The Facts About HybridBlock
Regarding “Fact Seeker’s” July 14, 2018 Medium post, we at HybridBlock felt it necessary to publish a response for our community. If their aim was to provide a clear and fair assessment of the HybridBlock ecosystem, it failed; instead this inflammatory article, based upon misunderstandings and misinformation, confused the community. Here is a clear breakdown of the “facts” to clear up any confusion among our community.
Fact 1: HybridBlock did not raise $50 million USD. Our pre-sale began in January when Ethereum (a majority of our raise was collected this way) was valued at over $1,000 USD. Taken at the time of collection, yes, our raise approached $50 million USD, but today (and at the end of our token sale) Ethereum is worth about half that price. The reality is that our bank account doesn’t reflect the amount the community thinks we raised. Because we didn’t sell right away, we could have re-pegged to the current market price and accepted more contributions. But instead, we chose to honor the original pegged amount and protect the commitments made by our early contributors.
Here are some additional “facts” for perspective on the funding needed to properly build and run platforms similar to HybridBlock; Coinbase, a fiat-crypto onramp, raised $100 million USD in their series D round while Binance, a crypto-to-crypto platform, raised approximately $15 million USD during their BNB token sale — immediately followed by a $15 million private equity round. HybridBlock is building a fiat-to-crypto platform, a crypto-to-crypto exchange, an advanced trading terminal, and a gamified and engaging education platform — this is a robust and expensive ecosystem we are building. Imagine combining Coinbase, Binance, Bloomberg and a major university all into one ecosystem. Two of these pillars are active today; our Hybridblock Exchange Beta which can be reached at www.hybex.io and HybridCentral, which is hosting (planning, paying for, and executing) its second major cryptocurrency conference from the Hybrid Summit series. You can read more about it at www.hybridsummit2018.com.
Fact 2: The “Coinbase of Asia” is not HybridExchange Beta Simulator. It’s BaseTrade — our fiat to crypto onramp. BaseTrade is one pillar of an entire ecosystem that we are working to build. Fact Seekers logical shortcomings (or intentional misrepresentations) aside, the issue remains that many of these “facts” are easily disputed by simply reading HybridBlock’s white paper or getting involved in the Hybridblock community, or perusing the token sale website.
HybridBlock is not a single platform. In our whitepaper we outline four distinct products that combine to offer a “a complete cryptocurrency trading solution” that walks beginners through education (HybridCentral), helps them buy their first cryptocurrency (BaseTrade), begin trading (HybridExchange) and ultimately have exposure to the most advanced trading systems available (HybridTerminal). This requires a long-term roadmap. Raising through a token sale beginning in January and an open sale finishing in June does not give a legitimate company enough time to build out a completed and complex ecosystem by July. Our Beta exchange is JUST the beginning. We will soon announce more technology partnerships and critical regulatory relationships that will help HybridBlock become a fully regulated exchange, licensed to sell cryptocurrencies and securities. Imagine the legal bills on that alone. Yes, we could have waited to release any products. Our purpose in launching the beta exchange and simulator was to show the community that we are making real progress on our roadmap. In the next 4–6 months you will see BaseTrade, Central and our full Exchange come online, followed by HybridTerminal.
Fact 3: Our Telegram community. Incentivizing community involvement and user growth is a necessity for any successful startup. Uber encourages new riders with a $15 free credit — even if you never ride again, at least you came and took a look around. Incentivizing users to be a part of our community, to come and try it out, is the core requirement of growing a community — and a fundamental requirement for driving growth.
Things are exactly as they seem at HybridBlock, our Telegram communityconsistently praises our admins, our co-founders, and other team members for being actively involved in discussion, addressing concerns head on, and even disclosing full token sale details to our community. Many other token sale channels simply “ban” users that offer dissenting views, we do not (given they don’t violate community guidelines). Fact Seeker’s article mentions these “arguments” (we call them discussions) where users go back and forth discussing pros and cons of what is happening. Whether people sign up for Uber and never use it again is beyond the control of the company giving the promotion. People are free to come and go, participate or not participate, it doesn’t make the platform any less legitimate.
Fact 4: Technology partner — AlphaPoint. Our leadership always disclosed our “technology partners in New York City” during any discussion or interview when asked about it. AlphaPoint’s matching engine is well known for its performance and we are proud to be using it to power an incredibly complex global order book. With Fact Seeker’s investigative work to “find” the AlphaPoint code in our system, I would also assume they are aware with the common definition of “Beta” software. Just to clarify what “Beta” software means;
“the second phase of software testing which a sampling of the intended audience tries the product out.”
Yes, even you Fact Seeker, we are glad you tried it out and we appreciate the feedback (although would prefer you share it with us directly). We hope to provide a better experience in 4–6 months when we launch our FULL Exchange based on critical feedback from our community. We personally invite you to come take a look when that’s ready.
Fact 5: AlphaPoint does not provide KYC services via email. It would be much easier if they did. Perhaps billionaire investor Michael Novogratz $15 million USD investment into AlphaPoint will include a KYC service in the future. Outsourcing KYC vetting to third party experts is widely practiced. From a legal and regulatory perspective, it is critical that we as a financial operator take KYC very seriously to protect the general public and remain compliant with regulators — that often means enlisting the support of professionals in the space. A quick search on the privacy policy at Coinbase.com and the Terms and Conditions at Binance.com reveals the following disclosures;
“we[Coinbase] may require you to provide additional information which we may use in collaboration with service providers acting on our behalf to verify your identity or address” -Coinbase Privacy Policy
“you also authorise us to make inquiries, either directly or through third parties, that are deemed necessary to verify your identity or to protect you and/or us against financial crimes such as fraud.” -Binance Terms and Conditions
Just to clarify, an AlphaPoint employee is not casually emailing your information around. It is reviewed either by our in-house compliance team or sent directly through secure API calls to vetted service providers that have been audited by third party cybersecurity experts to ensure your information is as secure as possible.
In the end, we hope that your caveat “if it is only a white label product” is now cleared up. HybridBlock is more than just an exchange and it is not simply a “white label” from our technology partner AlphaPoint. Our plan is to release a “game changing” cryptocurrency ecosystem that will become what Alibaba became to the online retail shopping experience, or what Facebook became for the social media experience. We are just getting started.
We sincerely appreciate Fact Seeker’s efforts to bring truth and transparency to the community — we just wish it was based more on the facts. We personally invite you to come meet the team behind HybridBlock’s development Fact Seeker because we all firmly believe that HybridBlock will become a cornerstone brand in crypto to help onboard the next 200 million users.
