After the dust settles from the “Moon Talk,” which start-ups will still be around?
Those involved with Bitcoin and crypto for more than a few months have been told 2017 was the best year so far. Many people enjoyed wild percentage gains and money came pouring in. But, now we have pulled back to early 2017 prices and it feels like a hangover that cannot be shook.
The best part of capitalism and being an entrepreneur is that you can constantly step out of the box, evaluate and look for solutions to problems. By looking at business areas that all individuals participate in and consume like banking, retail-goods and identity security then we are bound to find issues. These are large sectors to start to poke holes in because almost everyone has given you a story that their experience was less than enjoyable in many of those business areas. So, entrepreneurs go to work; reverse engineering systems and studying emerging technology to see how they can serve customers while making money.
I personally saw countless ICOs trying to wrap their head around compliance and wanting to do the things the right way. Using third party providers with existing systems was the only choice at the time for legal and ID management, but we said “why not create a blockchain solution for blockchain crowd-funds to reduce costs across the board?” In a world of regulations that keep increasing, it affects all of us even if not using that direct product. Companies are not stupid, when the price of a barrel of gasoline increases; Shell does not absorb that cost into their profit margin, the station is out running to change the Gas price right in front of you! This is true for financial institutions and retail businesses as well.
I recently came across some really eye-opening data from a 2017 Thompson Reuters Global KYC Survey. According to the survey, financial institutions with $10 billion or more in revenue have seen their average spend on KYC-related procedures increase to $150 million this year from $142 million in 2016, while their number of deployed employees has skyrocketed to an average of 307 KYC compliance professionals in 2017 from 68. Despite this rise in headcount, just over a third of firms reported that scarce resources remain their biggest challenge in conducting KYC and customer due diligence (CDD) processes.
So, I implore you to ask yourself when investing your hard-earned dollars to that new cool, crypto project that has all the hype; What problem are they solving? What is the market size of this problem? What will make big corporations interested in being a customer? Bridge Protocol will automate the automatons. Our upcoming solution will aid businesses in reducing their headcount for compliance by building a better, blockchain designed mousetrap.
