Making the Best Use of Blockchain to Disrupt Banking: A Marathon, not a Sprint.

It has been a tumultuous and exciting past 12 months in the world of crypto. When the Monaize and Komodo Platform teams formed a partnership in July 2017 to launch the world’s first decentralized ICO, Bitcoin was worth around $2500, and the idea that cryptocurrency might replace traditional currencies (fiat) was held by few. Governments and international organizations have very quickly gone from ignoring the subject, to laughing at it, to now fighting it. These are all very positive signs for crypto and decentralized technologies.

Monaize is an e-banking platform and a legal entity by nature. When we began the project, there were few legal requirements. However, as the legal attention grows around blockchain technology in general, we find logical reasons to re-look at certain aspects of the ICO in order to protect all stakeholders in the Monaize ecosystem including ICO participants, users, and technological partners.

One of the primary concerns for government authorities that are looking at cryptocurrencies is money laundering. Monaize is a strong believer in the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, and the anonymity and freedom from centralized institutions that comes with this. However, it is nonetheless important for us to be respectful of the legal and regulatory landscape around the subject and to make efforts to avoid conflict.

For this reason, we have decided to make certain adjustments to the way in which the ICO is conducted. Monaize will be using Komodo’s blockchain and BarterDEX technology including the MNZ asset chain created in September which inherits all of Komodo’s features. However, the actual swap will not be conducted via atomic cross chain protocol as previously planned. Instead, we have decided to bring token distribution in-house and to put certain procedures in place in order to align ourselves with the evolving regulatory and legal landscape. More details on this are to come.

Since mid-2016, when the team at Monaize first came together and embarked upon its journey to be a force for change in banking, we have added a great deal of blockchain expertise to the considerable amount of experience we already had. For this, we are extremely grateful for our close partnership with Komodo Platform, and to the community at large. In the coming weeks, leading up to our official ICO relaunch, we will release our ICO wallet from which MNZ tokens can be bought.

Our vision is for a world in which cryptocurrencies replace currencies as we currently know them. However, the inertia of the current banking system, and the time it takes for such technologies to become mainstream, mean that it could be some years before this happens. We believe that the best way to help the people we serve transition through this period, is by providing hybrid solutions which serve both the legacy banking infrastructure and blockchain at the same time.

The work that has been done on Monaize’s very own wallet for the distribution of MNZ tokens over the past couple of months has given us an enormous head start in developing the cryptocurrency wallet which will eventually be integrated into our main banking application for iOS and Android, and which will support well-known cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Komodo, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash and others. We are in the process of updating our White Paper and look forward to sharing details with our community soon.

We would like to thank our community of loyal supporters for their patience during this time. This message will be the first in a series of upcoming official communications in which we will provide more information on the technical, financial, legal and product-related aspects of the Monaize project, as well as providing an official date for the ICO.

We hope that all of you will agree that our collective mission is to make the best use of cryptocurrencies, and the ingenious technology behind them, in order to disrupt the status quo. This mission is best viewed as a marathon, not a sprint, in order to bring about real, lasting change in banking.

The Monaize Team