October 2018: Building Decentralized Banking Infrastructure — Early Steps, Big Strides

The token economy has seen some interesting dialogue lately, hasn’t it? Earlier this year, Gartner conducted a survey of 3,160 chief information officers and found, despite banter around the promise of blockchain, that only 1% are building credible business models.

We’re proud to be taking tangible steps towards a big outcome — and we’re making slow, steady, forward progress.

Over the next few months, blockchain investors are going to see a stark separation from industry noise and the most promising companies. Access is proud to be part of a high-integrity cohort of companies taking a long-horizon view to building transformative technology. It’s a marathon, and we’re making every detail count.

• We went through a rebrand that will allow us to scale to more stakeholders. Check out our new website at joinaccess.com.
• Our team has expanded! We recently hired a new office manager. The team is now 6 in New York City, 3 in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 44 in Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal
• We’re hiring a full-time global head of operations

New Partnerships

Partnerships are the seeds from which our banking ecosystem will grow.

• In September, we locked down an opportunity to white-label a cryptocurrency exchange, to launch in Africa.
• We’re also working with leading stable coin companies, to create a pathway for foreign investment into Africa.
• With this foundation, we are working with solar partners and added a leading advisor.
• With this framework in place, Access will enable investment directly into energy infrastructure, in tandem with our core financial services offerings.

More detailed announcements are coming soon, so stay tuned!

[Read More About Our Fintech Vision — How We’re Building Smart Contracts for P2P Lending in Africa]

Recent Events

After returning from a trip to Ghana and Senegal, where we conducted a needs assessment with our network of bankers, community organizers, and engineers, our team has been focused on sharing these stories far-and-wide.

• In September, Access CEO Mickey Costa attended Consensus Singapore to expand our team’s network of potential partners.
• Mickey spoke at the Annual Concordia Summit, a side event to the UN General Assembly, on the topic of Incentivizing Local Growth through Decentralized Governance. At this event, Mickey presented on the topic of financial inclusion at an invitation-only roundtable to launch Concordia Africa with African thought leaders
• Mickey was also on a panel at the Singularity University Summit in San Francisco, where he talked about decentralized autonomous organizations with Unchained podcast host, Laura Shin and Bancor Co-Founder Galia Benartzi.

See Mickey’s Talk at Singularity:

Join Our Journey

This September, we launched a few new social channels. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Medium have become a source of inbound inquiries — potential partners and media reach out to us on a weekly basis. We’re using our social channels to share groundbreaking blockchain industry research and key lessons learned building Access.

We need your help spreading the word and sharing our stories.

Twitter: @ACX_Network
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/acxnetwork/
Medium: https://medium.com/acxnetwork
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/accessnetwork/
Discord: https://discord.gg/XyW4Mrh

Contributors Statement
This work was a collaboration between the entire Access Network team, ranging from the CEO to CTO, COO, Chief of Staff, and other members of leadership. Emily Burchill, Shannon Wu, Ritika Puri, and Karissa Domondon created this story.

Disclosure
The opinions expressed are those of the authors and are no guarantee of the future performance of any Access Network fund or service. This material has been prepared for educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment, accounting, legal or tax advice. Access Network is currently unlaunched and has not announced a token generation event. Blog posts are intended to provide education about the business model and its path to development, only.