Bitquenceâs vision is to democratize the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Currently it is complicated for the average user to get involved. Bitquence will strive to make it simple by creating tools and technologies which makes crypto more user-friendly and accessible to non-technical users, while creating a token that is designed to be extremely useful for the Bitquence platform.
There are two main tools to achieve this one is a universal wallet and another is being able to buy diversified collections or âbasketsâ of cryptocurrencies.
Adam Lavine has answered all our questions in great detail.
Why has the Bitquence team decided to tackle this problem?
We see an enormous shift in how people are interacting with finance and value. People want more control, and they love the idea of decentralized currencies. However, for most people the cryptocurrency world is bewildering: how do I get in? What should I buy? How risky are the different coins? How do I manage my wallets and keys?
You can point to a similar point in time when the first computers were being developed. A very new, powerful technology had been developed, but it wasnât really until Apple simplified the interface without sacrificing power that the technology was able to take off. We believe in the financial freedom that cryptocurrencies offer and want to bring the future of money to everyone.
The underlying technology behind cryptocurrency and blockchain based systems have evolved to the point that they are sophisticated and useful enough to be very powerful, yet highly inaccessible and foreign to a vast majority of people. Additionally, the technology ecosystem is very unforgiving. If you get one character wrong in a transaction, or forget your wallet address, your transaction or even your entire portfolio can be irreversibly wiped out. Thereâs no customer service, no central authority and no regulating body.
Who is the team behind Bitquence and what is their expertise in this field?
Bitquence has a talented team of individuals with a diverse set of expertise.
Dennis Chen is an incredibly good database engineer and has proven time and time again that he can build complex data-driven applications to scale. While CTO at Funmobility, he managed over $1 Billion in mobile microtransactions and has 5 granted patents to his name.
Maurice Herlihy is a superstar in distributed systems and is a distinguished academic and Computer Science professor. He has won the Dijstra Prize in Distributed computing, the ISCA influential paper award, the Godel Prize and more! Recently he published a paper on adding concurrency to Ethereum smart contracts viewable here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.04467 that offers some potential solutions to scaling the network.
Lincoln Lydick is an award winning UX and front-end designer with nearly 3 decades of experience in the space. He built out an enterprise level Digital Experience Martech platform that was used by brands such as Pepsi, Chiquita, Ace Hardware and for the launch of the âMinionsâ movie.
Shingo Lavine is really the cryptocurrency and alt-coin expert that has been leading product and infrastructure design. He was the one who pulled the team together and was able to source talent from all the amazing members of the team.
Rounding out our engineers we have Pete Rodgers who will be handling application security. Pete has managed a number of private hosted data centers and will be managing the Bitquence data center for maximum security. Pete has maintained carrier-grade global applications for clients including Verizon, Sprint, Metro PCS, AT&T, GLobe and U.S. Cellular.
Adam Lavineâs work has reached over 60 million consumers spanning 15 billion unique consumer interactions. Adam has extensive M&A experience both on buy and sell side, most notably selling Specular to a $700M public company and thereafter running their R&D operations, and acquiring the mobile media assets of Infospace a $1B publicly traded company.
Ken Nowak is a polished executive with extensive experience managing customer service, finance and operation teams. He is has managed a scale mobile content delivery platform, managed a multi-million dollar division and M&A transaction for Infospace and previously worked with Fortune 100 clients via his role as an Executive at Arthur Anderson.
Aiko Nomura is an extremely detailed-oriented corporate and legal expert with a ton of experience in international business development, M&A and compliance.
We also have Morrison & Forrester, a world-class legal firm that specializes in financial services and regulation signed on to represent Bitquence.
We have more members that you can read about at bitquence.com/team
What are the quick wins that this project can achieve?
In the first 3-5 Months we are confident that we can deliver one-click asset allocations, the Bitquence Universal Wallet and the Community Consensus Risk profiles.
One-click allocations will let participants buy baskets of diversified crypto currencies, organized into logical collectons like Big Cap Coins, Privacy Coins, ICO Coins and so on. This will make it super-easy to diversify risk.
The Bitquence Universal Wallet will be a smart, secure and consumer-friendly wallet that people can use for all of their Bitquence transactions.
Community Consensus Risk Profiles will enable cryptoexperts to be rewarded by accurately predicting performance of crypto currencies and digital assets. Think of this like a crowdsourced version of Morningstar.
From there, it is all about driving usage and volume on the platform and Bitquence token so we can establish the digital liquidity network over the course of the next year. We will be posting weekly updates on our project and will engage with the community to help people gain confidence in the project and be as open as possible.
What are the main challenges and how is Bitquence is preparing for them?
From a technology perspective, we have to be scalable and secure. These are absolute basics for us to run the platform. However, we believe our biggest challenge will not be technical, but legal and regulatory. We will be avoiding the U.S. market to start because of the uncertain legal and regulatory infrastructure that exists there. Itâs too bad, but the U.S. has not had a crypto-friendly position so far, and a lot of exchanges have simply exited the market. However we believe that eventually the U.S. will come around and embrace companies that operate within reasonable guidelines, and at that point we think weâll be ready to bring a great service to U.S. consumers.
We recently partnered with a top Silicon Valley law firm Morrison Foerster to help establish legal positions that will allow for operation globally and of course the U.S.
What are the most interesting features of the Universal wallet for the average user?
The wallet allows you to store and send almost any liquid cryptocurrency. Furthermore, it gives the user a single place to interact with all of their holdings and change positions in a variety of currencies.
Community consensus risk profiles will also give users additional insight into any given tokenâs risk and quality. Youâll also be able to create your own crypto coin baskets and get aggregate risk and quality ratings. Weâre also trying to make the user interface as simple as possible to appeal to new users.
On which platforms/OSs will the universal wallet be available?
The wallet will be run out of the gate on all devices via responsive mobile web, email and text message and of course tablets and PCs. Then weâll build dedicated native mobile apps on iPhone and Android.
Will the universal wallet need to download the blockchain of each coin?
Nope! The wallet will operate much like electrum wallets do where the blockchain is indexed at the Bitquence servers. So this is a centralized approach, although there will be certain aspects of the platform that will be decentralized. This means that users will be able to download and interact instantly, and also wonât have to deal with multiple wallets and keys. It will also mean that they can reset a password, so they wonât lose their funds forever if they forget their private key.
Which coins will be listed first in the Universal wallet?
The issue with listing coins isnât necessarily a technical one, but a liquidity one. We want to only list coins that users will actually be able to buy at quoted prices without long waits and unexpected results. Different exchanges have different âbook thicknessâ for different currencies. As we develop those relationships, it will expand the depth of liquidity we can offer users.
As a result, the first coins to be listed will likely be those in the top 50 of trading volume, but we hope to list as many as possible. One advantage weâll have is that weâll be doing bulk trades on behalf of all of our clients, so we should be able to develop liquidity fairly quickly.
Will the crypto investment baskets be accessible from the universal wallet?
Yes. The one-click diversified baskets are an integrated feature with the wallet.
There will be a fee of around 1% to invest in these baskets, will these fees be on the entry or on the exit or both?
We are still developing the fee structure, but we are looking to a model similar to hedge funds, but with much lower fees. Hedge funds typically charge 2/20 fee structures (2% of assets under management and 20% of profit) and we are looking to do something similar using high-water mark rules only on increases in portfolio value.
Who will be the recipient of the fees?
Bitquence will distribute a portion of the fees through community consensus rewards to incentivize users to stake their tokens on the platform and accurately rate tokens. This builds a community-centric ecosystem. Some fees will also be used to build liquidity in the Bitquence token. Other fees will be used to fund Bitquenceâs operations.
Can the users liquidate their holdings in the respective collection of coins contained the basket they have invested in?
Of course. All collections are backed 1:1 by their underlying assets with no leverage meaning Bitquence will always be solvent. Users can liquidate, reallocate, send or withdraw their holdings as they wish. However with this said, Bitquence isnât designed to be a day-trading platform, but rather a buy-and-hold platform.
In your opinion, what is the one key breakthrough for cryptocurrencies and tokens to reach mass adoption?
Cryptocurrencies need to be safe, secure and easy to use. Furthermore, their value needs to be clearly communicated to merchants and payment processors and the infrastructure for a global cryptocurrency payments system needs to be developed that links assets across different blockchains. We hope that Bitquence can contribute to this and help cryptocurrencies reach mass adoption.
Would you like the investors to know something not covered by the above questions?
We donât want to be like all other token sales and be another speculative asset that tanks in 3 months. We are in this for the long haul and are looking to deliver real value to the community through this project. We want to be as transparent as possible through the course of this project and work closely with the crypto community to make this project a success.
Also, unfortunately, we are not offering our token sale to U.S. investors at this time. We may work with our law firm to do a U.S.-based secondary offering at some point in the future.
Thanks very much for your interest in Bitquence. For more information, please visit www.bitquence.com and follow us on Twitter @Bitquence
We thank Adam Lavine for the interivew.
