I thought it would be really cool to have an ultimate guide for those new to crypto currencies and the terms used. I made this mostly for beginner’s and veterans alike. I’m not sure how much use you will get out of this. Stuff gets lost on Reddit quite easily so I hope this finds its way to you. Included in this list, I have included most of the terms used in crypto-communities. I have compiled this list from a multitude of sources. The list is in alphabetical order and may include some words/terms not exclusive to the crypto world but may be helpful regardless.
2FA
Two factor authentication. I highly advise that you use it.
51% Attack:
A situation where a single malicious individual or group gains control of more than half of a cryptocurrency network’s computing power. Theoretically, it could allow perpetrators to manipulate the system and spend the same coin multiple times, stop other users from completing blocks and make conflicting transactions to a chain that could harm the network.
Address (or Addy):
A unique string of numbers and letters (both upper and lower case) used to send, receive or store cryptocurrency on the network. It is also the public key in a pair of keys needed to sign a digital transaction. Addresses can be shared publicly as a text or in the form of a scannable QR code. They differ between cryptocurrencies. You can’t send Bitcoin to an Ethereum address, for example.
Altcoin (alternative coin): Any digital currency other than Bitcoin. These other currencies are alternatives to Bitcoin regarding features and functionalities (e.g. faster confirmation time, lower price, improved mining algorithm, higher total coin supply). There are hundreds of altcoins, including Ether, Ripple, Litecoin and many many others.
AIRDROP:
An event where the investors/participants are able to receive free tokens or coins into their digital wallet.
AML: Defines Anti-Money Laundering laws**.**
ARBITRAGE:
Getting risk-free profits by trading (simultaneous buying and selling of the cryptocurrency) on two different exchanges which have different prices for the same asset.
Ashdraked:
Being Ashdraked is essentially a more detailed version of being Zhoutonged. It is when you lose all of your invested capital, but you do so specifically by shorting Bitcoin. The expression “Ashdraked” comes from a story of a Romanian cryptocurrency investor who insisted upon shorting BTC, as he had done so successfully in the past. When the price of BTC rose from USD 300 to USD 500, the Romanian investor lost all of his money.
ATH (All Time High):
The highest price ever achieved by a cryptocurrency in its entire history. Alternatively, ATL is all time low
Bearish:
A tendency of prices to fall; a pessimistic expectation that the value of a coin is going to drop.
Bear trap:
A manipulation of a stock or commodity by investors.
Bitcoin:
The very first, and the highest ever valued, mass-market open source and decentralized cryptocurrency and digital payment system that runs on a worldwide peer to peer network. It operates independently of any centralized authorities
Bitconnect:
One of the biggest scams in the crypto world. it was made popular in the meme world by screaming idiot Carlos Matos, who infamously proclaimed," hey hey heeeey” and “what's a what's a what's up wasssssssssuuuuuuuuuuuuup, BitConneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect!”. He is now in the mentally ill meme hall of fame.
Block:
A package of permanently recorded data about transactions occurring every time period (typically about 10 minutes) on the blockchain network. Once a record has been completed and verified, it goes into a blockchain and gives way to the next block. Each block also contains a complex mathematical puzzle with a unique answer, without which new blocks can’t be added to the chain.
Blockchain:
An unchangeable digital record of all transactions ever made in a particular cryptocurrency and shared across thousands of computers worldwide. It has no central authority governing it. Records, or blocks, are chained to each other using a cryptographic signature. They are stored publicly and chronologically, from the genesis block to the latest block, hence the term blockchain. Anyone can have access to the database and yet it remains incredibly difficult to hack.
Bullish:
A tendency of prices to rise; an optimistic expectation that a specific cryptocurrency will do well and its value is going to increase.
BTFD:
Buy the fucking dip. This advise was bestowed upon us by the gods themselves. It is the iron code to crypto enthusiasts.
Bull market:
A market that Cryptos are going up.
Consensus:
An agreement among blockchain participants on the validity of data. Consensus is reached when the majority of nodes on the network verify that the transaction is 100% valid.
Crypto bubble:
The instability of cryptocurrencies in terms of price value
Cryptocurrency:
A type of digital currency, secured by strong computer code (cryptography), that operates independently of any middlemen or central authoritie
Cryptography:
The art of converting sensitive data into a format unreadable for unauthorized users, which when decoded would result in a meaningful statement.
Cryptojacking:
The use of someone else’s device and profiting from its computational power to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge and consent.
Crypto-Valhalla:
When HODLers(holders) eventually cash out they go to a place called crypto-Valhalla. The strong will be separated from the weak and the strong will then be given lambos.
DAO:
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. It defines A blockchain technology inspired organization or corporation that exists and operates without human intervention.
Dapp (decentralized application):
An open-source application that runs and stores its data on a blockchain network (instead of a central server) to prevent a single failure point. This software is not controlled by the single body – information comes from people providing other people with data or computing power.
Decentralized:
A system with no fundamental control authority that governs the network. Instead, it is jointly managed by all users to the system.
Desktop wallet:
A wallet that stores the private keys on your computer, which allow the spending and management of your bitcoins.
DILDO:
Long red or green candles. This is a crypto signal that tells you that it is not favorable to trade at the moment. Found on candlestick charts.
Digital Signature:
An encrypted digital code attached to an electronic document to prove that the sender is who they say they are and confirm that a transaction is valid and should be accepted by the network.
Double Spending:
An attack on the blockchain where a malicious user manipulates the network by sending digital money to two different recipients at exactly the same time.
DYOR:
Means do your own research.
Encryption:
Converting data into code to protect it from unauthorized access, so that only the intended recipient(s) can decode it.
Eskrow:
the practice of having a third party act as an intermediary in a transaction. This third party holds the funds on and sends them off when the transaction is completed.
Ethereum:
Ethereum is an open source, public, blockchain-based platform that runs smart contracts and allows you to build dapps on it. Ethereum is fueled by the cryptocurrency Ether.
Exchange:
A platform (centralized or decentralized) for exchanging (trading) different forms of cryptocurrencies. These exchanges allow you to exchange cryptos for local currency. Some popular exchanges are Coinbase, Bittrex, Kraken and more.
Faucet:
A website which gives away free cryptocurrencies.
Fiat money:
Fiat currency is legal tender whose value is backed by the government that issued it, such as the US dollar or UK pound.
Fork:
A split in the blockchain, resulting in two separate branches, an original and a new alternate version of the cryptocurrency. As a single blockchain forks into two, they will both run simultaneously on different parts of the network. For example, Bitcoin Cash is a Bitcoin fork.
FOMO:
Fear of missing out.
Frictionless:
A system is frictionless when there are zero transaction costs or trading retraints.
FUD:
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt regarding the crypto market.
Gas:
A fee paid to run transactions, dapps and smart contracts on Ethereum.
Halving:
A 50% decrease in block reward after the mining of a pre-specified number of blocks. Every 4 years, the “reward” for successfully mining a block of bitcoin is reduced by half. This is referred to as “Halving”.
Hardware wallet:
Physical wallet devices that can securely store cryptocurrency maximally. Some examples are Ledger Nano S**,** Digital Bitbox and more**.**
Hash:
The process that takes input data of varying sizes, performs an operation on it and converts it into a fixed size output. It cannot be reversed.
Hashing:
The process by which you mine bitcoin or similar cryptocurrency, by trying to solve the mathematical problem within it, using cryptographic hash functions.
HODL:
A Bitcoin enthusiast once accidentally misspelled the word HOLD and it is now part of the bitcoin legend. It can also mean hold on for dear life.
ICO (Initial Coin Offering):
A blockchain-based fundraising mechanism, or a public crowd sale of a new digital coin, used to raise capital from supporters for an early stage crypto venture. Beware of these as there have been quite a few scams in the past.
John mcAfee:
A man who will one day eat his balls on live television for falsely predicting bitcoin going to 100k. He has also become a small meme within the crypto community for his outlandish claims.
JOMO:
Joy of missing out. For those who are so depressed about missing out their sadness becomes joy.
KYC:
Know your customer(alternatively consumer).
Lambo:
This stands for Lamborghini. A small meme within the investing community where the moment someone gets rich they spend their earnings on a lambo. One day we will all have lambos in crypto-valhalla.
Ledger:
Away from Blockchain, it is a book of financial transactions and balances. In the world of crypto, the blockchain functions as a ledger. A digital currency’s ledger records all transactions which took place on a certain block chain network.
Leverage:
Trading with borrowed capital (margin) in order to increase the potential return of an investment.
Liquidity:
The availability of an asset to be bought and sold easily, without affecting its market price.
of the coins.
Margin trading:
The trading of assets or securities bought with borrowed money.
Market cap/MCAP:
A short-term for Market Capitalization. Market Capitalization refers to the market value of a particular cryptocurrency. It is computed by multiplying the Price of an individual unit of coins by the total circulating supply.
Miner:
A computer participating in any cryptocurrency network performing proof of work. This is usually done to receive block rewards.
Mining:
The act of solving a complex math equation to validate a blockchain transaction using computer processing power and specialized hardware.
Mining contract:
A method of investing in bitcoin mining hardware, allowing anyone to rent out a pre-specified amount of hashing power, for an agreed amount of time. The mining service takes care of hardware maintenance, hosting and electricity costs, making it simpler for investors.
Mining rig:
A computer specially designed for mining cryptocurrencies.
Mooning:
A situation the price of a coin rapidly increases in value. Can also be used as: “I hope bitcoin goes to the moon”
Node:
Any computing device that connects to the blockchain network.
Open source:
The practice of sharing the source code for a piece of computer software, allowing it to be distributed and altered by anyone.
OTC:
Over the counter. Trading is done directly between parties.
P2P (Peer to Peer):
A type of network connection where participants interact directly with each other rather than through a centralized third party. The system allows the exchange of resources from A to B, without having to go through a separate server.
Paper wallet:
A form of “cold storage” where the private keys are printed onto a piece of paper and stored offline. Considered as one of the safest crypto wallets, the truth is that it majors in sweeping coins from your wallets.
Pre mining:
The mining of a cryptocurrency by its developers before it is released to the public.
Proof of stake (POS):
A consensus distribution algorithm which essentially rewards you based upon the amount of the coin that you own. In other words, more investment in the coin will leads to more gain when you mine with this protocol In Proof of Stake, the resource held by the “miner” is their stake in the currency.
PROOF OF WORK (POW) :
The competition of computers competing to solve a tough crypto math problem. The first computer that does this is allowed to create new blocks and record information.” The miner is then usually rewarded via transaction fees.
Protocol:
A standardized set of rules for formatting and processing data.
Public key / private key:
A cryptographic code that allows a user to receive cryptocurrencies into an account. The public key is made available to everyone via a publicly accessible directory, and the private key remains confidential to its respective owner. Because the key pair is mathematically related, whatever is encrypted with a public key may only be decrypted by its corresponding private key.
Pump and dump:
Massive buying and selling activity of cryptocurrencies (sometimes organized and to one’s benefit) which essentially result in a phenomenon where the significant surge in the value of coin followed by a huge crash take place in a short time frame.
Recovery phrase:
A set of phrases you are given whereby you can regain or access your wallet should you lose the private key to your wallets — paper, mobile, desktop, and hardware wallet. These phrases are some random 12–24 words. A recovery Phrase can also be called as Recovery seed, Seed Key, Recovery Key, or Seed Phrase.
REKT:
Referring to the word “wrecked”. It defines a situation whereby an investor or trader who has been ruined utterly following the massive losses suffered in crypto industry.
Ripple:
An alternative payment network to Bitcoin based on similar cryptography. The ripple network uses XRP as currency and is capable of sending any asset type.
ROI:
Return on investment.
Safu:
A crypto term for safe popularized by the Bizonnaci YouTube channel after the CEO of Binance tweeted
“Funds are safe."
“the exchage I use got hacked!”“Oh no, are your funds safu?”
“My coins better be safu!”

Sats/Satoshi:
The smallest fraction of a bitcoin is called a “satoshi” or “sat”. It represents one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin and is named after Satoshi Nakamoto.
Satoshi Nakamoto:
This was the pseudonym for the mysterious creator of Bitcoin.
Scalability:
The ability of a cryptocurrency to contain the massive use of its Blockchain.
Sharding:
A scaling solution for the Blockchain. It is generally a method that allows nodes to have partial copies of the complete blockchain in order to increase overall network performance and consensus speeds.
Shitcoin:
Coin with little potential or future prospects.
Shill:
Spreading buzz by heavily promoting a particular coin in the community to create awareness.
Short position:
Selling of a specific cryptocurrency with an expectation that it will drop in value.
Silk road:
The online marketplace where drugs and other illicit items were traded for Bitcoin. This marketplace is using accessed through “TOR”, and VPNs. In October 2013, a Silk Road was shut down in by the FBI.
Smart Contract:
Certain computational benchmarks or barriers that have to be met in turn for money or data to be deposited or even be used to verify things such as land rights.
Software Wallet:
A crypto wallet that exists purely as software files on a computer. Usually, software wallets can be generated for free from a variety of sources.
Solidity:
A contract-oriented coding language for implementing smart contracts on Ethereum. Its syntax is similar to that of JavaScript.
Stable coin:
A cryptocoin with an extremely low volatility that can be used to trade against the overall market.
Staking:
Staking is the process of actively participating in transaction validation (similar to mining) on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. On these blockchains, anyone with a minimum-required balance of a specific cryptocurrency can validate transactions and earn Staking rewards.
Surge:
When a crypto currency appreciates or goes up in price.
Tank:
The opposite of mooning. When a coin tanks it can also be described as crashing.
Tendies
For traders , the chief prize is “tendies” (chicken tenders, the treat an overgrown man-child receives for being a “Good Boy”) .
Token:
A unit of value that represents a digital asset built on a blockchain system. A token is usually considered as a “coin” of a cryptocurrency, but it really has a wider functionality.
TOR: “The Onion Router” is a free web browser designed to protect users’ anonymity and resist censorship. Tor is usually used surfing the web anonymously and access sites on the “Darkweb”.
Transaction fee:
An amount of money users are charged from their transaction when sending cryptocurrencies.
Volatility:
A measure of fluctuations in the price of a financial instrument over time. High volatility in bitcoin is seen as risky since its shifting value discourages people from spending or accepting it.
Wallet:
A file that stores all your private keys and communicates with the blockchain to perform transactions. It allows you to send and receive bitcoins securely as well as view your balance and transaction history.
Whale:
An investor that holds a tremendous amount of cryptocurrency. Their extraordinary large holdings allow them to control prices and manipulate the market.
Whitepaper:

A comprehensive report or guide made to understand an issue or help decision making. It is also seen as a technical write up that most cryptocurrencies provide to take a deep look into the structure and plan of the cryptocurrency/Blockchain project. Satoshi Nakamoto was the first to release a whitepaper on Bitcoin, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” in late 2008.
And with that I finally complete my odyssey. I sincerely hope that this helped you and if you are new, I welcome you to crypto. If you read all of that I hope it increased, you in knowledge.
my final definition:
Crypto-Family:
A collection of all the HODLers and crypto fanatics. A place where all people alike unite over a love for crypto.
We are all in this together as we pioneer the new world that is crypto currency. I wish you a great day and Happy HODLing.
-u/flacciduck
feel free to comment words or terms that you feel should be included or about any errors I made.
Edit1:some fixes were made and added words.

Hey everyone! This is Part IV of VI from our May-June update catchup series (5 Jun - 11 Jun'20):

Yosma's Cheerful Cassowary beat Eva's Bright Beetle in a quick finale to win this week's Parena which had a massive $PAR pot thanks to a generous donation from Tony. Gamer Boy’s “Random Gk” and “Renewal from January” quizzes in Tiproom were fun as always. Plus, there were 10k $PAR in prizes. Cool! Charlotte’s “Mega Trivia” got everyone scratching their heads. CoD Mobile gamers were in for an epic time this week with Tavo hosting a tournament with a 3k $PAR pot in the Parachute War Zone. Two-for-Tuesday slid into the "rap, reggae and reggaeton" mode this week. Click here to listen to the playlist. Thanks Sebastian for setting it up! If you have been around for a while, you’ll know that Clinton’s charity, For Living Independence, does some amazing work. So the next time you shop on Amazon, don’t forget to show some love though AmazonSmile.
Cap and crew made their voices heard in NYC this week in solidarity with George Floyd
Congratulations to 2gether for crossing the 40k user mark this week. A new way for account top ups was introduced as well. This week’s CEO email covers news on the latest UX and the 2GT token. Youtuber Funontheride featured the email in his video. Filippo Angeloni covered the latest updates in his newest video as well. Founder Savador Casquero wrote about crypto staking in an Investing.com article. MakerDAO covered the 2gether card in its blog post on crypto debit cards. Following the XIO dApp update from last week, Citizens brainstormed about the UI this week. Citizens also talked about some of their contrarian beliefs in crypto. Bomb community started a Uniswap rewards program. Voyager raised USD 2.1M through a private placement from investors such as Streamlined Ventures, Susquehanna, Market Rebellion etc. Their stock has seen some enormous growth this year too. CEO Stephen Ehrlich shared his thoughts on the crypto market in a recent Bloomberg article. The team also took inputs from the community on which crypto to list next. John McAfee announced a Ghost cell phone data service to be released in September. Check out how the eSIM will work from the sneak peek video. The list of supported phones is mentioned here. And hope you had good fun in ParJar Gaming while winning some cool $ESH. A new set of upgrades were pushed to the Fantom Wallet. For the latest technical update on the project, click here. This week, I also wrote a Hackernoon article (with my co-author Rohit) exploring projects which had unique variations to Proof-of-Stake for their chain consensus. Among the projects featured were Fantom, COTI and Harmony. Jeff from Uptrennd will be speaking at the LA Blockchain Summit in October this year. The winners of the Blockchain Awards were announced. The newest Opacity release allows expired accounts to be revived within 2 months of expiry.
Fantom, Harmony and COTI take up a tiny but growing slice in the global staking pie
Catch up on the latest District0x weekly update and dev update from here and here respectively. The Q1 2020 report was released as well. The project is still sitting on a healthy crypto asset base of USD 4M+. Hydro team shared a guide to choosing a prepaid debit card program manager. Their PaaS report was also covered by Finovate this week. A new research page for featuring all of Hydro’s fintech research material was released. The successful applicants of the Project Hydro Decentralization Ambassador Program (which started in May) were voted upon this week and 7 DAs were elected. Silent Notary, Ubikiri and IDL integrations were completed this week with Silent Notary now appearing in Applications section of Ubikiri. A roundup of the latest updates was published as well. Sentivate founder Thomas Marchi sat down for an interview with MineYourBiz Monday’s NrdGrl007. Mycro announced that Chaia.io will be hosting a campaign on the Mycro Hunter App soon. SelfKey’s Data Breach compendium was updated this week. And if you’re a Product Designer looking for remote work, don’t forget to check out this opening at SelfKey. What next for Constellation? Watch the Constellation Network State of The Union to find out. Their educational group Startdust Collective made a brand video and a high level explainer article on the HyperGraph Transport Protocol. Pynk is thinking about doing a global crowdfunding campaign as opposed to one that is restricted to certain countries only. In light of this, the Pynk Crowd Wisdom was put to work to find out the best way to go about this.
Results of the Project Hydro DA Elections
Wibson’s latest app update was covered by Cointelegraph and Europe World News. Click here to catch up on this week’s detailed work thread from the Harmony project. A recent Harmony ecosystem is the SmartStake dashboard to check staking stats. Sprout Wallet now supports core utilities of HRC20 tokens. The team sat down for an AMA with Binance India and KuCoin this week. Next week they will be doing another AMA with the larger Binance community. Some insights about the Harmony grants were shared in this week’s community call. Read up on Intellishare founder Raymond Xiong’s thoughts on DAOs which he shared as part of a speaker panel at the 2020 Digital Innovation Project Exchange Conference. The team also published a post on how they aim to solve the DeFi congestion. The TestNet is expected to arrive soon as well. After the latest livestream of DI-RECT’s concert which saw ~10k attendees, GET Protocol announced that they will be facilitating tickets to the follow-up show as well. A recap of the COTI journey was published to mark the one-year anniversary of the project and the occasion was celebrated with a fun trivia. DoYourTip community voted to have liquidity rewards for pooling $DYT on Uniswap.

And with that, it’s a wrap! See you again with another update. Ciao!

Can the early success of major crypto exchanges propel them to winning the broader consumer finance market?
https://reddit.com/link/i48t4q/video/v4eo10gom7f51/player
This is the first part of Crypto Banking Wars — a new series that examines what crypto-native company is most likely to become the bank of the future. Who is best positioned to reach mainstream adoption in consumer finance?
While crypto allows the world to get rid of banks, a bank will still very much be necessary for this powerful technology to reach the masses. We believe a crypto-native company, like Genesis Block, will become the bank of the future.
In an earlier series, Crypto-Powered, we laid out arguments for why crypto-native companies have a huge edge in the market. When you consider both the broad spectrum of financial use-cases and the enormous value unlocked through these DeFi protocols, you can see just how big of an unfair advantage blockchain tech becomes for companies who truly understand and leverage it. Traditional banks and fintech unicorns simply won’t be able to keep up.

The power players of consumer finance in the 21st century will be crypto-native companies who build with blockchain technology at their core.

The crypto landscape is still nascent. We’re still very much in the fragmented, unbundled phase of the industry lifecycle. Beyond what Genesis Block is doing, there are signs of other companies slowly starting to bundle financial services into what could be an all-in-one bank replacement.
So the key question that this series hopes to answer:

Which crypto-native company will successfully become the bank of the future?

We obviously think Genesis Block is well-positioned to win. But we certainly aren’t the only game in town. In this series, we’ll be doing an analysis of who is most capable of thwarting our efforts. We’ll look at categories like crypto exchanges, crypto wallets, centralized lending & borrowing services, and crypto debit card companies. Each category will have its own dedicated post.
Today we’re analyzing big crypto exchanges. The two companies we’ll focus on today are Coinbase (biggest American exchange) and Binance (biggest global exchange). They are the top two exchanges in terms of Bitcoin trading volume. They are in pole position to winning this market — they have a huge existing userbase and strong financial resources.
Will Coinbase or Binance become the bank of the future? Can their early success propel them to winning the broader consumer finance market? Is their growth too far ahead for anyone else to catch up? Let’s dive in.
https://preview.redd.it/lau4hevpm7f51.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=2c5de1ba497199f36aa194e5809bd86e5ab533d8

Binance

The most formidable exchange on the global stage is Binance (Crunchbase). All signs suggest they have significantly more users and a stronger balance sheet than Coinbase. No other exchange is executing as aggressively and relentlessly as Binance is. The cadence at which they are shipping and launching new products is nothing short of impressive. As Tushar Jain from Multicoin argues, Binance is Blitzscaling.
Here are some of the products that they’ve launched in the last 18 months. Only a few are announced but still pre-launch.

Lending: earn interest on your deposits
Debit Card: users can spend their crypto with a card (via Swipe acquisition)
Fiat onramps: 300+ payment methods and supported in 170+ countries
Options Trading: starting with mobile-only and Bitcoin
Futures Trading: became top 2 in volume within 6 months
Margin Trading: can get up to 5x leverage
BUSD stablecoin: similar to USDC, PAX, and other USD-backed stablecoins
Staking: easily earn interest on assets that have Proof of Stake chain
Mining pool: allowing miners to easily transfer funds between various Binance services
OTC Portal: over-the-counter trading desk for those who want to make bigger trades
Peer-to-Peer trading: for onramps/offramps (i.e. user buying crypto with fiat)
Launchpad: crypto startups can launch their tokens via IEO (Initial Exchange Offering)
Binance Charity: recently donated a lot to covid19-related efforts
Binance Chain: a new blockchain that powers their Binance Dex.
Binance DEX: a decentralized exchange
Binance Labs: the venture arm of Binance
Smart Contracts on Binance Chain: could this be an Ethereum killer?

Binance is well-positioned to become the crypto-powered, all-in-one, bundled solution for financial services. They already have so many of the pieces. But the key question is:

Can they create a cohesive & united product experience?

Binance Weaknesses

Binance is strong, but they do have a few major weaknesses that could slow them down.

Traders & Speculators Binance is currently very geared for speculators, traders, and financial professionals. Their bread-and-butter is trading (spot, margin, options, futures). Their UI is littered with depth charts, order books, candlesticks, and other financial concepts that are beyond the reach of most normal consumers. Their product today is not at all tailored for the broader consumer market. Given Binance’s popularity and strength among the pro audience, it’s unlikely that they will dumb down or simplify their product any time soon. That would jeopardize their core business. Binance will likely need an entirely new product/brand to go beyond the pro user crowd. That will take time (or an acquisition). So the question remains, is Binance even interested in the broader consumer market? Or will they continue to focus on their core product, the one-stop-shop for pro crypto traders?
Controversies & Hot Water Binance has had a number of controversies. No one seems to know where they are based — so what regulatory agencies can hold them accountable? Last year, some sensitive, private user data got leaked. When they announced their debit card program, they had to remove mentions of Visa quickly after. And though the “police raid” story proved to be untrue, there are still a lot of questions about what happened with their Shanghai office shut down (where there is smoke, there is fire). If any company has had a “move fast and break things” attitude, it is Binance. That attitude has served them well so far but as they try to do business in more regulated countries like America, this will make their road much more difficult — especially in the consumer market where trust takes a long time to earn, but can be destroyed in an instant. This is perhaps why the Binance US product is an empty shell when compared to their main global product.
Disjointed Product Experience Because Binance has so many different teams launching so many different services, their core product is increasingly feeling disjointed and disconnected. Many of the new features are sloppily integrated with each other. There’s no cohesive product experience. This is one of the downsides of executing and shipping at their relentless pace. For example, users don’t have a single wallet that shows their balances. Depending on if the user wants to do spot trading, margin, futures, or savings… the user needs to constantly be transferring their assets from one wallet to another. It’s not a unified, frictionless, simple user experience. This is one major downside of the “move fast and break things” approach.
BNB token Binance raised $15M in a 2017 ICO by selling their $BNB token. The current market cap of $BNB is worth more than $2.6B. Financially this token has served them well. However, given how BNB works (for example, their token burn), there are a lot of open questions as to how BNB will be treated with US security laws. Their Binance US product so far is treading very lightly with its use of BNB. Their token could become a liability for Binance as it enters more regulated markets. Whether the crypto community likes it or not, until regulators get caught up and understand the power of decentralized technology, tokens will still be a regulatory burden — especially for anything that touches consumers.
Binance Chain & Smart Contract Platform Binance is launching its own smart contract platform soon. Based on compatibility choices, they have their sights aimed at the Ethereum developer community. It’s unclear how easy it’ll be to convince developers to move to Binance chain. Most of the current developer energy and momentum around smart contracts is with Ethereum. Because Binance now has their own horse in the race, it’s unlikely they will ever decide to leverage Ethereum’s DeFi protocols. This could likely be a major strategic mistake — and hubris that goes a step too far. Binance will be pushing and promoting protocols on their own platform. The major risk of being all-in on their own platform is that they miss having a seat on the Ethereum rocket ship — specifically the growth of DeFi use-cases and the enormous value that can be unlocked. Integrating with Ethereum’s protocols would be either admitting defeat of their own platform or competing directly against themselves.

Binance Wrap Up

I don’t believe Binance is likely to succeed with a homegrown product aimed at the consumer finance market. Their current product — which is focused heavily on professional traders and speculators — is unlikely to become the bank of the future. If they wanted to enter the broader consumer market, I believe it’s much more likely that they will acquire a company that is getting early traction. They are not afraid to make acquisitions (Trust, JEX, WazirX, DappReview, BxB, CoinMarketCap, Swipe).
However, never count CZ out. He is a hustler. Binance is executing so aggressively and relentlessly that they will always be on the shortlist of major contenders.
https://preview.redd.it/mxmlg1zqm7f51.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d900dd5ff7f3b00df5fe5a48305d57ebeffaa9a

Coinbase

The crypto-native company that I believe is more likely to become the bank of the future is Coinbase (crunchbase). Their dominance in America could serve as a springboard to winning the West (Binance has a stronger foothold in Asia). Coinbase has more than 30M users. Their exchange business is a money-printing machine. They have a solid reputation as it relates to compliance and working with regulators. Their CEO is a longtime member of the crypto community. They are rumored to be going public soon.

Coinbase Strengths

Let’s look at what makes them strong and a likely contender for winning the broader consumer finance market.

Different Audience, Different Experience Coinbase has been smart to create a unique product experience for each audience — the pro speculator crowd and the common retail user. Their simple consumer version is at Coinbase.com. That’s the default. Their product for the more sophisticated traders and speculators is at Coinbase Pro (formerly GDAX). Unlike Binance, Coinbase can slowly build out the bank of the future for the broad consumer market while still having a home for their hardcore crypto traders. They aren’t afraid to have different experiences for different audiences.
Brand & Design Coinbase has a strong product design team. Their brand is capable of going beyond the male-dominated crypto audience. Their product is clean and simple — much more consumer-friendly than Binance. It’s clear they spend a lot of time thinking about their user experience. Interacting directly with crypto can sometimes be rough and raw (especially for n00bs). When I was at Mainframe we hosted a panel about Crypto UX challenges at the DevCon4 Dapp Awards. Connie Yang (Head of Design at Coinbase) was on the panel. She was impressive. Some of their design philosophies will bode well as they push to reach the broader consumer finance market.
USDC Stablecoin Coinbase (along with Circle) launched USDC. We’ve shared some stats about its impressive growth when we discussed DeFi use-cases. USDC is quickly becoming integrated with most DeFi protocols. As a result, Coinbase is getting a front-row seat at some of the most exciting things happening in decentralized finance. As Coinbase builds its knowledge and networks around these protocols, it could put them in a favorable position to unlock incredible value for their users.
Early Signs of Bundling Though Coinbase has nowhere near as many products & services as Binance, they are slowly starting to add more financial services that may appeal to the broader market. They are now letting depositors earn interest on USDC (also DAI & Tezos). In the UK they are piloting a debit card. Users can now invest in crypto with dollar-cost-averaging. It’s not much, but it’s a start. You can start to see hints of a more bundled solution around financial services.

Coinbase Weaknesses

Let’s now look at some things that could hold them back.

Slow Cadence In the fast-paced world of crypto, and especially when compared to Binance, Coinbase does not ship very many new products very often. This is perhaps their greatest weakness. Smaller, more nimble startups may run circles around them. They were smart to launch Coinbase Ventures where tey invest in early-stage startups. They can now keep an ear to the ground on innovation. Perhaps their cadence is normal for a company of their size — but the Binance pace creates quite the contrast.
Lack of Innovation When you consider the previous point (slow cadence), it’s unclear if Coinbase is capable of building and launching new products that are built internally. Most of their new products have come through acquisitions. Their Earn.com acquisition is what led to their Earn educational product. Their acquisition of Xapo helped bolster their institutional custody offering. They acqui-hired a team to help launch their staking infrastructure. Their acquisition of Cipher Browser became an important part of Coinbase Wallet. And recently, they acquired Tagomi — a crypto prime brokerage. Perhaps most of Coinbase’s team is just focused on improving their golden goose, their exchange business. It’s unclear. But the jury is still out on if they can successfully innovate internally and launch any homegrown products.
Talent Exodus There have been numerous reports of executive turmoil at Coinbase. It raises a lot of questions about company culture and vision. Some of the executives who departed include COO Asiff Hirji, CTO Balaji Srinivasan, VP & GM Adam White, VP Eng Tim Wagner, VP Product Jeremy Henrickson, Sr Dir of Eng Namrata Ganatra, VP of Intl Biz Dan Romero, Dir of Inst Sales Christine Sandler, Head of Trading Hunter Merghart, Dir Data Science Soups Ranjan, Policy Lead Mike Lempres, Sr Compliance Vaishali Mehta. Many of these folks didn’t stay with Coinbase very long. We don’t know exactly why it’s happening —but when you consider a few of my first points (slow cadence, lack of innovation), you have to wonder if it’s all related.
Institutional Focus As a company, we are a Coinbase client. We love their institutional offering. It’s clear they’ve been investing a lot in this area. A recent Coinbase blog post made it clear that this has been a focus: “Over the past 12 months, Coinbase has been laser-focused on building out the types of features and services that our institutional customers need.” Their Tagomi acquisition only re-enforced this focus. Perhaps this is why their consumer product has felt so neglected. They’ve been heavily investing in their institutional services since May 2018. For a company that’s getting very close to an IPO, it makes sense that they’d focus on areas that present strong revenue opportunities — as they do with institutional clients. Even for big companies like Coinbase, it’s hard to have a split focus. If they are “laser-focused” on the institutional audience, it’s unlikely they’ll be launching any major consumer products anytime soon.

Coinbase Wrap Up

At Genesis Block, we‘re proud to be working with Coinbase. They are a fantastic company. However, I don’t believe that they’ll succeed in building their own product for the broader consumer finance market. While they have incredible design, there are no signs that they are focused on or capable of internally building this type of product.
Similar to Binance, I think it’s far more likely that Coinbase acquires a promising young startup with strong growth.

Honorable Mentions

Other US-based exchanges worth mentioning are Kraken, Gemini, and Bittrex. So far we’ve seen very few signs that any of them will aggressively attack broader consumer finance. Most are going in the way of Binance — listing more assets and adding more pro tools like margin and futures trading. And many, like Coinbase, are trying to attract more institutional customers. For example, Gemini with their custody product.

Wrap Up

Coinbase and Binance have huge war chests and massive reach. For that alone, they should always be considered threats to Genesis Block. However, their products are very, very different than the product we’re building. And their approach is very different as well. They are trying to educate and onboard people into crypto. At Genesis Block, we believe the masses shouldn’t need to know or care about it. We did an entire series about this, Spreading Crypto.
Most everyone needs banking — whether it be to borrow, spend, invest, earn interest, etc. Not everyone needs a crypto exchange. For non-crypto consumers (the mass market), the differences between a bank and a crypto exchange are immense. Companies like Binance and Coinbase make a lot of money on their crypto exchange business. It would be really difficult, gutsy, and risky for any of them to completely change their narrative, messaging, and product to focus on the broader consumer market. I don’t believe they would ever risk biting the hand that feeds them.
In summary, as it relates to a digital bank aimed at the mass market, I believe both Coinbase and Binance are much more likely to acquire a startup in this space than they are to build it themselves. And I think they would want to keep the brand/product distinct and separate from their core crypto exchange business.
So back to the original question, is Coinbase and Binance a threat to Genesis Block? Not really. Not today. But they could be, and for that, we want to stay close to them.
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Other Ways to Consume Today's Episode:

Read on Medium: https://medium.com/genesisblock/crypto-banking-wars-will-coinbase-or-binance-become-the-bank-of-the-future-eb31bcf02b02
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0csY1j0FuEk
Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/genesisblock/13-crypto-banking-wars-will-coinbase-or-binance-become-the-bank-of-the-future/
Listen via Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc): https://anchor.fm/genesis-block/episodes/13-Crypto-Banking-Wars---Will-Coinbase-or-Binance-Become-the-Bank-of-the-Future-ehmrmo

Follow our social channels: https://genesisblock.com/follow/
Download the app. We're a digital bank that's powered by crypto: https://genesisblock.com/download

https://preview.redd.it/0yq7rwnkjdq11.png?width=1500&format=png&auto=webp&s=950dd49d7e1f7f1e421f7074bd030aec064e6ac7
A total prize pool of 7,000 KMD in our infographic contest
Calling all creatives to take part in our infographic contest and compete for a prize of 7,000 KMD. The winning infographic will explain the architecture of Komodo Platform’s technology. Winners will be those who are able to communicate our architecture and tech visually. This contest will run primarily on Reddit, with the exception of resources being posted to Medium and a master twitter thread for submissions on Twitter. You'll find links at the bottom of this post.

Prizes for winning infographics.

Are you a creative designer? Here's what you can win…

A grand prize of 5,000 KMD
Two runner-up prizes of 500 KMD each
Two third-place prizes of 250 KMD each

Prizes for sharing and giving feedback!

Not a designer? That's OK. You can still participate and win! We'll award five lucky winners 100 KMD each for sharing and promoting the contest. Winners will be picked in a raffle. If you'd like to take part click here https://gleam.io/MwMtO/komodos-20-infographic-contest-5000-kmd-grand-prize and share this post with your friends.

Your Goals

Create a high-quality infographic that illustrates the genesis of our platform, the working tech that has been created and how Komodo has been built differently, and deliberately, from the very beginning to ensure security, scalability and interoperability. This is why we refer to the architecture, because Komodo was designed to overcome common problems like congestion, governance and attacks that other platforms did not foresee or prevent, from the beginning. This is Komodo DNA.
Share your submission far and wide and encourage your friends and followers to vote for you.
Encourage feedback, ask questions and make your infographic the best that it can be.

Our Criteria to Judge

Please note that upvotes and shares are not the only criteria we'll use to judge winners. While useful, we will value creativity, good questions and discussion on Reddit highly. When sharing your posts you will score more highly if people comment, provide feedback and are engaged.

How well the infographic conveys our working tech, it's core concepts and plans to build on top of it.
How well the infographic illustrates our story, purpose and conveys our tech so that it's easy to understand.
Constructive discussion, questions and feedback on Reddit that lead to improvement.
Sentiment and comments generated across all our social media. This will not include vanity metrics like likes or shares.
Upvotes on Reddit for the author's submission post ONLY. All votes will be counted (i.e. doesn't matter which week they were made).
Retweets of the submission in our master thread ONLY. Include your handle and a cover image in your submission. This means if you promote yourself on Twitter you ought to promote the tweet with your work in it.

How do you win?

You may submit up to two infographics. By submitting an infographic, you understand Komodo may post and use your submissions on our digital channels during and after the contest. Each infographic must have it's own post.

Create a post on Komodo's subreddit using the 'infographic contest' flair.
Add the infographic image into the Reddit post.
Include your Twitter handle.
Include a social media friendly cover image for us to use when we tweet your submission out.
Post a link to your submission post here in the comments for all to see.

Contest Timeline Guide (these dates indicative and are subject to change).

7th September. Announcement. If you're reading this on Reddit before the big announcement then well done! You have two extra days before this is announced on Friday.
10th - 21st September. Research and Questions. We will promote the contest, invite questions and requests for resources, in the comments of this master Reddit post (because this means all information and good questions will be visible to all participants).
22nd September. Draft Submissions. Creatives to submit their draft infographics on Reddit. All submissions need to have their own post and then be linked to in the comments of this master post. This is important to remember!
24th - 30th September. Feedback. A period of one week will be devoted to promoting the submissions and asking the community and team to give you feedback.
1st October. Final Submissions.
2nd - 8th October. Voting. A week of promoting your work and at the end we'll count votes, consider feedback and pick our winners.
15th October. Winners Declared. The final decision by judges. Votes and community feedback counts towards judging but do not have final say.

Resources

If you need help please post in this thread, or email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) with ‘Infographic Contest’ in the subject line.

Also please let us know if you are, or you know, a good GUI developer because we'd love to hear from them. Ask them to DM ca333#0118 or SHossain#8093 on Discord.

Entries and submissions for the infographic contest. You can click here to see them all in a scrollable thread on Twitter.

Infographic #001 Chur The Crypto Entry #1 Title: "Truly from the ground up" by thesudio.
Infographic #002 Chur The Crypto Entry #2 Title: "5 Reasons to Choose KOMODO" by thesudio.
Infographic #003 Vols Crypto/Gantz Design: Komodo's 2.0 Infographic Contest - Draft Submissions 1 by VolsenVols.
Infographic #004 Dexter's Komodo Infographic Contest by dexter_laabo.
Infographic #005 Komodo's 2.0 Infographic Contest - Draft by savandra by savandra.
Infographic #006 Vols Crypto/Gantz Design: Komodo's 2.0 Infographic Contest - Draft Submissions 2 by VolsenVols.
Infographic #007 Komodo Infographic by cryptol1.
Infographic #008 Komodo Contest 2.0!! by PacoSenda.
Infographic #009 Komodo In A Nutshell [INFOGRAPHIC CONTEST] by jeanetteLine.
Infographic #010 Infographic Komodo: Working Technology and Endless Possibilities by Meyse.
Infographic #011 My 1st submission by Brenny431.
Infographic #012 Komodo's Infographic Contest – Draft by DrawProof by ProofDraw.
Infographic #013 Egg-out with Komodo's end-to-end blockchain platform! by sayonara_girl.
Infographic #014 Imagine Komodo as an Add-On to Bitcoin... by Limiter02.
Infographic #015 Komodo Infographic Competition – v2 (NEW) by piptothemoon.
Infographic #016 Welcome to Blockchain 3.0 End to End Blockchain Solutions by thecryptofoundation.
Infographic #017 The future of Blockchain is Komodo by jsteneros.
Infographic #018 KOMODO Infographic Contest - 1st Draft by gravigocrypto
Infographic #019 My second submission by PacoSenda
Infographic #020 The 4 Main Features of the Komodo Ecosystem by emmanmalaman.
Infographic #021 Komodo Infographic Entry - One Stop Blockchain Solution by immimidada.
Infographic #022 INFOGRAPHIC CONTEST 1st submission :) by by mohitgfx3.
Infographic #023 Built differently. Deliberately. KOMODO. by u/sayonara_girl.
Infographic #024 Redefining the Architecture of Blockchain Platforms by brunopugens.
Infographic #025 Infographic contest submission by Platitude_X.
Infographic #026 KOMODO Infographic Contest by cheegeet.
Infographic #027 A bird's eye view on Komodo Platform by cryptaiz.
Infographic #028 Komodo Galaxy Ecosystem by majonicoin.
Infographic #029 Welcome to the Blockchain 3.0 by CryptoDeskCreative.
Infographic #030 The layers of Komodo's architecture by Andaer100.
Infographic #031 Komodo: Platform of Platforms by theoxys
Infographic #032 Komodo Platform Architecture by theoxys
Infographic #033 Build and Grow your Business with KOMODO by jon0008
Infographic #034 Infographics contest submission by savandra(FINAL) by savandra.

25/09/18 - First Round of Feedback

Infographics should use graphical design elements to visually represent the Komodo Architecture Story found here: https://komodoplatform.com/komodo-platform-a-brief-overview/ included in our ‘required reading’. There’s also a bullet point aid: https://medium.com/@benohanlon/bullet-point-aid-to-help-you-the-history-of-komodos-architecture-dced35b29965 you may find useful.

We want to stress that the infographic ought to focus on the Architecture story. In the first round we've found many have focused on the five pillars which is a part of it but not the focus.
Copy should be short and concise and not dominate the infographic. The idea is to simplify the story and not to copy and paste directly from the story.
Colour Palette - avoid heavy usage of the old KMD green and yellow-orange. Would prefer usage of the interim KMD colour palette.
Recommended fonts: Montseratt, Roboto, Open Sans, Helvetica, or Arial.
Graphical - Imagery should complement the associated copy. Diagrams are encouraged in place of simple icons to explain more complex technology concepts.
Interim KMD colour palette

Interim KMD Colour Palette
If you’ve not been included in the first round it’s because the submission hadn’t been made when the team reviewed. Don’t worry though because we’re organising hangouts and further feedback to help.

#001 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by thesudio. There’s a lot of good points made, however, these would work better if there is a clear narrative and flow to the information being presented. Otherwise, it can be overwhelming and confusing to the reader. The #1 objective is to visually depict the architecture story and how KMD is redefining blockchain platform architecture.
#002 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by thesudio. We like that there is a clear structure and clear messaging aligned to each of the 5 pillars. However, the infographic should be focused on telling the architecture story vs the pillars.
#003 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by VolsenVols. Love how you’ve incorporated our existing graphic design elements into the infographic. This is heading in the right direction and the level of copy and content are well balanced. It would be nice to align this closer to the architecture story and to expand on the different layers of our technology using the same style.
#004 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by dexter_laabo. Needs to tell the architecture story. This looks more like it took information from our current website. “Anonymous” is not a key aspect of our technology that we’re focusing on.
#005 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by savandra. The visuals are strong but the narrative could be stronger. It would be nice to align this closer to the architecture story and to expand on the different layers of our technology using the same style.
#006 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by VolsenVols. Team prefers the other submission style in entry #003.
#007 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by cryptol1. Doesn’t depict the architecture narrative. Inaccurately describes cross-chain tech as “proprietary”. Simplification has the wrong messaging associated, should be white-label focused. This is considered more of a graphics versus an infographic. Needs to be more comprehensive.
#008 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by pacosenda. We like the unique design style and approach taken. Doesn’t follow the architecture narrative. Should be expanded out as it is a bit short on content with no clear flow or narrative.
#009 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by jeanetteLine. Great level of detail and thought on the layout and content. Doesn’t, however, cover the architecture story. Would be preferred if the design direction reflects interim colour and style vs. legacy KMD. The roadmap should be avoided. Looks like they borrowed more from the website than the guidelines.
#010 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by Meyse. Very creative way to explain and layout the content. This could be expanded out more to encompass the entire architecture story. Cross-chain verifications/smart contracts, blockchain bridging need to be incorporated in.
#011 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by Brenny431. Follows the 5 pillars versus the architecture story. Would prefer stronger visuals and design elements.
#012 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by ProofDraw. Design elements are good but need to follow architecture story versus 5 pillars.
#013 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by sayonara_girl. Needs to follow the architecture story.
#014 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by Limiter02. Good thought has gone into the copy, however, there’s way too much of it. Would prefer stronger visuals and utilizing a more visual storytelling approach. Doesn’t follow the architecture story. Remove the lizard.
#015 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by piptothemoon. Great thought into visually representing key points. Needs to be expanded out to incorporate the architecture story, but this is heading in the right direction from a visual storytelling POV.
#016 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by thecryptofoundation. Love the timeline approach, and mostly followed the guidelines and architecture story. Also, like the incorporation of accomplishments at the end. Would like to get the stock imagery used to reflect our interim colour palette. Not all visuals match what is being represented in the copy.
#017 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by jsteneros. As discussed in the Zoom call, this graphic is really solid but a little heavy on the copy. Would be good to see more visualizations of the info. This graphic hits on some of the important messages (e.g. Komodo is built differently from other blockchain platforms and solves many of the issues that first-gen platforms are struggling with) but it would be great if there was more information about Komodo’s architecture and how Komodo is different from other platforms.
#018 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by gravigocrypto. This one was also discussed in the Zoom call. Outstanding visuals and overall design. The info follows the architecture story well but could be stronger if the 3 layers of Komodo’s architecture were tied together into one, coherent visual. It’s a challenging task but that’s part of the contest : )
#019 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by PacoSenda. This is a really creative infographic, which is great! However, we’d really like to see the visuals a bit more in line with fonts and color palette described above in the “First Round of Feedback” section. Also, as with the feedback for many of the infographic submissions, sticking to the Komodo architecture story would be best.
#020 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by emmanmalaman. The visuals are pretty cool but this one misses most of our core messaging. It would be much stronger if it followed the architecture story and touched on the info provided in this post. There’s definitely potential here but it needs some work.
#021 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by immimidada. The colors and visuals here are spot-on. It’s also really great that it sets up the problem and then presents the Komodo solution. However, the problem and solution aren’t defined exactly the way we’d like. Check out the architecture narrative to learn more, and try to follow that story a bit more closely.
#022 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by mohitgfx3. This one is a bit heavy on the KMD logos. We’re really hoping to see a visualization of Komodo’s infrastructure architecture. As with the feedback for many of the infographics, it would be best to re-read Komodo’s architecture story and try to stick to that as much as possible. Using images from the current website is also not a great approach, as we’re preparing to launch a new site in the coming months.
#023 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by u/sayonara_girl. Some of the visuals are cool! It’s missing the narrative we’re looking for. In general, less copy and more visual storytelling would improve this graphic a lot. We’d like to see a smooth, linear flow of information. Take another look at the architecture story and try to follow that narrative.
#024 Infographic Link // Reddit Post Link by brunopugens. This one follows the narrative well! But it’s a little heavy on the copy. It would be much stronger if the architecture was displayed visually, rather than explained with text. Also, the design is cool but it’s difficult to read b/c the perspective of the text is skewed. It’s a really cool idea but might be better to put the text flat for the sake of readability and clarity.

We hosted a round of live feedback sessions via Zoom. The recording is here:

https://soundcloud.com/blockchainists/zoom-call-first-round-of-feedback-for-komodos-infographic-contest#t=3:50

Timeline

The first block in the KMD blockchain was mined just under two years ago, on September 13, 2016 to 9:04 PM. Since then, Komodo has demonstrated a commitment to innovation and established a history of execution.

February 21, 2016 — The vision for Komodo Platform is born with jl777’s Declaration of Independence.
September 13, 2016 — The first block in the KMD chain is mined.
October 15, 2016 — Komodo’s initial coin offering (ICO) is launched.
November 20, 2016 — Komodo’s ICO comes to a close with a total of 2,639 BTC raised.
January 2017 — The Komodo Mainnet is launched, complete with independent assetchains and delayed Proof of Work security.
January 31, 2017 — The KMD coins purchased in the ICO are issued.
March 2017 — Komodo’s development team develops one of the first atomic swap protocols.
July 2017 — Thousands of atomic swaps are made in a public, observable setting.
August 2017 — Private, zero-knowledge trades made possible with Jumblr, Komodo’s native shuffler.
October 2017 — Komodo develops a way to make atomic swaps in SPV Mode (“Lite Mode”), thus eliminating the need for traders to download entire blockchains to do atomic swaps.
November 2017 — First GUI for Komodo’s atomic-swap-powered decentralized exchange (DEX) is released, making atomic swap trading more accessible than ever before.
January 2018 — The mobile version of Agama wallet is released.
February 2018 — A public stress test allows 13,900 atomic swaps in a 48 hour period.
March 2018 — Komodo bridges the gap between Bitcoin-protocol-based coins and Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens, providing support for 95% of coins and tokens in existence.
March 2018 — Komodo holds its second annual Notary Node Elections.
May 2018 — The world’s first decentralized ICO is held on Komodo Platform.
June 2018 — The alpha release of HyperDEX, a new GUI for Komodo’s decentralized exchange, is launched.
July 2018 — Komodo enters a partnership with Netcoins, making KMD coins available for purchase with fiat currencies at over 21,000 locations across three continents.
July 2018 — Komodo announces the 5 Pillars of Blockchain technology and begins introducing some Komodo 2.0 technology features, like Federated Multi-Chain Syncing and Cross-Chain Smart Contracts.
August 2018 — Komodo takes two big steps towards mass adoption, announces a collaboration with Ideas By Nature, an industry-leading blockchain agency, and releases a full briefing on the development on UTXO-based smart contracts.

Achievements

Cryptomiso.com is a website that ranks 866 different blockchain projects according to the Github commit history of that project’s most popular repo. Komodo is ranked #1 overall for Github commits over the last 12 months.
China's Ministry Research Initiative regularly ranks Komodo in the top 10.
Binance CEO highlights Komodo (see this Five Bullet Friday edition for more info).

If you would like to update your post, please edit and add to the post so people can see the different iterations. Entries and submissions for the infographic contest. You can click here to see them all in a scrollable thread on Twitter.

AX Trading LLC (AX), a technology-enabled registered broker-dealer and Alternative Trading System (ATS) operator, today announced a strategic partnership with Quant Network a pioneering technology company providing financial and regulatory technology as well as interoperability in financial services, payments and capital markets infrastructure. Through this partnership, Quant Network’s technology, Overledger a blockchain operating system, will enable universal interoperability for regulatory-compliant security tokens and digital assets to be traded on AX ATS, a regulated secondary trading market. AX intends to integrate Overledger to help foster the evolution of traditional capital markets infrastructure to facilitate the mass implementation of interoperable regulated digital assets. With the increased market adoption of digital assets and banking “coins” such as JPMorgan Coin, AX and Quant Network are at the forefront to enable the transferability and movement of digital assets. George O’Krepkie, AX CEO said: “we look forward to partnering with Quant. Their technology will allow our blockchain agnostic security token exchange to communicate seamlessly with issuers, traders, investors, and regulators across different blockchain protocols. This is a key technological breakthrough that will help us bring the benefits of security tokens to Main Street and Wall Street.” It is expected that the first interoperable digital asset offering may commence as soon as January 2020, and that the AX Trading ATS may be ready to enable and list interoperable digital assets and securities in 2020.

Let’s have a closer look at what that means to truly appreciate the significance of the partnership by covering the basics for those not familiar with wall street.
https://preview.redd.it/2z8h6uqos0m31.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=a1c02216ce4eda8f3e06abdb6fe519b36efd1be6

What is an Institutional Investor / Trader?

An institutional investor is an organization that invests on behalf of the organization's members. They consist of hedge funds, banks, investment banks, pension funds, insurance companies, endowment funds, or any other type of money management firm.
Institutional investors account for about three-quarters of the volume on the New York Stock Exchange (which alone handles more than $20 Trillion a year in volume). In the US, Institutional investors own about 80 % of the total market value of the equity (stock) market, which globally is worth more than $73 trillion.
Wall Street refers to the institutional investors I mentioned above whereas Main Street refers collectively to members of the general public who are not accredited investors and the overall economy as a whole.
Whilst the Equity Market is huge, Institutional investors also invest in other securities which are prime to be tokenised such as Real Estate Market (Globally worth $217 trillion), the Debt Market (Globally worth $215 trillion) and the Derivatives Market (Low end estimates at $544 trillion and high-end estimates at $1.2 quadrillion). All of which makes the current market cap for cryptocurrencies look like a drop in the ocean.

Who are AX Trading?

AX Trading is a SEC-registered broker-dealer and Alternative Trading System (ATS) Operator. They are a member of FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority)and SIPC ( Securities Investor Protection Corporation) regulated authorities. The SEC has some of the most stringent regulations in the world for listing securities and there are fewer than 50 SEC-registered Alternative Trading System Operators in the United States, of which only a handful are currently implementing Digital Assets. Others are awaiting regulatory approval with Coinbase, Circle etc are all looking at getting into this huge market.
https://www.coindesk.com/stonewalled-by-finra-up-to-40-crypto-securities-wait-in-limbo-for-launch
AX Trading have investors and sponsored brokers including the likes of Credit Suisse, (a multinational investment Bank and Financial services company worth $27.5 billion). AX currently have over 800 Institutional traders (these are not individuals, but corporations such as hedge funds, banks, investment banks, pension funds, insurance companies, endowment funds etc).
AX Trading have also partnered with Euronext, the largest Stock Exchange in Europe with a market cap of $4.65 trillion as of 2018, in the creation of Euronext Block which utilises AX Trading.

What is an Alternative Trading System?

An Alternative Trading System (ATS) is an SEC-regulated trading venue which serves as an alternative to trading at a public exchange. ATS account for much of the liquidity found in publicly traded issues worldwide. They are known as multilateral trading facilities in Europe, electronic communication networks (ECNs), cross networks, and call networks
AX is the world’s first “Electronic Trading Network” (ETN) where institutional traders can proactively connect and trade with other counterparties in a secure environment. Unlike traditional stock exchanges/ECNs that show orders to everyone and traditional dark pools/crossing systems that show orders — presumably — to no one, AX allows institutional traders to pick and choose WHOM they want to notify and also WHAT information they want to share with them.
Institutional investors may use an ATS to find counterparties for transactions instead of trading large blocks of shares on national stock exchanges. These actions may be designed to conceal trading from public view since ATS transactions do not appear on national exchange order books. The benefit of using an ATS to execute such orders is that it reduces the domino effect that large trades might have on the price of an equity.

How does AX Trading Work?

The AX Trading process begins when one trader sends an “initiated” order to AX. The order can be routed to the AX ATS via one of our broker sponsors such as Credit Suisse. The initiated order triggers a “Call Auction” on AX, a period of time when the order will rest in AX to be matched against other orders from auction responders.
The Initiator of an AX auction decides who they want to invite to participate in the auction, whether they be all 800+ institutional members or targeted to specific ones, as well as how much info they want to disclose about the order. Based on these instructions, the AX ATS then notifies the members inviting them to participate in the trade.
The invited members can then participate in the trade by either placing buy orders of their own or placing sell orders. At the end of the AX auction period, all orders are brought together, and a match is performed.
In the traditional, continuous market with displayed bids and offers, traders are often chasing liquidity. In other words, the price may move away from them the more they buy or sell to what is commonly called “market impact.” On AX, the advantage of their call auction model is it brings liquidity — in the form of participant orders to the buyer rather than them chasing liquidity.

What is a Security Token?

Security Tokens are different than Utility Tokens or Cryptocurrencies. A security token is a digital representation of a traditional security. It may represent shares in a company, interest in a fund, real estate, art collectables, or essentially any asset a party can own. Anthony Pompliano wrote an article explaining tokenised securities in more detail which you can see here

Security Tokens are digital assets subject to federal security regulations. In layman terms, they are the intersection of digital assets (tokens) with traditional financial products — a new technology improving old things. If cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are considered “programmable money” then you can consider Security Tokens a version of “programmable ownership.” This means that any asset with ownership can and will be tokenized (public & private equities, debt, real estate, etc).

https://preview.redd.it/21cz6zvus0m31.png?width=569&format=png&auto=webp&s=883eb844e1061cddd585903549dde829098765c2
Quant Network community member David W also wrote an excellent piece on the benefits of tokenisation of assets in a lot more detail than what I will briefly cover here and strongly recommend you check it out.

The Tokenisation of assets is therefore inevitable, because it is a better way to record, exchange and monitor asset ownership for all parties involved. The amounts at stake represent many hundreds of trillions of US dollars

What are the benefits of a security token?

Lower Fees — having Smart Contracts and compliance programmed into the token itself removes the need for middlemen, reducing costs. Post Trade businesses such as clearing houses would also no longer be required further reducing costs.
24/7 markets — Currently the major US stock markets trade between 9:30am and 3pm during weekdays only. Trading can be done 24/7 and globally whilst remaining compliant.
Fractional Ownership — This greatly increases liquidity for previously illiquid assets. Real estate, Artwork, even assets such as Oil Refineries are already in talks about being tokenised through Overledger. If you have an asset such as an oil refinery worth billions of dollars, then naturally this limits the market should you ever want to sell it. However with fractional ownership you could own a tiny percentage of it and receive profits from the oil refinery based upon the percentage you own, which exponentially increases the number ofpotential buyers, increasing liquidity.
Rapid Settlement — Currently it takes 3 working days to settle a securities trade, this can be reduced to minutes by having the asset and fiat represented on a blockchain and handled through smart contracts.
Automated compliance — Security tokens are programmable, and rules and regulations are hard-coded into the architecture of the token to ensure they always remain compliant. This means that they can be traded globally and still ensure they respect the relevant countries regulations that the participants are located in.
The benefits that a blockchain provide such as transparency, security, immutability, high availability. Regulators can also run a node and verify compliance in real time.

Security Token Issuance Platforms

Security token issuance platforms allow issuers to issue Security tokens that represent the security such as Shares in their company etc in return for capital. This is known as a Primary Market. Importantly it’s not just the issuance that they look after, it’s the whole life cycle of a digital security to ensure they remain continuously in compliance as they are traded etc. They also provide reporting to the issuer so they can see who owns the tokens and what dividends to pay out.
Securitize are one of the leading security tokens issuing platforms. They have created the DS Protocol, a blockchain agnostic protocol for security tokens which manages the whole lifecycle of a digital security, ensuring it remains continuously in compliance. They have issued a number of security tokens on the Ethereum network as well as recently working with IBM to tokenise the Corporate Debt Market (worth $82 Trillion). On the back of this they joined Hyperledger, an open source project which includes Enterprise blockchains such as Hyperledger Fabric which IBM is heavily involved with.
https://tokenpost.com/Quant-Network-Securitize-and-others-join-Hyperledger-blockchain-project-1544
They recently also became the first SEC-registered transfer agent, which means Securitize can now act as the official keeper of records about changes of ownership in securities.
There are many companies in this sector which are utilising various blockchains, Other examples include:

Harber — R Token protocol for Ethereum
Polymath — ST20 protocol for Ethereum
Blockstate — a security token issuance platform recently announced plans to migrate a number of ERC-20 tokens from the public Ethereum blockchain to the permissioned blockchain R3 Corda
Dusk — Uses the Dusk blockchain
Own — Uses the Own blockchain

And many more such as Nefund, Bankex, Capexmove, Swarm, Symbiont, Tokeny etc

https://preview.redd.it/vr6c7jdzs0m31.png?width=520&format=png&auto=webp&s=88431b27906099bb09f31ef1fdee0222dd96674f

Trading Venues

Whilst the issuance platforms above generally also include their own exchange where the token can be traded on, secondary markets such as those offered through traditional stock exchanges and Alternative Trading Systems provide significantly more liquidity.
Traditional Stock Exchanges have been very active in blockchain with some going through proof of concepts, to those like SIX SDX Digital Exchange which is due to launch later this year. They are using various blockchains and cover the full process from Issuance, Trading and Post Trade / Settlement services. I have briefly outlined which blockchain they are using / testing with along with source to read more about it below:

Switzerland’s Stock Exchange — SIX Digital Exchange issue, trading, settlement, custody — Corda — Source
Largest Stock Exchange in Germany — Deutsche Borse Franfurt Stock Exchange — Corda — Source and Source
South Korea’s Stock Exchange — Korea Exchange — Hyperledger Fabric — Source and Source
Japan’s Stock Exchange — Tokyo Stock Exchange — Hyperledger Fabric — Source which the consortium has now grown to 44 companies. Tokyo Stock Exchange are also testing JP Morgan’s Quorum for voting on the blockchain — Source
London Stock Exchange Group — Hyperledger Fabric — Source . They are also invested in Nivaura which utilises Ethereum — Source
Largest Stock Exchange in Europe — Euronext — Permissioned Ethereum via Liquidshare — Source as well as recently investing in Tokeny a blockchain based project based on public version of Ethereum — Source
Singapore Stock Exchange — Ethereum — Source

Post Trade — Central Security Depositories

Situated at the end of the post-trading process, CSDs are systemically important intermediaries. They thereby form a critical part of the securities market’s post-trade infrastructure, as they are where changes of securities ownership are ultimately registered.
CSDs play a special role both as a depository, involving the legal safekeeping and maintenance of securities in a ‘central depository’ on behalf of custodians (both in materialised or dematerialised form); as well as for the issuer, involving the issuance of further securities by issuers, and their onboarding onto CSDs’ platforms.
CSDs are also keeping a number of other important functions, including: dividend, interest, and principal processing; corporate actions including proxy voting; payment to transfer agents, and issuers involved in these processes; securities lending and borrowing; and, provide pledging of share and securities.
Blockchain technology will enable real-time settlement finality in the securities world. This could mean the end of a number of players in the post-trade area, such as central counterparty clearing houses (CCPs), custodians and others. Central Security Despositories (CSD) will still play an important role according to reports:
“CSDs could have an important role to play in a blockchain-based settlement system. As ‘custodians of the code, CSDs could exercise oversight of, and take responsibility for, the operation of the relevant blockchain protocol and any associated smart contracts.” Euroclear Report
Another group of 30 central securities depositories (CSDs) in Europe and Asia are researching possible ways to “join hands” in developing a new infrastructure to custody digital assets. The CSDs will attempt to figure out how to apply their experience in guarding stock certificates to security solutions for crypto assets.
“A new world of tokenized assets and blockchain is coming. It will probably disrupt our role as CSDs. The whole group decided we will be focusing on tokenized assets, not just blockchain but on real digital assets.”
You can read more about how blockchain will affect CSD’s here
Examples of CSD’s in blockchain

SIX Digital Exchange and Deutsche Borse are utilising Corda as explained in the trading venues section
DTCC the largest in the US process 1.7 Quadrillion US Dollars of securities every year and are planning on moving their Trade Information Warehouse to Axoni’s AXCore Blockchain (Based on permissioned version of Ethereum) later this year — Source
Canada CDS are using the Quartz blockchain from Indian IT Services Company Tata Consultancy Services — Source
Euroclear in collaboration with the European Investment Bank (EIB), Banco Santander, and EY are developing a blockchain solution — Source
French CSD’s too soon go live on Setl Blockchain — Source and Source
Russia’s National Settlement Depository is launching a blockchain project using D3ledger (based off Hyperledger) — Source

The Importance Of Interoperability

The evolution of DLT and the wide adoption across industries and across different market segments is resulting in many different ledgers networks, but the ultimate promise of DLT can only be realized when all ledger networks can seamlessly interoperate. — from the recent DTCC whitepaper with Accenture
Some challenges and constraints related to the market infrastructure ecosystem remain open and will need to be addressed in the future to sustain the development of DLT platforms for trading and the post-trade process. At this stage, the questions of interoperability and standardization across these DLT (probably permissioned) platforms remain open and we may see a list of platforms offering no scope for interconnection. This will prevent them from fulfilling the key “distribution” criterion of DLT. Another related challenge that may determine whether or not the technology is adopted is the ability to provide Delivery versus Payment (DvP) settlement, in particular in central bank money. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that settlement can also be facilitated in commercial bank money. — https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/lu/Documents/technology/lu-token-assets-securities-tomorrow.pdf

It’s clear from the above that interoperability will be crucial in order to unlock the true potential of Distributed Ledger Technology. Issuance platforms will seek to interoperate with as many secondary exchanges as possible to provide maximum liquidity for issuers. Issuance platforms and secondary exchanges are each using a wide range of different blockchains that all need to interoperate as part of the trade process. CSD’s will also need to have interoperability between other CSD’s as well as to the secondary exchanges (again each using different blockchains).

Enter Quant Network’s Overledger

Quant Network’s blockchain operating system, Overledger, provides interoperability between any current and future distributed ledger technology as well as easily connecting Off Chain / Legacy networks as well as plans to connect directly to the Internet. Within 10 months it has proven it can provide interoperability with the full range of DLT technologies from all the leading Enterprise Permissioned blockchains such as Hyperledger, R3’s Corda, JP Morgan’s Quorum, permissioned variants of Ethereum and Ripple (XRPL) as well as the leading Public Permissionless blockchains / DAGs such as Bitcoin, Stellar, Ethereum, IOTA and EOS as well as the most recent blockchain to get added Binance Chain. All without imposing restrictions on connected chains, being Internet scalable and able to easily integrate into existing networks / infrastructure.
https://preview.redd.it/8p6hi942t0m31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0536ea9981306feb8bd95788c66e9a5727a4d58
Overledger a blockchain operating system, will enable universal interoperability for regulatory-compliant security tokens and digital assets to be traded on AX ATS, a regulated secondary trading market. AX intends to integrate Overledger to help foster the evolution of traditional capital markets infrastructure to facilitate the mass implementation of regulated digital assets. With the increased market adoption of digital assets and banking “coins” such as JPMorgan Coin, AX and Quant Network are at the forefront to enable the transferability and movement of digital assets
https://www.quant.network/blog/redefining-wall-st-with-decentralised-capital-market-infrastructure-the-possibilities-of-quant-networks-overledger-technology-in-regulated-capital-markets
Overledger enables Universal Interoperability where digital assets can move across blockchains so that they can interact with smart contracts on different blockchains. It does this by locking the asset on one blockchain and then representing it on another blockchain either by creating a representing token or representing it via metadata. This will enable all of these different parties such as Issuance platforms, Exchanges, CSD’s, traders etc to move the digital asset from their respective blockchain onto AX Trading’s platform for secure, immediate and immutable trading to take place. Potentially it would even allow Digital Assets / Securities to settled on a public permissionless blockchain such as the recently connected Binance Chain in a completely safe, secure and compliant way.
https://preview.redd.it/a3o9qxq5t0m31.png?width=443&format=png&auto=webp&s=78d7a7e7d47213bbb354336ba9d5ad92c1c2254a
Regulators would be able to run a node and view transactions in real time ensuring that compliance is being kept. Potentially they could also benefit from using Quant Networks Multichain Search capability http://search.quant.network/ to be able to fully track assets as they move across blockchains.

George O’Krepkie, AX CEO said: “we look forward to partnering with Quant. Their technology will allow our blockchain agnostic security token exchange to communicate seamlessly with issuers, traders, investors, and regulators across different blockchain protocols. This is a key technological breakthrough that will help us bring the benefits of security tokens to Main Street and Wall Street.”

Securrency

AX Trading have also partnered with Securrency (who have previously tokenised over $260 million in real estate assets). Securrency provide a protocol that enables security tokens to remain in compliance regardless of what blockchain the token is on. Due to the layered approach that Overledger has adopted from the learnings of TCP/IP, this protocol can be easily integrated on top of Overledger to enable security tokens to move across blockchains as well as ensuring they remain in compliance with regulations programmed into the token.
https://youtu.be/vSQ2fu9iZGs

Delivery vs Payment (DvP)

A DvP transaction involves the settlement of two linked obligations, namely the delivery of securities and the payment of cash. DvP avoids counterparties being exposed to principal risk, i.e. the risk that the seller of securities could deliver but would not receive payment or that the buyer of securities could make payment but would not receive delivery. Following this requirement, a DvP securities settlement mechanism has to ensure that the delivery of securities and the payment of cash are linked in a way where one leg (obligation) of the securities trade is conditioned to the final settlement of the other leg (obligation) of the trade. Thereby final settlement is defined as “the irrevocable and unconditional transfer of an asset or financial instrument, or the discharge of an obligation by the FMI or its participants in accordance with the terms of the underlying contract”. — STELLA — a joint research project of the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan

We have seen how Overledger can provide interoperability for the securities to move across Issuers platforms, integrate with Stock exchanges, Central Security Depositories and AX Trading. Now we need to be able to ensure that payment is guaranteed and in a way that offers immediate settlement which is irrevocable. To do this we need to represent FIAT on the blockchain so that it can interact with smart contracts and settle transactions on the blockchain.

J.P.Morgan’s Coin

J.P.Morgan is the largest bank in the United States and ranked by S&P Global as the sixth largest bank in the world by total assets as of 2018, to the amount of $2.535 trillion.
J.P. Morgan was the first U.S. bank to create and successfully test a digital coin representing a fiat currency. The JPM Coin is based on blockchain-based technology enabling the instantaneous transfer of payments between institutional clients.
With J.P.Morgan’s $2.6 trillion balance sheet, expertise in blockchain and global payments network, J.P. Morgan can seamlessly and securely transfer and settle money for clients around the world. J.P. Morgan are supervised by banking regulators in the United States and in the international jurisdictions in which it operates.

How does JPM Coin work?

A Buyer purchases JPM coins in advance which get represented on the Permissioned Quorum blockchain ($1 =1 JPM Coin). Quant Network’s Overledger could then provide interoperability to lock those tokens on Quorum and represent those onto another blockchain / AX Trading’s Network. By being able to represent securities and FIAT on the same blockchain (even though the underlying assets are on different blockchains) this provides instant finality / settlements to occur.
Once the seller receives the JPM coin in exchange for the securities they have sold they will be able to redeem them for USD. It also doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to have a JP Morgan account to redeem them, you could imagine in the future that the Bank instead redeems the JPM Coin and credits the users account. Similarly the buyer of the security token redeems the represented token and unlocks the security token on the original blockchain.
You can read more about JP Morgan’s Coin here as well as its use cases

J.P Morgan is betting that its first-mover status and large market share in corporate payments — it banks 80 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 — will give its technology a good chance of getting adopted, even if other banks create their own coins. “Pretty much every big corporation is our client, and most of the major banks in the world are, too,” Farooq said. “Even if this was limited to JPM clients at the institutional level, it shouldn’t hold us back.”

Overledger enables different securities tokens / digital coins representing FIAT currencies to be brought together from the various permissioned / permissionless blockchains onto one platform where trading / settlement can take place. Overledger is the only technology that can do this today across the leading permissioned and permissionless blockchains as well as existing networks, all in a secure, scalable and easy to integrate way.
https://preview.redd.it/ngt7q7hdt0m31.png?width=738&format=png&auto=webp&s=60166bdc0fcdf72a502e3472a09de5ddb5e1eb69
Quant Network are working with AX Trading to bring more digital assets, securities and tokenised assets to their existing 800 institutional traders in an already live and connected FINRA and SEC regulated exchange. AX Trading is not just about trading securities but other digital assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and potentially even Quant in the Future.
https://preview.redd.it/ibecorcft0m31.png?width=1286&format=png&auto=webp&s=94540cf49654e36a8155f424c2a4bdb5fd549558
This is a multi-trillion dollar market with huge global enterprises, traditional exchanges and global banks are all adopting DLT at a rapid pace and going into production at scale in a matter of months, examples include the NYSE Bakkt launching Bitcoin futures later this month, Swiss Stock Exchange ($1.6 Trillion market Cap) is due to launch their digital exchange running on Corda (SDX) by the end of the year. The DTCC are due to launch their Trade Information Warehouse which processes $10 Trillion of cleared and bilateral derivatives by the end of the year. JP Morgan who transfer $6 Trillion every day are due to launch their JPM coin at the end of year and AX Trading is due to offer their first digital asset by January 2020.
Quant Network’ Overledger enables the bridging of traditional finance infrastructure with the new decentralised finance infrastructure DeFi of the future, helping to redefine Wall Street and Capital Markets.
https://medium.com/@CryptoSeq/wall-street-2-0-17252ffd8919

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https://www.reddit.com/Ripple/wiki/rules

Helpful Links
Ripple Insights - Top 9 Frequently Asked Questions About Ripple and XRP (Jan 18, 2018)
Ripple’s Ultimate Strategy; why XRP will increase in value
Removing inefficiency of international payments with XRP
Reasons to expect XRP to be the most popular bridge asset
"XRP is competitive now in the USD/MXN corridor"
Ripple's Decentralization Strategy Update
XRP Market Performance
List of Ripple Partnerships and RippleNet Implementations

People to Follow
Ripple on Twitter
Brad Garlinghouse, Chief Executive Officer at Ripple
Yoshitaka Kitao, executive chairman, CEO and president of SBI Holdings, Inc.
David Schwartz, Chief Cryptographer at Ripple | aka u/sjoelkatz
Stefan Thomas, Former CTO at Ripple, Co-creator of Interledger. Founder at Coil
Patrick Griffin, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Ripple
Miguel Vias, Head of XRP Markets at Ripple
Warren Paul Anderson, Product Manager, xRapid/XRP at Ripple

Hodor's XRP Blog
TplusZero - research & analysis on #XRP

Most Discussed Topics and Answers
● The Case Against BankCoin - Banks need an independent digital asset to enable truly efficient settlement
● Ripple Technology → Fast Payments → XRP → Fast Settlement
● Solving the chicken and egg problem - FI's bridging payments with XRP & companies saving money by holding XRP
● Banks hold XRP under a contractual agreement | Build liquidity to bridge payments to raise the demand for XRP
● How the global adoption of xRapid (XRP liquidity tool) would affect the value of XRP
● Besides instant cross-border payment settlement, XRP can capture other use cases, value that doesn't yet exist
● XRP Ledger has numerous technological advantages over blockchain systems that use proof of work
● Ripple is committed to making the XRP Ledger as decentralized as they possibly can
● Quantum-resistant signature schemes - Adding a new scheme is easy and fast

XRP Wallets
You need 20 XRP to activate a XRP wallet. Fees can be changed by the validators through the voting process.
The reserve requirement protects the XRP Ledger from spam or malicious usage.

When you are sending XRP to an exchange, destination tag is very important.
Destination tag is not needed when you transfer XRP to your own wallet address.

● XUMM by XRPL Labs | Developers
XUMM is a free app (iOS and Android) that makes sending, receiving and interacting with the XRP ledger easy & secure.

● Ledger Nano S | Tutorial | FAQ | Buy Online | Ripple Recovery Tool
Cryptocurrency Hardware Wallet
When you get your Ledger wallet, you must reset it and get a new set of 24 words seed before using it.

● The World Exchange | How to Create a Cold Wallet for Ripple
A free user-friendly and purely client-side wallet

● GateHub | Support | Network Statistics
GateHub XRP Web Wallet

Tools
Check XRP wallet balance - Bithomp | Graph | Transactions
Print raw information about an account, a transaction or a ledger - RPC Tool

Exchanges
The best way to support XRP is to buy/sell XRP directly with your local currency, not with USDT, ETH, LTC, or BTC.
Available XRP pairs - AUD, BRL, CAD, CNY, EUR, GBP, IDR, INR, JPY, KRW, MXN, PHP, RUB, THB, TRY, UAH, USD, ZAR.
You can find the complete list of XRP exchanges and supported XRP/fiat pairs Here.

USD - US Dollar
Kraken | Bitstamp | Bitfinex | CEX.IO | Gatehub |
Exrates | Exmo | Mr. Exchange | Bitsane | Sistemkoin | BitBay | Quoine

EUR - Euro
Kraken | Bitstamp | Gatehub | CEX.IO | LiteBit.eu | Anycoin Direct
The Rock Trading | Bitsane | BitBay | BitFlip | Bitlish | Quoine

KRW - South Korean Won
Bithumb | Upbit | Coinone | Korbit | GOPAX | Coinrail

JPY - Japanese Yen
Kraken | Bitbank | Quoine | Mr. Exchange

CNY - Chinese Yuan
RippleFox | Ripple China | Fatbtc

TRY - Turkish Lira
Vebitcoin | BTCTurk | Koineks | Sistemkoin | Ovis

INR - Indian Rupee
Zebpay | Koinex | Unocoin | Bitbns | BuyBitcoin | BuyUcoin

AUD - Australian Dollar
BTC Markets

THB - Thai Baht
BX Thailand

MXN - Mexican Peso
Bitso

IDR - Indonesian Rupiah
Indodax | Quoine

RUB - Russian Ruble
Exmo | BitFlip

ZAR - South African Rend
Altcoin Trader

CAD - Canadian Dollar
Kraken

UAH - Ukrainian Hryvnia
Kuna | BTC Trade UA | BitFlip

GBP - British Pound
Cryptomate

BRL - Brazilian Real
Braziliex

SGD - Singapore Dollar
Quoine

AED - United Arab Emirates Dirham
BitOasis

PHP - Philippine peso
CX | Exchange

USDT - Tether
Poloniex | Bittrex | Huobi | OKEx | CoinBene | Upbit | HitBTC |
ZB.com | Gate.io | Sistemkoin

ETH - Ethereum
Binance | Bittrex | Gatehub | OKEx | OTCBTC | Upbit | HitBTC |
Bitsane | Mr. Exchange | CoinFalcon

LTC - Litecoin
Bitsane | Mr. Exchange

BTC - Bitcoin
Kraken | Bitstamp | Bitfinex | CEX.IO | Gatehub | Binance | Poloniex | Bittrex |
HitBTC | OKEx | Upbit | Huobi | BTCTurk | BTC Markets | CoinEgg | Exmo |
ZB.com | OTCBTC | Coinrail | Bits Blockchain | Triple Dice Exchange | Indodax |
Exrates | Qryptos | Gate.io | Bitsane | Bitso | Ovis | BCEX | BitBay |
Mr. Exchange | Orionx | CoinFalcon | Abucoins | BitFlip | LakeBTC | Coinbe

Following up on my other post which shared only a few high level points I thought people would be interested in, here's a more in-depth summary of the meetup. THIS IS VERY LONG! I don't really have a TL;DR beyond my other short highlight thread, but I think there are some other high level summaries. This is for those who want a very thorough recap of what was discussed. I'm happy to update this with anything shared in the comments which I remember and think is additive to the summary, definitely didn't catch every single thing.
I'm leaving out a few talking points/questions that either 1) I didn't totally catch, 2) provided no incremental information or 3) were just bad questions (there were some).
Sunny's Speech
Sunny began with a history of blockchain, from the bitcoin whitepaper to the first few alt coins to the advent of Ethereum. He then went on to discuss the extent to which these various stages involved meaningful/useful innovation: original alt coins did not, ethereum of course did, but is heavily flawed for enterprise use. He then went on to discuss what those primary flaws are and how VeChain is trying to solve them (scalability, governance, cost, etc.) He noted that technology is not blockchain's biggest obstacle, it's adoption. He talked about how, although some people will tell him to "get lost or something" he doesn't really believe in full decentralization. I think his point was that although it's nice in theory, it just isn't really practical, and it's a bad approach in particular for trying to get this new blockchain technology adopted in the mainstream. This goes back to something he said in another interview at some point - you can't just come in with totally new, radical technology outside the existing framework and replace everything that exists from the outside. You have to start within the existing framework, show people what's possible, and then change the system from the inside out.
He went on to discuss what he sees as problems with some of the existing projects. Talked about how projects in the top 20 have ecosystems worth 2 billion dollars, hold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of their own tokens to be used for the project's development etc., but they don't have a CFO. He thinks that should concern people.
I don't remember exactly where it fit in the narrative, but he discussed valuation/speculation. He pointed out that they have a number of their university research partners trying to work out token valuation models. He made a general point that more utility should equal more value, the implication being VeChain will have more real utility (and should therefore have more value) than any other blockchain. They had a slide showing some calculations and pointed out that if you look at the known metrics, the dividends, etc., the price of Google's stock is 85.7% speculation. Only $161 of it's $1,128 value (at the time they ran these numbers) can be tied to the current value. For Tencent, it's 93.5% speculation. He jokingly pointed out that in crypto it's about 99.99%, but I think one of the unspoken points here is that it's silly to think that on mainnet launch speculation about the future value is going to go away and you'll just have token value based on current Thor production. That isn't how markets or valuation work.
He then basically mocked people complaining about the code not yet being open source, and there being no whitepaper - the people who think these are red flags and that the project might be a 'scam'. As if PwC and DNV GL didn't do extensive diligence.
On this point, I'll quote GarzyWarzy from another thread:
"Sunny mentioned that the crypto community as a whole doesn’t seem to appreciate the level of reputational risk that these multi billion dollar enterprise partners take by publicly backing a blockchain startup (“what do people think would happen if PwC backed us and we failed in 6 months?”). As an investment banker who deals extensively with corporate governance issues and every type of business risk imaginable, I will add my two cents that this risk is massive and that is it a clear sign of extensive diligence and extreme trust in the VeChain team to execute their business plan for developing their ecosystem. Always remember, “it takes many years to build a reputation, and seconds to ruin it”."
I'm a corporate lawyer and couldn't agree with this more. The people who think a whitepaper (which they likely wouldn't even understand) is more reassuring than the endorsement by DNV GL, PwC, Draper and Breyer (who would never, ever make such an investment without extensive due diligence) have no idea how things work in the corporate world. DNV GL and PwC are recommending VeChain to clients, and Draper and Breyer have made investments through their funds, where they have a fiduciary duty to the investors in those funds. The amount of diligence that occurs before taking those reputational and legal (negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, etc.) risks is truly exhaustive.
Back to adoption, Sunny went on to compare blockchain to TCP/IP, as he's done in the past. Most people use email every day, but do they care about TCP/IP? Of course not. Blockchain will be the protocol infrastructure for things people use every day, whether they know it or not.
At this point, continuing to talk about adoption and use cases, he mentioned that they signed a top 3 insurance company in China as a client, and he also mentioned a CRM use case that's in the works.
He said the whitepaper will be out in a few days, and will explain a lot of what they're doing/what they're trying to do, and what some of the use cases are. They are focused on developing as many practical use cases as possible - this is how you get adoption. Once the use cases are defined, you can start "developing killer dApps" in relation to them. I think this is, to some degree, a subtle shot at Ethereum - his point here being that developing lots of dApps on a platform doesn't really mean much unless those dApps actually relate to a practical, defined real world use cases which ensures they will be used and adopted.
The whitepaper took so long because, in Sunny's words, his "english sucks" and after he wrote it, his teams needed to double, triple, and quadruple review/edit/refine what he wrote so that it is in professional english.
Back to adoption, he stated there are around 13/14 crypto projects they are working with who intend to use VeChain (either porting over from Ethereum or launching an ICO on the platform. More on this in the Q&A section). One of them is a company that already generates $50 million/month in revenue and want to 'blockchain-ize' their business. He pointed out here this is a company that isn't just interested in padding their coffers - they have money, that isn't an issue. These are the types of projects they like to work with. They aren't interested in being a 'shitcoin generator' (this was said by Sunny in the Q&A and got a laugh and round of applause). Last point on this, he noted that BitOcean is taking so long because the "Japanese government are being assholes". That's a direct quote. Sunny is hilarious. I can't overstate how likable he is - he comes off as a down to earth, cool, funny and easy going guy.
Kevin's Speech
Next, Kevin spoke. This was a short update on authority nodes and the mainnet. He mentioned that most projects have masternodes as basically a marketing tool, they aren't that meaningful or necessary. VeChain's authority masternodes are essential to the ecosystem. You can not become an authority node if you can not meaningfully contribute to growing the ecosystem. There is no room for negotiation on this. They aren't interested in having random people running validating authority nodes for profit and nothing else. As far as the application process, they received over 100 applications and are expecting more (authority node application and monitoring process will be ongoing to make sure VeChain has the best authority nodes possible and that each node is continuing to fulfill all of its obligations). As far as the applicant pool, they were about 71% enterprise, 29% individual. About 52% China, 23% America, then a mix of HK, Singapore, Japan, and others.
He then addressed the mainnet. Internal testing is done, they are now moving on to the public alpha testing, which is by invite only and is not the open source phase. This phase starts today and includes a number of professional firms auditing the code: PwC's cybersecurity team, secureware.io, Slow Mist, and Hosho. They will also be putting a bug bounty on Hacken eventually, finding a critical vulnerability could get you up to 2000 VEN tokens. This private testing will go on for a few weeks, before the public testing begins in early June which involves the code becoming open source - as of now, they expect it to start in the first week or two of June.
Then, he announced the 1 VEN to 100 VET token split. The example he gave was talking to friends about buying Bitcoin - some responded "it's already $8000, I can't buy a bitcoin I can't afford it". Kevin would respond, well actually you can buy .001 bitcoin if you want... and then they'd lose interest. I think what he's getting at is they want to be prepared for years down the road when demand is enormous - they don't want people dealing in fractions. Yes, I'm also sure they are aware of the implications for this in terms of price and the attractiveness of a 5 cent token verses a 5 dollar token. I don't deny that. Look at fucking Tron.
The Q&A Session
Someone asked about how the authority nodes will be monitored. Kevin explained there will be a dedicated team for this. They are serious about having the highest quality authority nodes and holding them to the standards they expect. There will be a quarterly review process, and any issues will be brought to the Steering Committee, which may decide to remove/replace an authority nodeholder if they aren't contributing and fulfilling their obligations. He noted that the whitepaper will include a thorough section on their governance model.
Question about it being difficult, currently, for companies (especially in the west) to find out how to contact them and work with them. What are VeChain's plans in terms of a business development team, marketing, etc. Sunny explained that while obviously they'll have an internal BD team, and this is being built out, they also want to heavily leverage the resources of the community. In a way, the community will be a giant business development team, and they will create standard toolkits for the community to use to market/introduce VeChain to people in the first instance. The guy then asked what if I got you Pfizer - that's enormous, what's my incentive? Sunny responded there will be rewards in VET tokens for bringing them clients.
I don't remember what the exact question was, but it was noted at this point that although the private, consortium chain is an Ethereum fork, the mainnet was built from scratch and is not an Ethereum fork. They did intentionally use the Ethereum Virtual Machine, though, so that Ethereum dApps can be easily ported over to VeChain. It sounds like they expect this to happen quite a bit. They also talked about how they went through the web3 libraries and 80% will be able to work directly with VeChain. They want interoperability, compatibility, and ultimately, an easy transition for Ethereum developers and dApps.
Someone asked about them building out their own IoT business or letting others do the IoT work. Sunny talked about how he believes IoT is the way to connect blockchain to the physical world. There was a story not worth sharing about why they initially acquired an IoT team, but he gave this example: when Apple first released the app store and the ability to develop, nobody knew how or used it. So, Apple built the apps themselves and basically showed everybody what was possible and how to do it by example. So too will VeChain take this approach. They are partnering with IoT manufacturers and developing some of their own IoT solutions, and they'll continue to do this, but the point isn't to dominate IoT. They are showing the world by example what can be done in terms of IoT on the VeChain platform, and they ultimately want people/enterprises to be able to create their own value and their own IoT solutions on the VeChain blockchain. Anyone who wants to do so will be able to.
Question about enterprises buying once the enterprise pool runs out - what happens if enterprises aren't comfortable doing what all of us have done (wiring money to a fiat gateway exchange, buying bitcoin/ethereum, moving it to binance, buying in the market, transferring out of binance, etc.). Kevin isn't really worried about this. They are talking to exchanges and service providers about it, they're talking to Circle about fiat pairing, etc., but realistically Kevin can see that exchanges are becoming more advanced and that ultimately they will be institutionalized in a way that basically just mitigates this concern.
Question about storage of VET tokens after mainnet. There will be a mobile wallet launch at the exact same time. This mobile wallet will 1) facilitate the token swap from VEN to VET (most people will probably do this on exchanges, but eventually you'll be able to do it in the mobile wallet if you missed doing it on an exchange), 2) have a module that shows you what kind of node you are, 3) automatically receive your generated Thor, and 4) eventually allow you to hold other ERC-20 tokens. They also mentioned that although they're talking to ledger, etc. they are developing their own hardware wallet. Kevin explained this is essential for enterprises serving as authority nodes or holding large amounts of VET. They aren't going online and ordering a ledger and setting it up. VeChain needs to be able to provide this service and assurance for them, and they will. This is why these guys are lightyears ahead in terms of enterprise adoption. They've thought about these things.
Question about 'competitors' like Waltonchain. First, Sunny goes "who?" and Kevin goes "what's Waltonchain?" But then Sunny went on by saying the "right" thing - there are no competitors in such a fledgling industry. He would love to hold hands with the other blockchain projects trying to do good things, and walk into the future together. He thinks projects can learn from each other and help each other. They aren't trying to crush competitors or beat anyone or anything like that. However, Sunny also jokingly asked "Seriously, why do people think Waltonchain is our competitor? We are what, 15th biggest project, and they are...?" He also went on to say that he is judging some competition or tech demo later this month on the 26th-28th, and that Waltonchain is the demo product. He thinks this is sort of funny, but also said if their product is great and the demo is good, there is no reason he wouldn't support them, vote for them, etc.
Question about Breyer and Draper relationships. Draper is invested in many cryptocurrency projects and many companies, has tons of connections, and he gives VeChain a way of talking to all of those projects/companies. Breyer was the one who set them up with the research team at a Chinese university, he was the link to Circle to discuss fiat onramps, etc. The connections these guys bring are tremendous. I should note here that in a small group conversation with Kevin during the networking portion after the speeches, which was initiated by GarzyWarzy (perhaps he can elaborate further), he confirmed that Breyer and Draper are both meaningfully invested in tokens, not just equity of the technology portion of the company.
Some clown actually used up time to ask "is CCK here?" Sunny said someone asked him this at Harvard also, and he was absolutely adamant that he doesn't know who this person is or how they are getting the information they have. He did not comment on it beyond that. He clearly thought it was a dumb question and said seriously that once and for all, he really doesn't know who it is.
Question about how many projects will be running on the mainnet day 1. Sunny said it's hard to say for sure, but that there are currently between 20 and 25 use cases deployed on the consortium chain, all of which will be moved over in the first few months. He also mentioned the 15ish crypto projects that will be moving over to or launching on the platform, and the fact that their client pipeline is now over 250. He transitioned a bit from this point to discuss how they "don't want to be a shitcoin generator". If you come to them with a project that is just an ICO with a whitepaper and no product, no proof of concept, etc., they're not going to want you to launch that. They would rather invest in you if they think you're a good project, help you develop those things, prove out what you're trying to do, then help you launch a serious ICO or dApp with a real use case. Again, they are all about practical use cases, this is the path to adoption. That said, the project will be open source ("you guys asked for open source, so") there will be some shitcoins, it's unavoidable.
I think that covers most of what I remember. Hope you all enjoy!

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