SwissBorg Monthly: August & September
Places we’ve been, People we’ve met, Partnerships we’ve forged and Progress we’ve made!
We had an eventful summer at SwissBorg. Great strides were made in developing the SwissBorg Investment app and the SwissBorg Indices, which serve as teasers for the investment app were launched and are live on our website.
The SwissBorg powered Blockchain Unchained brand of events reached new heights with the Geneva conference that attracted more than 500 enthusiasts and was one of the most successful blockchain events that the famous financial hub has ever witnessed.
Extremely qualified and dedicated new team members have joined our team. Our Japan team is busy with plans to expand into Asia, especially China, and has helped us forge new and important partnerships. We have a new and promising partnership with Ginco Japan, which provides the most secure and simple wallet in the Japanese market and is now supporting CHSB, the SwissBorg token.
Our marketing team is working on rebranding and launching a new, improved, website and has launched a podcast channel where we can share ideas from our team members and the larger community of crypto and blockchain experts.
The SwissBorg community is growing on Reddit, where our brilliant and diverse team members share their thoughts and experiences and have a chance to interact with the community. On Telegram, we have formed a Community Committee to better respond to the concerns and desires of our SwissBorg tribe.
The ever-active legal team is always super busy and the summer did not deter them. From Lausanne to London to Malta they are persistently seeking licenses and planning strategies to give us a solid regulatory footing.
Our finance & governance department is on track having completed the structuring process and working on 2019 budget. We have updated our roadmap and are focused on reaching our goals and keeping our promises.
Blockchain Unchained Geneva Conference: A Big Success!
Blockchain Unchained conference, powered by SwissBorg, in Geneva on September 12th, was action-packed, with more than 500 Blockchain enthusiasts and crypto curious, coders and hodlers, professors and students, came together to explore the possibilities and discuss the obstacles facing the fascinating and innovative world of the blockchain. Geneva had yet to see a crypto conference of this size and stature. Read more here: https://bit.ly/2NprEZ3
Partnership Update:
SwissBorg was proud to announce our most important strategic partnership with Ginco in Japan which was first shared publicly by Monica Ohashi, of Ginco inc. at the Blockchain Unchained Conference in Geneva. Multiple benefits will result from this long-term relationship with Ginco. Ginco is the most secure and simple wallet available in the Japanese market. Thanks to Ginco’s proprietary technology and cryptography, the wallet meets the highest security standards. On top of that, the wallet’s extremely well-designed user interface makes the experience as simple as possible. Simplicity/ ease of use in Japan is among the most important factors when evaluating quality products especially compared to the complicated procedures most of us go through with other wallet storages such as the ledger nano s. Read More about the exciting opportunities that this partnership presents: https://bit.ly/2PVZFwG
TECH UPDATE:
SwissBorg’s Toronto team, Marco Guerreiro and Ankit Mittal have developed the very first SwissBorg Crypto Indices. The SB Top20 and the SB Next30 are first crypto indices developed by SwissBorg to track cryptos tailored to individual investment preferences. With the indices, SwissBorg aims to give our community members a taste of what is to come with the launch of our investment app, it currently shows some of the products we will be offering via our Investment App. Read more: https://bit.ly/2pBibz
Watch SwissBorg’s CRO, Marco Guerreiro’s interview at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto:
Financial Engine:
We have had good progress on our Financial Engine (The institutional grade system that will manage all of SwissBorg’s trading transactions). We will release more details in the coming months. Key details will be kept confidential as this will be a strategic competitive advantage for SwissBorg vs any competitors.
Investment Research:
We developed an options portfolio risk analysis tool focused on bitcoin options, for now, this is an internal tool only. We have completed an exhaustive analysis of investment strategies with bitcoin options with interesting results, this will be kept internally for now. We are 50% done on an analysis of flows and changes to the CHSB token holder structure, to improve the knowledge of our community, parts of which we expect to release a summary with key findings of it when completed.
Referendum 2: Engaging Community
We successfully launched SwissBorg’s second Referendum in July 2018. RSB2 tokens were distributed to 23'122 addresses. There were 2467 votes cast, among which 920 votes registered through the web interface.
There was an RSB2 supply of 790'395'461 tokens. Around 40.8% of RSB2 have been used. The number of CHSB rewarded was 3'229'216, with the majority of the participants voting from Japan with Switzerland coming in as second. the timing of Referendum2 coincided with a huge rise in the price of gas for Ether transactions which forced us to delay it and then made it fall at a time where most people are on vacation. The major token holders tilted the overall outcome in the final days to the “Gaming” option.
We take pride in our ability to run Referendums and gauge the swarm of our community, with each Referendum we learn lessons that we apply to the next one to come.
SwissBorg Investment App:
Our team of engineers has been working hard to deliver our showcase product. With the new hires, our Tech team headed by Nicolas Rémond is working non-stop on our Investment App.
Ferdinando Messina, our Mobile Software Engineer provides this report & chart of their progress:
After different iterations and UX testing sessions, we finalised most of the screens that will be part of the first release of the app. We hired an Android engineer that already joined and completed the mobile team. The engineering team began developing and securing the infrastructure that will support the mobile investment app.
Legal Update:
In August, the Legal Department took a breath of fresh air with the hiring of Ardian Balaj, our new Legal Crypto Analyst.
We have been working diligently on many fronts:
- We set up GDPR processes required to protect personal data of our Community Members (GDPR register, Data Breach Response Policy, Breach Notification process, templates.)
- We have made great strides towards the UK licensing process. The EMI file is tentacular but we love a challenge.
- We took active participation to Swiss Consultation procedures regarding FinTech matters, in particular to the proposed amendments of the Swiss Banking Ordinance introducing a new licensing regime for Fintechs — in order to lobby for our and the Community’s interests.
- The Governance Team met with Malta Financial Services Authority MFSA to discuss regulatory issues for SwissBorg entities incorporation, and licensing process!
The Legal Team has also taken an active part in the organisation of Blockchained-Unchained in order to make the event visible among lawyers. Ardian moderated the legal panel during the event, surrounded by very prominent panelists with and from different regulatory perspectives. It definitely helped shed a bright light on SwissBorg and on “how to build a regulatory regime for Blockchain.”
Governance update:
Our Governance department continued the structuring of the group by setting up all the requirements for the UK entity for payrolls, the legal framework in preparation for the EMI etc.., for Malta for the Licences, and setting up the accounting standards for group consolidation.
- Defining and structuring the accounting framework for the Investment App
- Design the business model for the Investment App
- Tax plans for the group
- Preparing the year-end closing of the books for different entities
- Defining the budgets of 2019 for teams based on ongoing projects and the ones to come
- The hiring process for an accountant
Marketing Update:
As SwissBorg grows up, we are preparing to broaden our community and to take on the challenge of being a significant player in a new economy. In order to inspire trust and credibility with consumers around the world, our brand identity needs to be refined towards a more professional, approachable and established brand. In November we will be updating our brand with a new SwissBorg visual identity across our website, content, social channels, and promotional material.
Website Update:
The current SwissBorg website provided the perfect platform for our ICO and played a pivotal role in helping us reach our ambitious USD 52m hard cap earlier this year. However, since our ICO, our business objectives have shifted, and the current website is not fit for purpose. We are undergoing a complete revamp of the site, expected re-launch in November.
Crypto Unchained Podcast:
Vince Howard Our Head of Marketing in London has launched SwissBorg’s weekly series podcast, Crypto Unchained, where you can listen to SwissBorg team experts and industry influencers. Listen Line Élodie Derungs, Head of Legal at SwissBorg discuss tackling the compliance and legal issues surrounding blockchain technology are a top priority for early adopters seeking to disrupt traditional industries such as banking: https://bit.ly/2Ds6JQn
SwissBorg Spreads its Wings in China:
Amber Chook of SwissBorg Japan reports: China’s crypto businesses don’t just survive — they thrive. In August, our Asia team, Ken Yagami, Head of Japan and China, along with Amber Chook, PR Manager Asia, made a fruitful business trip to Shanghai in celebration of the first anniversary of MyToken the rapidly growing crypto app giant with 1.5 million Chinese crypto investors to this date. The most exciting announcement from the trip was that we now have a Community Ambassador for Mainland China — Wang Chao, CEO of Hestial PTE. LTD. He holds a Ph.D. from London Business School. Wang Chao has extensive experience working for internationally renowned consulting firms and private banks. With his financial expertise and experience in private banking, Wang Chao worked globally in London, Hong Kong, and Beijing Read More: https://medium.com/@swissborg_japan/swissborg-in-shanghai-tapping-into-the-huge-potential-of-chinese-market-2651
SwissBorg Japan Update:
The summer in Tokyo has been very productive. Japan was the country with the most answers for the QuizzBorg survey. More than 23% of the participants with 356 answers. Risa Suzuki and Amber Chook travelled to Switzerland in September to meet the Lausanne team and attend Blockchain Unchained conference in Geneva, where Amber headed a panel on Women in Blockchain.
The dynamic team in Tokyo is preparing for the Blockchain Unchained Oct 1 event: Battle of the Blockchains. Japan’s top 3 biggest blockchain media will be in attendance (Coinpost; CoinTelegraph and CoinOtaku) along with some of the major protocols. They are focusing on building strategic media partners to get ready for the smart wallet pre-release marketing campaign. The team is very proud of the Ginco partnership. Ginco has just won TechinAsia for best startup and has now added the CHSB token to their wallet.
In addition to legal partners, SwissBorg Japan has hired a compliance consultant with two decades of experience at a top-tier bank. Despite the tightening of the FSA’s registration screening process for cryptocurrency exchanges (from 160 to 400 criteria), we are fully committed and in the process of updating/ completing our documentation.
Community Update:
In keeping with our meritocratic reward system and the fundamentals of swarm intelligence, we created SwissBorg Community Committee group. These members were selected because they showed high levels of commitment and passion for supporting SwissBorg’s development. Read more about them: https://bit.ly/2N0NEEf
We held 2 monthly meetings with the CC members: democratic and meritocratic. We are brainstorming together on improvements and working on the SwissBorg Ecosystem.
Several Telegram community members joined us at the Blockchain Unchained event where we spent quality time discussing blockchain and everything to do with SwissBorg.
We have introduced a tool, a Combot, to the main Telegram channel, which helps us improve the overall community support on Telegram and facilitates answering questions related to the SwissBorg project. Next week we are kicking off our first London meet up and will be organising a meet-up next month in Berlin.
Reddit Update
We have updated our Meritocratic Rewards System on Reddit: Subscribe, join the conversations and we will reward you with CHSB tokens.
Traffic: In the chart below we can observe that SwissBorg´s Reddit page activity started growing in December 2017 and exploded in January 2018, when we had our ICO. Since the beginning of May, we can observe an increase in our subreddits page activity and of the total pageviews can be observed as well.
September has been a very active Month on our Reddit page with many new members joining us in the Meritocratic Reward System. The number of posts and subscribers has increased in the last two months and continues to grow each day.
Co-founders On The Move:
SwissBorg co-founder Anthony Lesoismier-Geniaux wraps up his views on the vast number of Hedge funds poised to join the Crypto space at the Hedgebrunch Crypto panel debate in London in September.
New Team Members:
SwissBorg is Hiring! Find out if one of our promising positions is meant for you: https://jobs.lever.co/swissborg
Subscribe to Business Insider: Does the crypto market enthuse or confuse you? Do you want to receive a tailored, easy to follow, yet in-depth, expert analysis of the cryptocurrency markets in your inbox every day? Subscribe to the SwissBorg Daily Insider: https://bit.ly/2QV5dcb
Battle of Blockchains:
Join our next Blockchain Unchained Meetup on Oct 1 during Tokyo Blockchain Week: https://www.meetup.com/fr-FR/Tokyo-Blockchain-Unchained-Meetup/events/254203868/
