The SwissBorg Monthly — JULY 2018
If June was a busy month here at SwissBorg July was downright hectic. Our Second Referendum on the blockchain was delayed due to the surge in the price of gas for ether transactions. Our tech team monitored the market closely, and when the price of Ether transactions had stabilized to a level that would keep the cost of participation low, our team made the decision to launch voting and allow the community the necessary amount of time to participate. The period for voting in our 2nd Referendum will continue to noon CET on August 3rd, 2018, with the possibility of extending it further if gas prices surge again.
Like the previous month, we have the good news that our tech team continues to grow. We’ve hired more engineers and feel ever more confident of delivering the products we have promised our community, such as the ICO platform that is already in place and supporting Helix Orange and our Investment app that is being built as we write. We are blessed with being located in Lausanne where one of the worlds best computer engineering universities, EPFL, is located which provides us with a vast pool of bright computer engineers.
The SwissBorg ecosystem is just like blockchain, products are as important as the community. We have taken new steps to grow and connect with our SwissBorgers. The most important of these was expanding our Blockchain Unchained event brand, which took us to more than seven major Asian cities ending in Tokyo where our Japan team organized two very successful and trend-setting meet-ups. Our Community Ambassadors have also been busy, on social media trying to reboot our subreddit, going to conferences, setting up pop up meet-ups, trying to show our presence and reach out to enthusiasts. Referendums, our way of tapping into the swarm intelligence of our community, are one of the best ways to practice our philosophy of inclusiveness and meritocracy. Our 2nd Referendum, asks our community which sector/industry they prefer SwissBorg to engage for inclusion in our ICO platform. In response to feedback from our community, we’ve improved this referendum by taking into account the holding time of the CHSB token to be more in tune with our promise of meritocracy.
Did you miss our July Q & A? You can view it here.
Tech update
July was Referendum Month here at SwissBorg. Our tech team worked hard to launch our second referendum which is going on right now until August 3rd, noon CET. We are happy that it has been running smoothly ever since the initial delay due to the surge in the price of ether transactions which would make participation too costly for community members.
Special shout out to Draazzzz, a SwissBorg Reddit community member who singlehandedly built an unofficial interface for viewing the referendum results: https://www.cryptalloc.com/rsb2/
For more on Referendum 2: http://bit.ly/2K0i33Z
ICO Platform Update
Our ICO platform is running well; we are in the second phase of structuring. Many DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) are asking us to run their campaigns. We are very selective and demanding regarding the quality of their business technology, the muster of their team, and a mission philosophy that is compatible with ours. We are setting up a pipeline to select the best DAOs to support on our ICO platform in the coming months. We are creating a selection committee and a diligence committee to bring onboard the SwissBorg ecosystem the best DAOs.
ICO campaign for Helix Orange our selected DAO is going well. SwissBorg provides them with technical and marketing support. Helix is one of the digital ID pioneers, focusing not only on digital ID but KYC (know your customer) as well. They already have their MVP (minimum viable product) and are running the pre-sale phase.
Legal Update
In the legal department, the big news this July was that Swissborg was accepted as a member of the Financial Services Standards Association (VQF), one of Switzerland’s Self-Regulatory Organizations (SROs), officially recognized by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, FINMA.
VQF will be in charge of supervising SwissBorg when it comes to combating money laundering and terrorism financing. Our team will also engage in advanced training with VQF Academy on applicable legislation as well as helping us optimize internal processes to guarantee the highest levels of compliance. Read more: http://bit.ly/2A8GAnX
Line Elodie Derungs, our energetic head of legal and her team, who worked hard to receive this membership, is a forward moving, highly engaged, engine here at SwissBorg. She sends this update:
- We hired several people to complete the core team with some very useful additional skills
- We continue to solidify our corporate governance and structuration of the group
- GDPR compliance is tough but we are progressing well as a team towards implementing the required processes for ALL our community members to profit from the highest level of data protection and not just for the EU residents as required by law. We go above and beyond for our community as a whole because: #WeAreSwissBorg
MyToken & SwissBorg Partnership
In the area of partnerships and expansion into Asia July brought us great news. MyToken, the cryptocurrency monitoring app with a 1.3 million Chinese crypto community following, will partner with SwissBorg to help the Wealth Management Platform expand into China. SwissBorg, the top 12 Swiss ICO in Switzerland, with the second largest crypto following in Japan will, in turn, help MyToken expand in Japan.
MyToken will help SwissBorg develop its community through regular meetups in China, using their 1 million plus user base to help SwissBorg establish a presence in the colossal Chinese crypto space. The partnership will allow SwissBorg to create an offline and online media presence and enter the blockchain media and WeChat channels. SwissBorg will take its Blockchain Unchained brand of ‘Edutainment’ meetups to China to strengthen community bonds and promote the potential that blockchain and crypto harbor for the future of banking and finance.
Read more: https://bit.ly/2LvoX6t
Reddit and Growth Hacking
Otilia Gudana Reports
During the last 2 week there are obvious signs of an increase in the number of subscribers on our subreddit page.
If we analyze the daily traffic in the last month, we can see that more subscribers have signed up in a few days compared to the previous periods. SwissBorg’s subreddit page was visited mostly towards the ends of the week, Thursday 943 page views and Friday 812 page views.
This increase is possibly generated by the announcement through our newsletter about our developed Reward System on Reddit (Earn 10 CHSB ) Subscribers numbers have increased by over 100 last month. We had nine months of inactivity. 1193 subscribers right now. More posts per day, more members active and getting rewarded by the meritocratic system. However, if we analyze the Reddit subscriptions, on a daily basis, we can observe that it fluctuates according to different factors like announcements, posts, and events.
For example we can observe that on June 5th we had more than 40 subscribers, which coincides with the day when we actively started using the Reddit platform and began to hold discussions and to reward community members for participation.
Risk Aversion Survey for SwissBorg’s Robo Advisory
Othman, David, and Otilia are developing a Robo-Advisor based on a reinforced learning model. To be able to collect initial data to train our model, we built an app, QuizzBorg, that will link a wide range of personal choices to risk aversion and investment profiles.The participants will receive CHSB tokens at the start of the survey and will be given opportunities to invest these tokens for a chance to earn more (or lose, as in real markets), thus providing us with data about what kind of risks the participants are willing to take. In parallel, we will gather the Facebook and LinkedIn data of the participants to understand how to determine the investment profile of our future clients in a non-invasive and efficient way using machine learning. Pre-registrations for the project will be open soon. The QuizzBorg app will follow shortly thereafter! Stay tuned to our social media channels for further announcements.
COUNTRY UPDATE
SwissBorg Japan
Our energetic team in Japan is engaged in multiple efforts to expand the SwissBorg brand name in Asia.
- Partnerships with Asian projects such as MyToken for community and events sharing (1.3mm users).
- Hiring: Tamami Kubo was hired to be a legal consultant, primarily to assist legal documentation for cryptocurrency exchange license application.
- Ending the BU Asia Roadshow with two high profile meetups in Tokyo, most importantly featuring our first ICO project off of our platform, Helix Orange.
SwissBorg London Marketing
Our head of marketing Vince Howard reports:
We are close to hiring a very strong candidate for our Head of Support role at SwissBorg who will be based out of our London office. As SwissBorg grows and with the introduction of our products to the community making sure we can scale support adequately to meet the demand of users will be vital. Also pleased to announce we hired William Dahlström, our super marketing intern. Will is working on implementing better digital statistics across our entire marketing suite and improving the overall process. We are also on the hunt for a stellar Graphic designer equipped with enthusiasm, creativity and the desire to create history with SwissBorg.
Across marketing, we are currently developing the SwissBorg brand identity to improve our overall visual and communication strategy. The project will include updating our present website and working alongside our product development teams.
Co-founders On The Move
Cyrus Fazel, Anthony Lesoismier, SwissBorg co-founders, and Antoine Guesry our head of Events, who is organizing the BlockchainUnchained Conference in Geneva in September, attended the Crypto Symposium at Villa Illumina in Mykonos, Greece, from July 15 to 18th. They attended panels, joined workshops, gave talks, made friends and exchanged ideas with like-minded crypto influencers and enthusiasts. Read more: http://bit.ly/2uNJ4Tx
Blockchain Unchained Events and Tours
Watch BlockchainUnchained Asia Road Show video.
Asia BU Tour ended successfully, growing community building partnerships in Asia. After two months of an action-packed schedule traveling to over six Asian countries, meeting hundreds of awesome people and building great connections with individuals from all walks of life, the SwissBorg team is grateful for the experience and the exposure.
A significant event in Hong Kong wrapped up the Asia Road Tour, with the attendance of more than a hundred community members and crypto enthusiasts. Cyrus Fazel, SwissBorg CEO founder, spoke about Evolution of Wealth Management and Dean McClelland, of Tontine Trust, talked about future of pensions using blockchain technology. Besides the main speakers, there was a panel around the theme of Scalability and Mass Adoption. Read more: http://bit.ly/2OkkQsm
Don’t Forget to Sign Up for Early Bird Special of our Blockchain Unchained Conference Geneva September 12–14, 2018!
NEW TEAM MEMBERS
We are in the process of growing our team and are hiring faster than we can update you! July was a great month for our hiring because we hired a fantastic Senior Backend Software Engineer and an amazing new Data Whisperer to help gauge and engage our community and conduct a risk aversion survey for the Robo Advisor: Othman Benchekroun
A complete list of new hires (some are being finalized as I write) will be published in our next weekly newsletter.
We are Hiring! Our rapid expansion continues, check out our ‘for hire’ list if you are interested in joining our trend-setting, and dynamic team.
