Newsflash: announcing our token.com launch

We’re delighted to announce our next project.

This summer, we’ll be launching a new product that makes decentralised finance simple and accessible to everyone. It will go live at token.com with an initial rollout in Brazil.

When we set out on our mission in 2017, our goal was simple: we wanted to make tokenized magic a reality for those who believed in the disruptive power of blockchain, so we built a groundbreaking app on Ethereum with a Visa® Debit Card for spending crypto anywhere. We’re proud to have grown Monolith over the years, with over $12.5 million now topped up on our Visa® cards to date.

With Monolith, we’ve helped a community of crypto natives take control of their financial destiny by creating a portal into the world of Ethereum. Things have moved fast since we launched in 2017: back then, Ethereum only had 1.7 million unique addresses, Proof-of-Stake was nowhere close to shipping, and DeFi wasn’t even a thing yet.

The Ethereum ecosystem has seen an explosion of innovation in recent years, with the surge in decentralised finance activity highlighting the network’s biggest use case to date. While Ethereum has started to live up to its potential, it’s also become much more complex. DeFi has spawned innumerable protocol, tokens, and ways to use Ethereum. Monolith has evolved as the ecosystem has, but Ethereum’s added layers of complexity mean that the wider world remains isolated from the most powerful financial technology to have emerged to date.

The events of this year have shown beyond doubt that blockchain technology has gone mainstream. However, it is not yet ready for mass adoption. We need to strip things back to get the world on board.

token.com will be simple, safe and fun, making DeFi easy enough for anyone to understand. Where Monolith empowers through total freedom, token.com empowers through simplicity. It will offer a curated experience that makes complex DeFi tools more accessible. In fact, the experience will be so simple that it won’t even feel like DeFi. And it will launch in Brazil.

Why Brazil?

There are many factors behind our decision to roll out our new offering in Brazil. Home to over 213 million people, Brazil has a large population of digital natives. Today, many of them are familiar with Bitcoin and other crypto assets. The country’s fintech hub is the largest in Latin America, and it’s seen explosive growth in recent years.

Moreover, in the last week, Brazil and other Latin American countries have started to show support for Bitcoin. El Salvador has become the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, while leaders in Panama, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil have posted subtle hints on social media suggesting that they endorse Bitcoin. Although Brazil is yet to make any crypto asset legal tender, this development highlights the region’s appetite for innovation in the crypto space.

Despite its booming fintech climate, Brazil is a developing country that’s faced many economic challenges. The country’s banking sector is regarded as one of the most bureaucratic in the world, with sky high lending rates and widespread inefficiencies. Inflation rates are also high. We believe that DeFi on Ethereum will be the solution. Brazil has already undergone rapid change since riding the fintech wave; crypto will be next.

Monolith and the future

We want to clarify what our token.com launch means for Monolith. In essence, token.com is an extra project for us — it will run alongside Monolith. token.com and Monolith are distinct but complementary endeavours that serve our singular vision of making tokenized magic accessible to anyone. Both have an important role to play in our journey as we realize this new future, and both will evolve alongside the other.

Over the next few months we will be working to further develop token.com in preparation for a wider roll out in Brazil. Alongside this, we will be exploring several different avenues to evolve and improve TKN, as well as clarifying how it fits into our vision for token.com. Finally, as a product with global significance, token.com will expand to other parts of the world following our Brazil launch.

Our CEO Mel Gelderman will be appearing in a community check-in to introduce token.com and discuss our next moves on Thursday 17th June. Let us know your questions in advance, otherwise drop by our Telegram channel from 16:00 UTC on the day.

We want to conclude by thanking every member of our community for being part of this journey with us. There is still a long road ahead, and there will be more challenges to come. If DeFi is to fulfil its world-changing potential, it needs to become more accessible first. We plan to help make it happen, starting in Brazil this summer.

Learn more at token.com