Interview with Satang Pro & Zcoin Founder— January 2019
On January 17, 2019, I had the chance to attend Unblock Bangkok, where I got to speak with Poramin Insom from cryptocurrency exchange Satang Pro and privacy coin project Zcoin.
Transcript:
So basically I’m the Zcoin and Satang founder, co-founder, and the CEO as well at the moment for Satang, but just core developer for Zcoin. I worked on the cryptocurrency space for five years.
Right now, Satang just got the license as an exchange, one of the three exchange licenses granted approval from the Thai SEC.
For the Zcoin, Zcoin is a top 100 cryptocurrency that focusing on privacy at the moment. Our main competitor is Zcash and Monero, and we aim to be the same par…like them, in the future. Maybe within this year or next year.
You’re holding an STO for Satang. Will that be open to foreign investors?
Yes of course it’s going to open to any investor around the world to invest in Satang. In this case, they’re going to have a share in Satang. But it’s a bit tricky because this Satang is going to be Satang Delaware. And that means it’s going to be US company, and that US company going to have a share in Satang Thailand.
So US investors can invest in the US company that invests in the Thai company.
Yes.
In the latest Zcoin dev update, it says that many parties in Thailand are interested to build on Zcoin’s platform. What kinds of businesses are interested, if you could tell us, and why would they choose Zcoin and not Ethereum or an STO platform like Polymath? Why would they choose Zcoin?
So basically you need to think about business guy that want to do something that related with technology. So they don’t to go into the technical detail. So they just want to partner with someone that already know about the technical side that can implement to them. So they basically contact me that ‘Hey, I want to do this token, how can you help me?’.
So in Zcoin we have Exodus Protocol which is a second layer that allow you to create a token on Zcoin blockchain. That mean once they contact me, I going to propose them that ‘Hey, I can create a token for you, for your business, but you need to use Zcoin network.’ That’s it.
Literally, it’s something that like…they don’t even know about Ethereum, because they don’t care about — what they care is about how can they utilize blockchain network to use their business.
Once these companies launch their STOs on Zcoin, will that benefit Znodes in any way?
Basically at the moment, with the STO it’s… I mean like for Exodus Protocol, it’s just simple token, not STO yet. But we are working on Themis Protocol that allow you to have ERC20 on Zcoin blockchain. And that mean you can write any smart contract, not just ERC, to do STO on Zcoin blockchain for sure in the future. And we expect it’s going to finish this year.
But anyway, it’s going to benefit Zcoin for sure, in terms of utilization Zcoin. But we don’t want to really go that way 100% because original idea of our Zcoin is a cryptocurrency that focusing on privacy, but we just want to have the option for business companies that want to implement STO and the token on Zcoin blockchain.
Lately there’s been a lot of concerns about government cracking down on cryptocurrency projects. Since Zcoin is a privacy coin, there’s the concern that governments might be scared that ‘oh it’s a privacy coin, we have to ban it so they won’t use it for money laundering.’ Do you think that’s a problem for Zcoin and are you doing anything to address that problem?
When we are talking about money laundering, even with the cash that we hold right now, they already use for money laundering. I don’t see how government don’t ban the cash that we are using at the moment. You cannot even track this cash, where it came from. You just use it and pay for any street food easily.
So it’s something that like, what Zcoin wants to achieve is like, you get a coin you can spend anywhere without tracing where it came from, like normal cash. So with the government that want to crack down it’s something that like, if they really want to crack down, people are going to go underground, that’s going to be a major problem for them.
So in my opinion it’s not something that like, the government cannot go a 100% ban. There need to be some kind of a mechanism that balance, otherwise people will use this coin in underground and they cannot control anything.
Finally what’s the next thing we can expect from Zcoin, the next update, and when can we expect it?
So basically, in first quarter, actually in this first quarter in 2019, we’re going to release Sigma Protocol. In Sigma Protocol, it’s going to remove the trusted setup phase in Zerocoin protocol, that Monero fans also talk about a lot in Zerocoin protocol and Zerocash that using in ZCash. So once we remove this trusted setup phase, that means Zcash still have trusted setup phase but Zcoin doesn’t have those trusted setup phase anymore. When comparing with Monero, we don’t have those backdoor anymore. It’s something that we want to release on first quarter.
And in the fourth quarter we’re going to release Lelantus Protocol. With that one, it’s going to hide the amount of sending coin, so in that sense, we’re going to have higher anonymity set comparing with Monero. And with the trusted setup phase, we don’t have anymore because Lelantus is another step from Sigma. That means we have all…anything that Monero have, but better than Monero. And with the trusted setup phase, we don’t have. Even though in terms of anonymity set we is quite smaller comparing with Zcash, but still with the trusted setup phase we don’t have. That mean it something that like, we are in the middle comparing with other competitors, we are not below. That is something that we expect.
Recommended Resources:
- Poramin Insom — Satang Pro Presentation (Unblock Bangkok)
