The SwissBorg Monthly
November was rebranding month here at SwissBorg. We shed our old clothes for a fresh and clean look that is a more accurate reflection of our philosophy of transparency and our ambition of mass adoption. Our new website will host our roadmap, blogs, crypto indices, and more, providing a better platform for sharing the news of our products/services and engaging our community.
Our Business Development team launched SwissBorg’s ICO competition where we will host DAO and projects from the Gaming industry and incubate the winning ICO. The competition that will continue for several months is our way of sharing our experience and expertise with the larger blockchain community. We want to boost young and promising ICOs and with them our ecosystem.
November was also a very busy month for our team members who travelled far and wide to share knowledge and spread the message of decentralised financial management. Our tech team has made great strides in the development of the SwissBorg App; in November, they took a road trip. Headed by Nicolas Rémond our CTO, the team travelled to Lyon for the ScalaIO 2018 conference that was followed by a workshop for peers in our Lausanne headquarters. Laureline David, our security engineer, went to the BlackAlps conference and brought us fresh ideas from the cybersecurity sector.
Our biggest news in November came from the Legal Department. Ardian Balaj has received the confirmation from the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) that SwissBorg is authorised to provide services under the VFA Act. Four companies have come into existence and duly registered under Maltese law. Each of these entities will be licensed to cover the entire SwissBorg ecosystem. We have started recruiting a Legal & Compliance Officer, as required by the laws of Malta; more experts have joined the SwissBorg Legal family. At the Malta Blockchain Summit with our founder, Cyrus Fazel, who wowed the crowd with a great talk on the future of ICOs, Ardian’s tireless networking and recruiting bore fruit bringing to our team more legal specialists.
SwissBorg Japan had a busy schedule, as usual, of meetups and conferences extending our reach into China where the partnership with local media has exposed us to an audience of several million. In this bear season, they gave us the good news of our token, CHSB’s, second Chinese exchange listing, coming in December, on 99EX which is an exchange launched by OKEx.
Our online community is well and thriving. SwissBorg Community Committee gives us constant, unwavering and invaluable feedback. We are in the process of vetting several Community Ambassadors for our Community Ambassadors Program. Our Reddit Weekly Competition Series is thriving, bringing new subscribers to our page where we are implementing our meritocratic system while awaiting our own platform’s completion. Our Community Manager’s ceaseless efforts to growth hack have expanded our horizon; we are now collaborating with Blockfolio and Delta Direct platforms where our community can track our CHSB token and follow our progress.
Our energetic head of events Antoine Guesry, who led our Blockchain Unchained events brand to great success in Geneva, is planning a busy series of events to encourage community expansion in major European hubs. As we approach the last month of 2018, we look back and take stock of our mistakes and our achievements. It has been a bumpy ride this month in the crypto space, but we remain as positive and hopeful as ever about a future of finance that is fair, facile, and universally accessible.
New Branding Update
As SwissBorg grows, we are preparing to broaden our community and embrace the challenge of being a significant player in a new economy. SwissBorg’s identity has been refined into a more professional, approachable and sophisticated brand to inspire trust and credibility with community members around the world.
ICO competition Update
We want to share our experience, expertise and financial support with promising projects on the blockchain. To give a boost to innovative ICOs and help expand the blockchain ecosystem we are launching an ICO Competition to select the best project to host on our ICO platform.
The winner of our ICO competition will be able to:
- Tap into our technological expertise: have access to a secure & customisable holistic platform.
- Consult expert advisers: receive strategic advice & feedback from top executives, financial professionals, tech experts and community partners in the vast SwissBorg ecosystem.
- Access investors and capital: the contest will give projects the opportunity to pitch their ICOs to investors and network in the blockchain space. The winning start-up will find it easier to launch their ICO and fundraise with our ICO package.
A few months ago, our community participated in a referendum deciding which sector to engage on SwissBorg’s ICO platform once our products and services are launched. “Gaming” won to become the first sector to be incubated on our platform. Read more.
Tech Update:
Our tech team is on full throttle working on the SwissBorg App. In November they got a chance to go on a road trip to Lyon to attend the ScalaIO 2018 conference, where they shared ideas and networked. Upon their return, they held a Scala workshop at our Lausanne headquarter. Laureline David our Security Engineer attended the Black Alps a major Cyber Security Conference in Yverdon-les-Bains, were she attended talks such as, “How to provide security fixes in a high constraint environment”, which gave “good pointers to handle security disclosures, and fixes without accidentally exposing your customers or breaking everything, mostly from an Open Source project perspective.” Read more.
Our Android Engineer Wins LauzHack
Last weekend, our Android engineer, Christopher Benz, participated in the LauzHack hackathon and won the first prize for his Bitcoin trading bot algorithm, in a team of four with friends.
LauzHack is a hackathon organised by EPFL students and taking place in the computer science building, with 300 students competing on several different projects for 24 hours non-stop, from noon on Saturday to mid-day Sunday. The organisers provided mini-challenges, games or workshops throughout the event.
During the first half of the event, a deep learning algorithm was implemented to predict the price of bitcoin, without much success. After discussion with our SwissBorg quantitative crypto analyst, Bastien Muster, about the algorithm strategy, our team chose a more simple solution, which uses an exponential weighted moving average to determine an average price to which they predict Bitcoin will return to in the next few seconds. Our team then used that information to calculate which percentage of our portfolio should be comprised of Bitcoin assets or cash, and place buy/sell orders accordingly.
This strategy worked well because Benz’ algorithm was able to react to Bitcoin price changes very rapidly to optimise profits, and made big buy/sell orders every second. Unfortunately, this algorithm wouldn’t work on a real exchange because of the very high transaction fees. The team, Christopher claims with a smile, is now thinking about another algorithm “to make us millionaires.”
With 46% of the students coming from abroad for the event, it was a great weekend of fun and networking, for Christopher and his team and “having a trading bot that worked well at the end was very satisfying.”
Our newly promoted Growth Hacker Mariem Farhat and our freshly appointed, Head of UX & UI Jacques Oberholzer took part in the Product Management Festival 2018 in Zurich. The global product management community shared their best practices, experiences and success stories. Giants such as Facebook, Google, Amplitude and Optimizely shared their ideas about product management in the digital age, highlighting the importance of data analytics for the successful launch of a product.
New Exchange Listings & Collaborations
99EX by OKEx: We welcome our second Chinese exchange listing and are delighted to announce that the CHSB token will be listed on 99EX in December 2018. 99EX is the first exchange launched by OKEx under its “Open Digital Asset Exchange & Win-Win” program. By fully leveraging OKEx’s industry experience, network, and technology, 99EX provides users with safe and reliable digital assets trading services. OKEx synchronises user database, liquidity, and technology with 99EX, OKEx users can log in on 99EX with the same accounts, trade, and transfer assets onto 99EX instantly with 0 transaction fee. SwissBorg is excited to provide millions of Chinese crypto investors with direct access to CHSB. Read more.
CryptoExchange API aggregation partnerships progress: API aggregation partnerships are key for the SwissBorg app’s success to provide both the volume and best rates available for all our future users. We have an open dialogue with three of the largest exchanges by volume to get preferred rates when it comes to both their open API and lowered commission fees by acting as a volume provider. We will continue to strengthen our relationships and aim to get one more large exchange to cooperate for our V.1.
LegalChain: Collaboration with Walder Wyss
SwissBorg’s Legal department has partnered with one of the most excellent law firms in Switzerland, Walder Wyss Attorneys-at-Law, to co-sponsor LegalChain, an association aiming at organising, on a regular basis, conferences and seminars on specific legal issues. LegalChain has organised its first conference around the topic “Bitcoin and the Law: Who will rule virtual gold?” Join us.
Ardian Balaj, of our legal department, will attend a symposium organised by the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland: Friday 30 November 2018 to discuss Blockchain and Smart Contracts with law professors and lawyers in the field.
Collaboration with Blockfolio & Delta Direct
We are happy to announce that while awaiting the launch of our app, SwissBorg is joining the two token tracking platforms Blockfolio Signals and Delta Direct to keep our community updated on the progress of our project and gain more exposure. Anyone can now track SwissBorg (CHSB) token to receive our signal updates. Make sure to enable notifications for our Delta Direct and Blockfolio Signals updates, so you never miss out.
Legal Update
The Legal Team is mutating, it is growing, and it is ready to rock on!
Line Elodie Derungs, our current Head of Legal, has resigned to focus on personal and professional projects. Even after her departure, SwissBorg and Line Elodie will keep in close touch, and Line Elodie will serve as a legal consultant for us. Line Elodie has done a fantastic job setting up the whole SwissBorg Legal Department with the idea in mind to keep it safe from harm, be it external or internal. Her work has established a solid basis for her successor to build on.
Ardian Balaj will take-on Line Elodie’s responsibilities and lead a team of consultants to move on with the licensing processes worldwide. Ardian has been hard at work recruiting young and motivated people to build this army of lawyers! Hard work and good luck bring fantastic result: we are very proud to announce that three new junior lawyers will join us in December and assist Ardian in building the perfect in-house legal department for a startup like SwissBorg.
New Legal Hires:
- Serena Fontana, a licensed Italian lawyer, she will join SwissBorg as Junior Legal Officer and work on many different aspects of contractual and corporate law, as well as deal with AML risks and requirements.
- Anda Pandrea, a research assistant, coming from the very reputable Law School of the University of Fribourg, will be our new Junior Regulatory Officer, whose role will be to assist with the organisation of the legal department, research crypto matters such as smart contracts, etc.
- Julian Grech is a Maltese lawyer and licensed notary with 2 LLM from the University of Fribourg as well; he will be our bridge between Switzerland and Malta.
Malta Here We Come! This month Malta is our big news. We are delighted and relieved to have received the confirmation from the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) that SwissBorg is authorised to provide services under the VFA Act during a 12 months transitory period!
We have submitted a Proof of Concept, i.e. a proof that our concept is actually working. It does NOT mean that the MFSA licenses us in Malta, and it does NOT mean that the MFSA already supervises us. What it means is that we will be able to deploy our services during the next 12 months, while requesting the real VFA license during this period. What it means is that we have convinced the MFSA that our products are in development and that SwissBorg is a serious player in this new game!
Caledo will be our VFA Agent and is in the process of being authorised as such by the MFSA. Informal discussions with Maltese lawyers lead to the first Agents authorisation around March 2019. The moment Caledo reaches this authorisation, we will launch the proper VFA licensing process. Patience and hard work. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to comply with the VFA Act requirements. And kick off the licensing process to obtain a broker/dealer!
Japan: November has also been busy on the legal/regulatory side of Japan. We love our Japanese Community and being able to provide services to them is a project we hold dear. The Japanese team, led by Ken and Anthony, has started the hard work to get all required documentation for the Virtual Currency License file (VC License). The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is very strict and very demanding — given last year’s hacking events faced by various exchanges — when it comes to licenses issued to crypto undertakings in Japan! The benchmark is high, and so are the expectations of the FSA.
UK: We are pausing the development of the Small Electronic Money Institution in the UK and waiting for early 2019 to know the position of UK authorities regarding cryptos to determine the strategy after 30.03.2019. Even though the press shows that the UK and the EU are making significant progress towards a Brexit deal, the situation remains very unclear as to the conditions under which this deal will come to life; and they still have a long way to go.
Our lawyers in the UK will, therefore, focus on Intellectual Property (IP), to protect SwissBorg.
Once the situation is clearer on the crypto side as well as the Brexit side, we will reconsider the best options available to serve our British Community, be it from Malta or in the UK itself.
Switzerland: Legal issues, when it comes to Blockchain and cryptos, are still very vivid. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are still part of our everyday life as crypto lawyers. More than ever, it is important to build alliances, gather people around pressing topics, be they regulatory, tax-related or any other legal matters, to discuss, to exchange, to dispute, to do something!
SwissBorg Japan
Mark Tanser joins us as a Senior Operations Management Consultant. He will be assisting with the FSA license application process and set up of the organisational and risk management structure of the Tokyo Office. Previously, Mark ran an FX derivatives retail trading business in Tokyo, obtaining a Type 1 Financial Instruments Business license (Japanese broker-dealer license)and setting up IT systems and operations. He has extensive experience as a derivatives trader with expertise in exotic options and structured products.
Haoran “Harry” Zhang joins us as a content management intern. Harry will be responsible for the translation of SwissBorg content into Japanese and Mandarin, as well as assisting Amber with community management in China. Please welcome Mark and Harry to the Tokyo Team!
Alex Fazel Reports from Legal Tech Tokyo Event
Thanks to the well-received SB presentation at the BU event in October, Alex Fazel, our Head of Communication, was invited to deliver the same content, but, entirely in Japanese this time in front of the tier-one law firms and financial institutions. The event “was eye-opening as many of the more traditional players had very little knowledge about crypto assets but seemed very intrigued about our smart wallet. Several visitors came back to our booth to ask us when the Japanese version of the SwissBorg app will be available.”
Spreading Wings in China
SwissBorg China is making its name with major Chinese exchanges and media. We have been witnessing a meteoric rise in the Chinese market. Our China team, Ken Yagami and Amber Chook, hosted Blockchain Unchained China Roadshow in Shanghai and Beijing. Thanks to this trip, they began forging exchange partnerships with major Chinese crypto exchanges such as Huobi, Binance, CoinBene, 99EX under OKEx, Bit-Z, and Coineal. As announced above, our CHSB token is confirmed to be listed on 99EX in December 2018. Ken and Amber are also invited to speak at OKEx NextGen Conference in Seoul next week to promote this listing, introduce the SwissBorg app, and hopefully open a new market for SwissBorg with this trip to South Korea. We successfully built media partnerships with China’s largest blockchain media to establish SwissBorg as THEE financial expert in the blockchain space. Currently, our SwissBorg daily market commentary is translated in Chinese and featured on the blockchain media with the most readership such as MyToken, Jinse.com, Bishijie, Bikuaibao, CoinVoice. From next week, SwissBorg market commentary will also be featured on Wall Street News China.
Community update
As we grow our team, build our digital and offline community and strive to deliver our products, we don’t want just to serve the community, we want to benefit from its collective wisdom and reward everyone based on their contribution. Our community centred strategy is to rely on SwissBorg community members input and feedback to guide us.
On our subreddit, we have a fresh vibe designed by Julia Munday, our Graphic Designer in London. We have added additional flairs to incentivise communications by making our Reddit page more user-friendly. We have finalised the reward transfers for September and October 2018, view here.
SwissBorg´s Weekly Competition Series hosted on our Reddit page, attracted many participants and received great feedback from the community. The Competitions series, takes place each week with a different contest, beginning Monday at 15.00 CET, and gives a chance to everyone to win CHSB tokens or the big reward, an iPhone X.
Our Community Committee (CC) members, now twelve in total, have regularly met to improve the SwissBorg ecosystem by giving us constant feedbacks, answering questions on social media channels and sharing their vision and ours.
We wish to welcome TheSisa and Fws in the Community Committee, their addition to the committee is invaluable.
As part of the community building strategy, we are publishing educational materials, giving market insights in our Daily Insider, producing video updates & interviews. In the future, we are planning to have webinars and launch “Ask Me Anything” campaigns on Reddit, bringing different team members or blockchain experts where the community will have a chance to ask questions and receive answers directly.
Our Community Ambassador Program has been launched, and we have already moved to the second round of interviews. We met and interviewed several possible Ambassadors from Germany, France, the Netherlands and even Mexico.
Last but not least, in November our community manager, Dr Otilia Gudana, a medical doctor by training, held a session at our Lausanne headquarters on stress management & well-being. A rapidly growing start-up, we rarely get a moment to stand still and live in the now. We push ourselves to try to achieve more and deliver our goals for our community. At the best of times, this can be highly stressful and can take its toll on team members. Because at SwissBorg we believe nothing is more important than our mental health!
Co-Founders On The Move
Our Tokyo office welcomed Anthony Lesoismier-Geniaux, our co-founder, who gave a talk to a full house of enthusiasts. Anthony’s trip was meant to help him better understand the market dynamics and potential of one of our biggest markets and to facilitate collaboration between the Japanese and Swiss team to accelerate the Virtual Currency Exchange license application in Japan.
Sponsored by WeWork, on November 6th, Anthony’s last day in Tokyo, there was a strong lineup of speakers with financial backgrounds including Ken Yagami and Sami Mian, Japan/ Korea country manager for Hedera Hashgraph.
Blockchain Unchained London Event: Cyrus Fazel, our founder, was joined by Paul Collins, of StickSports & Alex Buelau of CoinSchedule for a talk on the future of ICOs and how the Gaming sector is ideally suited for the blockchain space. The evening continued in engaging discussion and exploration of the possible applications of blockchain for gaming and the challenges to mass adoption.
The Malta Blockchain Summit
Cyrus Fazel and Ardian Balaj attended the Malta Blockchain Summit, where Cyrus gave a very well-received talk and Ardian networked and engaged in recruiting local legal tech experts.
After looking into most European jurisdictions, SwissBorg decided on Malta as our EU hub! How could we not? While many authorities are taking their time to draw their legislation or clarify the existing legal framework applicable to Blockchain, Malta is doing it! On November 1st, 2018, three new laws came into force that have been explored extensively by legal experts in the field: the Innovative Technology Arrangements and Services Act (ITAS), the Malta Digital Innovation Authority Act (MDIA) and the Virtual Financial Assets, or the VFA Act. Read more.
Upcoming Events:
Our indefatigable head of events, Antoine Guesry, is pushing full force his agenda to expand our following in Europe, here is a list of Blockchain Unchained events coming up in December.
LegalChain in Geneva: Book your ticket now!
Blockchain Unchained in Paris: RSVP now!
Zug: RSVP Now!
Zurich: RSVP Now!
Berlin : RSVP Now!
New Hires:
SwissBorg is Hiring! Find out if one of our promising positions is meant for you: https://jobs.lever.co/swissborg
