ given that this cohort has become as acclaimed as it has. Starting in college, I quasi-trained as and very seriously pretended to be a journalist. I was an editor of the school and interned at a newspaper in Chile for a summer. For a long time, I could pretend that my media diet was professionally beneficial. media newspaper Blogs, Twitter and traditional media figuring out how to transition to digital increased exponentially the amount of news content that was created daily. We truly are living in the golden age of hot takes. And I, for the most part, tried to keep up. Eventually, the daily slog through the even the traditional outlets: NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg, WashPost, The Atlantic, Politico and Vox became too much — there was probably a qualitative change to the media in the Trump era, but I think the volume itself was too high. In response, in early summer 2017,I tried to dial it back by deleting Twitter and the Apple News app and only allowing myself to writers/commentators I liked on Twitter in the browser by googling “WRITER NAME Twitter”. This worked for a while. But my world of writers/commentators I liked just expanded. And all too often, I would fall down link black holes. Despite my best efforts at moderation, the debate over repealing Obamacare in summer/fall 2017 broke me. We all watched it breathlessly — repeal, skinny repeal, whatever the last ditch Hail Mary was called. Countless adrenaline and cortisol spikes, internecine fights about collaborating on a subsidies fix or some other policy detail. And why not? Healthcare is 20% of GDP (and rising) — bending the cost curve is either important or really fucking important. And you know, lives are at stake. But, as we all know, in the end, nothing changed. Months of debate. Speculation. Rumors. Scoring. And then. Nothing. What killed me then, and I realized more broadly, was that most “news” is essentially speculative. Beyond that, the expected value of most news stories is ludicrously small in comparison to their coverage. What real benefit did spending…hours…per day reading news and commentary really serve me if a large percentage of the time, nothing actually happened. At the end of it all, sometime in September, I was leaving for a two week trip through France. Lyon. A drive through the Dordogne and Loire Valleys. A stop in St. Emilion. A few nights in Bordeaux. And a few more in Paris in the Marais. I decided the last thing I needed to do in any of these places was read the fucking news. So I didn’t. And then I didn’t when I got back. And I still haven’t. Here’s what I did and what I found. Methods Do not go on social media. At all. (This is probably good advice generally, but necessary to avoid the most inflammatory news.) Do not read anything that can be construed as news including event driven blogs, opinion pieces or features from news outles. Do not watch the news (this was pretty easy because I never do). Do not engage in conversation with anyone about the news. UNLESS they insist. The clear exception to this is ACTUALLY IMPORTANT EVENTS. If the expected value of a story is really, really high, then someone will insist on you knowing about it, despite initial protest. And if anyone breached this threshold, I would allow myself to read about it by googling the topic and reading a few stories at the top of Google News. When asked to defend myself, I ask the individual what they think the most important story in the world is. They tell me what they think it is, and unfailingly in turn, ask me. I show them this chart. Source And almost without fail, they would admit that they’ve missed the most important human development in the last 20 years. Findings The news is really addictive. I haven’t smoked a cigarette in three years, two months and eleven days. I can tell you, that our news environment is as addictive as cigarettes. I’ve quit caffeine for six month intervals. The news is far more addictive than caffeine. Receiving little information bursts clearly gives you a dopamine hit. Most days when I wake up, I want to check the news. I don’t want a cigarette. I haven’t missed much. Every time there was a mass shooting, I would know within a few hours. When the Harvey Weinstein story broke, I found out about it the next day and was kept informed of the reckoning with workplace sexual harassment as it happened. I will say that I’m still not very informed about the tax bill that finally passed, but from what I’ve gathered from people I trust — it seems to be made out of spider webs and magic, so I expect negative externalities regardless of its intentional distributional and distortionary effects. The status signaling effects were mixed. People who I had just met seemed to interpret my lack of engagement with the news as a lack of sophistication or civic spirit. Not being able to hold forth on policy proposals had a status lowering effect. Those who knew me before the blackout seemed to think I was misguided but respected the discipline to stay away. I’ve gotten to read a lot more intentionally. The time once devoted to reading political or macroeconomic speculation is now spent on the books I set out to read and the few writers I follow whose work isn’t news-driven. I feel considerably less partisan. I know that everyone thinks they’re less partisan than they truly are, and I’m sure that’s true of me too. But, I can admit, I used to be a party hack — even though I was an avowed independent. I now find myself feeling less passionate about either side, considerably more willing to critique the left and willing to hear out right wing intellectuals. I find this…suspicious at best. It could be that I can spend more time thinking about political issues rather than applying broad heuristics in a rapid fire manner to the 100 pieces of news that hit each day. Or the outlets I read are much more effective at shaping my beliefs than I would have liked to believe. I’m continually shocked by how many people are convinced that the world is getting worse, when it has gotten and is getting dramatically better. I want to reiterate: the news feed is more addictive than nicotine. I miss the feed daily in a way that I don’t miss cigarettes. Conclusion I’m going to continue on with the news blackout. It’s weird and hard to fight the urge to check the news every day. But the greater control over my time, attention, policy views and blood pressure is worth it.

Why I Stopped Reading the News: Notes on a News Blackout

Interested in how brand names appear in the IT world? Today we will talk about our experience — how we came up with the name for our service. What drove us to the decision to name our remarkable bookmarking service GrabDuck. So you’re probably thinking, why would someone grab a duck and not just try and catch it? And how does the name #grabduck actually relate to bookmarking? Hmm, let’s see… What would someone normally do when trying to invent a cool new name for their service? Well a great place to start is understanding what your service is doing; it’s strengths, it’s weaknesses and it’s limitations. As part of our basic requirements for coming up with GrabDuck, we wanted to identify the reasons our service existed. Why do people use bookmarking services? The simple answer is — they want to save internet content to return to at a later date. Essentially the user wants to find what they need without wasting too much time. We have always kept this at the front of our mind when working on making what it is today. GrabDuck With that in mind, it was imperative we give the user the ability to easily save and search through their content. The goal? Save the user’s time at all costs. But how to do this… First of all, the service needs to be invisible. Yes exactly, invisible! The best tool is the one you do not notice, it just helps you do your work. Therefore we abandoned the main sinkers of time in today’s web services to create a service which is more streamlined. Less high resolution images, auto playable video and content streams which eat away at your free time. Does the interface still need style? Yes! For GrabDuck we went for a minimalist design, taking away the time spent organising collections, folder structures and manually assigning tags, to give a clean and simple experience. Our user’s time is precious; they can spend it doing something more useful, so GrabDuck needs to just work. The key point here? GrabDuck pays attention to what the user likes and must deliver a service which is intuitive, easy and gets the job done! We wanted to create an internet boundary, a place to operate already known behavioural patterns learnt from GrabDuck’s big sister — the search engine. We see GrabDuck’s job as providing the user with the own “mini-internet” — a single place, with all the content they need. After all, GrabDuck is primarily a tool for working with internet articles. And what should a good tool do? Be inconspicuous, not need any special attention and just work! So, the search for a great name resumed in our heads — GrabDuck is the place for the user to create their “mini-internet” where they can store their internet. A place to store something — Hmm, a jar? A money box? A stash? What about a Piggy Bank? You know, where you save your treasure, to some of us a good article is like a shiny piece of treasure! We explored this idea for a long time, we even created several sketches of our new logo, working off of the child’s piggy bank reference. The more we thought and the more we drew we realised it wasn’t what we needed. Yes the idea went into the logo well but it required some explanation. People would still say- “Yeah, I get it! You’re storing finance stuff, right?” Or they would ask us — “So, what are you? A tax advisor?” After all this confusion, we threw the pig’s penny idea into the trash and we were left with nothing. But suddenly, everything changed overnight. A friend from the US called and said “You guys owe me a coffee, I know what you’re working on and I have the perfect name.” We were intrigued and let him explain. “Have you heard of the Grab-a-Duck game?” We were confused, “What game do you mean? Why the duck and why should it be caught?” “It’s everywhere” he said, “Have you really never seen the Grab-a-Duck game? Everyone must have seen it in their childhood — it’s an arcade game! A big box, filled with yellow ducks, put in your coin and try to grab the one you like with a big mechanical claw!” “It’s not an easy game but it makes every child happy! Here they filled them with yellow ducks, you should know the kind, they have them all over Berlin as souvenirs. They’re everywhere, right?” It was then we realized, this is it! After all, this is what GrabDuck offers. The user simply throws all of their internet articles (their ducks) into a big stash and they wait there, ready for their hour to be chosen by the “mechanical claw.” So finally we had it, we would call it . We realised straight away it was a great name because it was interesting; the minute we said GrabDuck, everyone was curious. GrabDuck So when the user is ready, they simply “take their coin,” throw it into the machine and search for the specific duck they need. Since we already knew the problems with finding bookmarks in other platforms we decided that in GrabDuck, as opposed to the claw machines, we would let you win! Whilst you don’t need a coin, or the skill to control a mechanical claw we wanted to keep the idea exactly the same. Well, with one big exception — Finding an article in GrabDuck is much easier than beating the Grab-a-Duck machine! With GrabDuck you get a prize with every play — The ability to achieve your goals and save time thanks to your inconspicuous assistant. In other words — GrabDuck just works! And yes, in the same way the Grab-a-Duck machine requires just 2 clicks, GrabDuck allows you to store your favourite content just as fast. Don’t just take my word for it, give it a try! Your favourite content, where you need it, in just 2 clicks! So the name was found, the domain was registered and the service came to life. We could write a lot about how wonderful the service is now, we are proud of what GrabDuck is today! But we have one great rule — it’s better to make your own opinion, the one based on your own feelings. Now it’s up to you! is free, so check it out and take your chance to catch your very own ducks. The difference? You’re guaranteed to win with GrabDuck, the bookmarking platform which just works. GrabDuck

How we came up with the name GrabDuck

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Chinese students leave their country to study abroad. While overseas, they pay tuition, buy books, eat at restaurants, and pay rent. All of that requires one crucial step: moving Chinese yuan out of China. “A lot of people are doing offshore financial planning because they’re going to have future liabilities denominated in US dollars or euros or pounds,” Weber Su, co-founder of fintech , tells . That includes not only Chinese parents who want their children to study abroad, but also those who want to buy overseas property or “travel around the world in five years,” he says. startup Niu Jiao Suo Tech in Asia “We usually target this group of people,” he adds. Since China’s sharp yuan-devaluation in 2015, about US$1.2 trillion has left the country. The Beijing-based startup, founded early last year, has picked one hell of a time to start helping Chinese investors move their money abroad. Since China’s sharp yuan-devaluation in 2015, about US$1.2 trillion has left the country, according to . In response, the Chinese government has tightened capital controls, especially over the past year as China’s annual GDP growth slows to . Bloomberg Intelligence below 7 percent Restrictions on insurance products, mergers and acquisitions, and are all part of the government’s capital flight crackdown. For instance, there’s a US$50,000 limit on foreign currency per person per year in China. even bitcoin However, that isn’t stopping Niu Jiao Suo, which connects Chinese retail investors or individuals with overseas mutual funds. Through the company’s app, users can invest in overseas funds of their choice, such as BlackRock, JP Morgan, and Franklin Templeton. The minimum amount is US$400. The upper limit, of course, is US$50,000. investment Husband and wife co-founders of Niu Jiao Suo (left to right): Angeline Cai and Weber Su. Photo credit: Niu Jiao Suo. “It actually gives us more attention, because all of a sudden you have a US$50,000 quota, renewed annually,” says Weber, explaining the impact of China’s capital controls. “That just conveys to an ordinary person that the quota is valuable. If you don’t use that it expires.” In addition, Weber says, limits on capital outflows are incentivizing prestigious overseas funds, such as BlackRock, to consider small players like Niu Jiao Suo. “They’re targeting [China Investment Corporation],” he says, referring to a massive Chinese sovereign wealth fund. “Safe. The big players. If they have time, they go to the insurance companies — those can write really big tickets.” “But due to the foreign exchange controls, even if they obtain really good sales leads, it doesn’t really lead to sales,” he explains. To attract funds, Niu Jiao Suo bundles the small investments made through its app into a larger package. That’s transferred to asset managers once a day. We do not want to open accounts for US tax residents It’s important to note that the company itself doesn’t manage any money. When users top up their Niu Jiao Suo account, the money is sent to a custodian account managed by DBS Bank, one of Niu Jiao Suo’s partners. When users make an investment, the money is transferred accordingly. The startup is primarily responsible for internal clearing and settlement work, as well as conducting due diligence on its users — the investors. “We need to make sure this guy […] is not a criminal,” explains Weber. The startup is using an API from China’s Ministry of Public Security that lets it key in Chinese national ID numbers and run background checks. Niu Jiao Suo also checks to see if users are US citizens or US tax residents. “We do not want to open accounts for US tax residents [because] we have to file taxes on behalf of them,” he says. For its trouble, the startup takes a 1 percent subscription or redemption fee, which charges investors when they buy or sell shares, respectively. From certain asset managers, Niu Jiao Suo is also able to take a cut from their management fees, which is used to pay fund managers. Caution ahead Niu Jiao Suo’s concept of aggregating small investments into one lump sum isn’t new. , a US-based company founded in 2012, lets users invest even smaller amounts of money — or what’s known as ‘micro-investing’ — by rounding up expenses, such as a cup of coffee, and investing the difference. Acorns , an app launched last year, is another micro-investment startup. Moneybox A slew of other Chinese startups, such as and , cater to Chinese retail investors who want to invest in overseas stocks and securities. Jimubox Tiger Brokers However, as Chinese officials continue to clamp down on capital outflows, these cross-border investment startups might start to feel the squeeze. “From the regulatory perspective, the focus on the personal allowance will become increasingly rigorous,” Jolyon Ellwood-Russell, Hong Kong-based trade finance and fintech partner at , tells . Simmons & Simmons Tech in Asia “So yes it’s a great idea […] but they need to be cautious from the lessons learned from of the likes of bitcoin, insurance products, and Union Pay restrictions,” he says, referring to Niu Jiao Suo. “It’s going to receive scrutiny if their product is perceived as getting around capital controls.” For Niu Jiao Suo, its business is still in early stages. Its app went live last July and currently has “thousands of users,” though the startup declined to disclose an exact number. In March, Niu Jiao Suo announced a US$5 million series A round led by , an early-stage venture capital firm focusing on Chinese and Southeast Asian tech startups. Gobi Partners Originally posted on Tech in Asia .

This fintech startup is helping Chinese people move their money abroad

Hi Rossen, welcome to our series “ .” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind Skrill? Ishan Pandey: Behind the BigTech has been around for 20 years now, providing millions of users with a digital wallet service. We are truly global, with a very rich feature set helping users pay online, send and receive money, store and spend their cash, and get exposure to digital assets. Rossen Yordanov: Skrill I joined Skrill in 2010, when we were called Moneybookers, and have been part of the team responsible for driving the adoption of our services ever since. Then, around 2017 I got very interested in crypto, and this interest has only increased over the years. Elon Musk’s recent U-turn on Bitcoin is causing a lot of controversy in the cryptocurrency community. What are your views on Bitcoin mining and the amount of electricity it consumes? Ishan Pandey: Obviously, there are issues with having an asset tied to massive amounts of carbon-intensive computing. However, there are different ways to look at energy consumption. One is the amount of energy, another is the type of energy used. Rossen Yordanov: I think with regards to Bitcoin – there is a lot that can improve and will improve, particularly in regards to the type of energy used. There are strong opinions in the space that Bitcoin mining can act as an economic battery and support the transition to more renewable energy sources, by way of making them more commercially viable. I find this very interesting. Also – not all cryptocurrencies will require much power. There are developments coming on Ethereum, for example, which will reduce energy consumption dramatically over there. Skrill is a leading digital wallet provider and a giant in the e-payments market. Please tell us about why Skrill is entering the cryptocurrency industry and the company’s purpose? Ishan Pandey: We started out in the crypto space in 2018, by offering users a very easy way to engage with crypto. Users can download the app, fund their account and choose which crypto assets they’d like to buy. Rossen Yordanov: Skrill users can convert 40 different traditional currencies into Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, 0x, Stellar Lumens, EOS, Tezos, OMG Network, Cardano, Chainlink and we are adding many more very soon. Unlike many wallets, users can take advantage of over 100 different convenient deposit methods which include credit cards, bank transfers and local payment options. Also – there are nice features like conditional orders and crypto-to-crypto trading which other wallets lack. For crypto, we see a real opportunity to make investing more accessible for consumers. Plus, even more importantly – to improve the utility that cryptocurrencies have, by providing a bridge between crypto and traditional finance. Giving people who have crypto the opportunity to easily use it in our environment will be very big. Ethereum and Bitcoin transaction fees are touching $39 to 18$, respectively, which is a considerable barrier for micro-payments and transactions. What are your views on the rising transaction fees and possible solutions? Ishan Pandey: Firstly, there’s scaling solutions coming to Ethereum, and I believe things there will change a lot, for the better over time. With Bitcoin, similarly, there are applications built around lightning network which are very fast and cheaper. Rossen Yordanov: That said – I still do not believe that Bitcoin & Ethereum will be used for micropayments, or generally anything similar to what Visa or Mastercard do anytime soon. There’s a difference between a transactional layer and a settlement layer, and I believe cryptos, for now, are more suitable for the settlement layer. And for other things, which are not necessarily related to payments, too, of course. Skrill recently added Cardano to its platform. According to you, what is going to propel the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies? Further, what are the risks that merchants should be aware of when they accept cryptocurrencies? Ishan Pandey: Indeed, and Cardano is a very interesting project, with a massive global community and an amazing team of academics. It still remains to be seen, however, what solutions they will bring over to the space, in my opinion. Rossen Yordanov: That said – with regards to adoption, I think that the main ingredients needed are utility and simplicity of user experience. Crypto has been very useful for people to speculate, invest, and generally earn money in the past years. But also, as of recently - we are seeing some very cool use-cases beyond that purely speculative aspect like super quick decentralized borrowing and lending for example, or NFTs for sports moments, and art. I believe that when these use cases are also delivered with a UX that people are broadly comfortable with, adoption will totally take off. Then, about merchants accepting cryptocurrency, I believe most merchants do take the route which is to not take the cryptocurrency themselves, but rely on a payment provider. In this way, the risks around safety, custody, price fluctuations are very much mitigated for the merchant, which is a great solution for them. Another important aspect is KYC and generally – being compliant, as a cryptocurrency address doesn’t have the attributes of, for example, a bank account like name and country but on the positive side the traceability of past transactions is amazing and there are great tools for reducing associated risks. That can also be done by the payment provider, and we are looking forward to helping merchants with that in the future. With the public’s rising interest in the crypto world, many users and now moving towards crypto trading give rise to frauds and instances of money laundering. How is Skrill tackling the issue of illicit transactions and money laundering associated with digital assets? Ishan Pandey: We operate a zero-tolerance policy towards illegal transactions or unlawful practices, so security, fraud and the prevention of abusive use of our products are a top priority. As a regulated financial institution, Skrill is governed by strict due diligence procedures. Rossen Yordanov: We have a comprehensive compliance framework in place to prevent the abuse of our services and we work hard to make that framework as strong as possible.  We also have monitoring systems to identify suspicious activity and if we detect anything suspicious we take appropriate action which includes reporting it to and co-operating with the relevant authorities Recently, there has been a massive uproar in the crypto market wherein people have purchased digital art using non-fungible tokens (NFTs). What is the future of NFTs in the cryptocurrency market and is it the next big thing? According to you, what is driving crypto’s value in 2021? Further, what are your views on NFT art and its valuation? Ishan Pandey: Everybody's talking about NFTs. You have your fans, and your haters. But really, you have to look somewhere in the middle. Rossen Yordanov: NFTs today are mostly digital collectibles. We know what happened with beanie babies. We understand that a G.I. Joe vintage doll might be worth thousands of dollars to somebody, and maybe five dollars to somebody else. So we can apply all of that ambiguity to NFTs as well. We don't have to argue that NFTs are inherently worthless, and that they’re a scam, or that the whole concept is ridiculous. We don't do this with other kinds of collectibles. We have divergent communities that see things in terms of their own value consensus. That's okay with NFTs, too. The great thing though about NFTs is there is provability of the provenance and the scarcity of the item in question. So that’s a great upgrade for the world of art and collectibles, and I think that more and more assets will be digitalized that way in the future. More – NFTs make it possible for creators to collect commission on future sales of their work, which is outstanding for the creator economy. So – I do think that NFTs are one of the things which are driving things forward in 2021, together with Decentralized Finance (lending, borrowing, yield-generating and other smart-contract protocols). The number of Bitcoin addresses is increasing, which is a standard measure of adoption. Transactions on some of the extensive networks, such as Ethereum, are witnessing the same trend. Do you think we will see more and more fintech companies expanding to the cryptocurrency market? Further, what are your views on companies holding digital assets on their balance sheet? Ishan Pandey: We absolutely will see more fintech companies expanding cryptocurrency operations, especially because they're doing that according to the demand and interest of consumers. Rossen Yordanov: I support companies holding cryptocurrencies, with one very important disclaimer – again, you have to plan and be very prepared for volatility. As long as a company has a very high tolerance towards volatility (which can come with a smaller allocation, or a generally longer-term view and plan), I do believe that this is a route that can be taken and can be long-term lucrative. The DOGE coin memes floating around the internet and Elon Musk’s Twitter jokes about it and the current price rally surrounding it is currently one of the most talked-about topics in crypto space. Do you think that these types of social trends can lead to mass adoption of cryptocurrencies? Ishan Pandey: So this is an excellent example of what you were touching on in your last question. There is entirely too much subjective value in Dogecoin. If everybody's looking at its value to change based on what someone somewhere says on Twitter or on TV, that's not a solid foundation. Hardly any investor would argue for that. It's just not sustainable. Having said that, the market, and frankly many markets have been crazy, and if people want to buy a digital coin with a dog’s face on it, they can totally, and will probably do that. I personally watch from the sidelines on this one, and do not think it’s great for cryptocurrencies’ image in general. Rossen Yordanov: Due to highly volatile prices and attempts by large companies to join the market, cryptocurrency has continued to make headlines this year. What new trends can we expect to see in the future moving forward? Ishan Pandey: We also already saw the first country to approve Bitcoin as legal tender – in El Salvador. Maybe that’s another trend? People are already speaking of Paraguay, Mexico as possible next ones. At the same time, the situation in the US doesn’t seem to be as positive as some thought it would be by now, and a Bitcoin ETF still doesn’t seem to be imminent. If this happens though, that’s big too. I know from conversations with people in the space that institutional inflows to Bitcoin have decreased, but there are more waves to come – there’s much of it in the pipeline, it just takes time. Rossen Yordanov: Also, I expect that fintech will continue to open up to crypto in a big way, and we will see a general convergence and integration between fintech and crypto companies. The spree of acquisitions/mergers has already started. We at Skrill have a lot of exciting things on our roadmap both in terms of making exposure to more crypto assets ever easier and in terms of increasing the real-world utility of crypto for people. And, generally, use-cases built on blockchain will continue to emerge. The future is sunny, with occasional storms, as is customary for the crypto space. Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence by asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The material does not constitute any investment, financial, or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc. The writer does not have any vested interest in the company. Ishan Pandey.

"BTC or ETH Micropayments Are Still Not On The Same Level As VISA or Mastercard" - Rossen Yordanov

At Crypto.com, we build our services on the solid foundation of security, transparency, and compliance - these are the necessary prerequisites to scale a successful business. 1. Welcome to our series "Behind the Startup". Tell us about your story and your journey into the fintech industry? I was born and raised in Bulgaria, at the very beginning of the 80s and grew up absorbing the country's pivotal regime changes to liberal democracy.  In the early 2000s, I moved to the capital Sofia for my university studies and a couple of years later, and I was incredibly lucky to stumble upon a job ad posted by Moneybookers (now Paysafe). At the time (2003) I had a very vague idea of what electronic money was, mainly because of Paypal, but was fascinated by the idea of a cashless society that transacts over the internet. I joined Moneybookers at the beginning of 2004 as one of the first few employees the company had on the ground and ever since then I fell in love with the idea of reimagining payments, making instant, cheap, borderless transfers to any country, in any currency using just a computer. Sixteen years later I have the same grit and determination to help build and popularize an even better payment platform, one that fosters financial inclusion, is transparent, affordable and allows individuals to take back the control over their money and identity. A payment platform that caters for every aspect of traditional finance but is built on a blockchain and is powered by cryptocurrencies. 2. You held leadership roles in the payment industry like Skrill (now Paysafe) and SysPay with a focus on building up a payment platform in line with regulatory requirements. The blockchain industry is still in its nascent stage, what kind of regulatory challenges do you face in the crypto industry? Since its inception, the blockchain industry has faced a lot of skepticism and has seen more than one adversary, particularly in the face of authorities and law enforcement agencies. As the industry developed, we saw the emergence of on-chain due diligence companies, some of which made their first steps helping out law enforcement agencies to trace and intercept crypto transactions. As the industry matures, so do the regulators. Plenty of jurisdictions have already announced their official stance on cryptocurrencies by either criminalizing the trade and possession of crypto or introducing local crypto licensing regime - Liechtenstein, Malta Gibraltar,  Germany, UAE to name a few. Earlier this year,  The European Securities and Markets Authority ("ESMA")  announced plans to develop a PAN European legal framework for cryptocurrencies and in the US the Cryptocurrency Act of 2020 is being discussed in the House of Representatives. As crypto adoption and popularity grow, an increasing number of regulators worldwide will start looking into crypto. The key issues that industry players face come from the lack of uniformity across jurisdictions - crypto licenses, where available, are local and cannot be passported, local regulators do not have standard criteria when classifying digital assets thus leaving investors and service providers second-guessing if some crypto-assets may fall within the scope of the EU financial services legislation. The 5th AML Directive and the introduction of the Travel rule by the FATF pose technical challenges as to their implementation, particularly due to the lack of established on-chain providers that can cater to delivering compliance. 3. Crypto.com is the first cryptocurrency company in the world to have ISO 27001:2013, PCI: DSS 3.2.1, Level 1 compliance and CCSS. What is the importance of this compliance for a crypto exchange? At Crypto.com, we build our services on the solid foundation of security, transparency and compliance - these are the necessary prerequisites to scale a successful business. Obtaining industry-leading certifications is not only a great way to establish ourselves as a prominent market leader but also speaks volumes about our commitment to meeting customer expectations and requirements. Gaining and keeping customer trust is the fundamental of mass adoption. 4. Do you think that such compliance should be made mandatory for the crypto industry? Conformity with different industry standards is mandatory and well defined in some cases (PCI DSS) and a matter of corporate governance and ethics in others. Companies that operate sustainable businesses should maintain appropriate programs defining the policies, procedures, and actions necessary to maintain regulatory and industry compliance. 5. Can you tell us about the objective and mission of Crypto.com? Unlike many of the early players, we did not start as a crypto exchange, which makes us stand out from the crowd. We are one of the incumbent crypto payment companies which were born with the idea to bridge the gap between traditional finance and cryptocurrencies. Our mission is to put cryptocurrency in every wallet and empower individuals to take back the control over their money, data and identity. 6. Crypto.com is providing a cryptocurrency exchange service to its customers. How is the company trying to position itself in this highly-competitive market? For the past four years, we have built a platform that addresses nearly every aspect of crypto offerings - payments, trading and finance traditional finance - payments, investment, deposits, credit, merchant services and last but not least - DeFi solutions that start with our  Non-Custodial Wallet app and will further venture into a wide range of decentralized solutions. We do not believe in competition but in partnership. To drive real adoption, we must all work together. We operate a new-age financial ecosystem built on the base of strong partnerships and compliance, and we continue improving and adding more value to better address the needs of our community. 7. The safety of funds remains a significant concern for investors and users. How do you ensure the safety of user funds? Safeguarding of customer funds is a key objective for us. As a responsible crypto custodian, we have developed a flow where all client assets are kept in cold storage, and daily transactions are pre-funded with our own fund. In addition to that, we have recently secured a total of the record $360M insurance cover for our offline vaults. 8. Crypto.com offers a debit card as one of its products, tells us about its adoption, and where users are using it? The MCO Visa Card is one of our stickiest products, and it has been in high demand ever since inception. At present, we are the only crypto company that offers a prepaid card across the world, covering 31 European countries, 49 US states, and Asian large portion of APAC countries. The card is quickly gaining popularity in Europe after its launch in AprilMay this year, and the European program is catching up with the rest of the regions. 9. Can you tell us about the MCO visa card, card tiers, and its features? We offer five tiers of MCO Visa cards that feature no annual or monthly fees, up to 5% cashback in crypto, 100% rebate on Spotify, Netflix and Amazon Prime, airport lounge access for select cards, no-fee ATM withdrawals, tap-and-pay functionality, and competitive interbank rates. The MCO Visa cards are high-quality metal cards that come in a variety of colors based on the card tier - Obsidian Black (50,000 MCO stake required), Icy White/Frosted Rose (5,000 MCO stake required), Jade Green/Royal Indigo (500 MCO stake), offers 5% cashback , Ruby Steel (50 MCO stake) and the Midnight Blue (Free plastic card), the higher the tier of your card, the greater the perks that come with it! 11. With already more than  2 million users, what is the future roadmap for the company? In the short term, our focus is to continue building up our ecosystem by improvising the existing services and adding new ones to address all aspects of payments, trading, and finance, in preparation for the ATH that we believe will come next year. We will continue improving the matching engine and liquidity of our crypto.com exchange, add new partnerships and assets, and build new DeFi solutions to complement our ecosystem. We are quickly moving into a new card issuing markets, such as Canada and Australia, and we continuously grow our user base and keep on evolving as a company as well, now having more than 350 team members across the globe. 12. What has been the impact of Coronavirus pandemic on Crypto.com products? Have you seen an increase in the use and adoption of your products? We were incredibly fortunate during these extraordinary circumstances, and our business has seen significant growth, partially due to the market volatility, partially due to the key new projects we rolled out such as the European card, our non-custodial wallet, and our new and improved exchange matching engine. 13. According to you, what is going to be the effect of coronavirus pandemic on the economy? Can we expect widespread bankruptcies all over the world? The COVID19 outbreak has wreaked havoc in over 185 countries across the world, and while there are no exact calculations on the economic damage it has caused it will have a significant negative impact on the global economy. Despite the numerous attempts of governments to save the markets by injecting fresh capital into the economy and introduce monetary policy measures in support of corporations, there is a good chance that the virus spread will dampen destroy economic growth. The substantial rise of unemployment levels, particularly amongst those engaged in the gig economy puts additional pressure on governments - in the US alone, over 30m people have filed for unemployment benefits within the first month of the lockdown, and the rest of the world is facing similar trends. According to the IMF, the global economy will shrink by 3% in 2020, and many of the top economies are expected to enter into an unprecedented recession. This would test the ability of central banks to control and overcome crises, and it's already evident that the massive quantitative easing would create only short term positive outcomes, but when markets correct themselves after the next quarter results, we will most likely face another plunge in stock prices. The biggest concern of all in a failing economy is when people are afraid of losing everything. In settings like this, crypto stands out as a secure and desirable store of value that offers full transparency and mobility as well as can be a great investment vehicle. The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence by asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The views in these articles are purely personal and educational; the material does not constitute any investment, financial, or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc. The writer does not have any vested interest in the company. Interviewer - Ishan Pandey, Founder of Blockchain Research.

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