About Startup365

Chaque jour nous vous présenterons une nouvelle Startup française ! Notre pays regorge de talents et d'entrepreneurs brillants ! Alors partons à la découverte des meilleures startup françaises ! Certaines d'entre elles sont dans une étape essentielle dans la vie d'une startup : la recherche de financement, notamment par le financement participatif (ou crowdfunding en anglais). Alors participez à cette grande aventure en leur faisant une petite donation ! Les startups françaises ont besoin de vous !

#Blockchain The Wrapped Bitcoin Project Has Officially Launched on Ethereum

The Wrapped Bitcoin Project Has Officially Launched on Ethereum

On Jan. 30, a group of cryptocurrency developers and organizations officially launched a project called Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) on the Ethereum network. The ERC20 token is a coin backed by bitcoin core (BTC) reserves and has started trading on several exchange platforms.

Also read: A Look at Openbazaar’s Multi-Currency Wallet and Vendor Listings

The Introduction of Wrapped Bitcoin

Last October, a joint initiative by Bitgo, Kyber Network, and Ren (formerly Republic Protocol), revealed the creation of a new ERC20 token called WBTC. The new tokens are meant to bring more liquidity into the decentralized ecosystem between both chains, while also enhancing decentralized applications. Wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) is the first ERC20 token backed 1:1 with BTC. The organizations that developed the protocol believe WBTC is the beginning of a multi-institutional framework for tokenizing any asset.

The Wrapped Bitcoin Project Has Officially Launched on Ethereum

“WBTC will allow the Ethereum network to be leveraged to enable new applications and use cases for itcoin — WBTC standardizes itcoin to the ERC20 format, so dapps such as Compound, Dharma, Dydx, Gnosis, Maker, Set protocol and more can leverage bitcoin for decentralized lending, margin trading, and derivative markets,” explain the creators of WBTC.  “Further compelling new applications and use cases will be identified, explored and implemented as the ecosystem continues to grow and actively innovate.”

The Wrapped Bitcoin Project Has Officially Launched on Ethereum

Initially, eight merchants will be facilitating conversion between WBTC and BTC. There is a required Know Your Customer (KYC) process involved with obtaining WBTC through these merchants. Initial merchants dealing with WBTC will include Airswap, Dharma, Ethfinex, Gopax, Kyber Network, Prycto, Ren, and Set Protocol. The developers also say that WBTC will be integral to the development of decentralized exchanges.

“WBTC also makes it possible for traders to use bitcoin value for token trades on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Airswap, Ddex, Ethfinex, Idex, Kyber Swap, Loopring, Radar Relay, Renex, Switcheo Network, and the Ocean,” the WBTC announcement detailed.

The WBTC representatives added:

Wallet providers and exchanges will now be able to reduce overheads with the ability to support multiple currencies while maintaining only the one Ethereum node.

The Wrapped Bitcoin Project Has Officially Launched on Ethereum

Proof of Reserve

The community-backed project is also centralized to a degree by a chosen custodian. Bitgo will hold the keys to mint tokens and the project will be very similar to stablecoin projects that use proof of reserves. The WBTC whitepaper details that there are many cryptocurrency assets and government issued bonds that use the reserve method. “This is the case with tether, trueusd, USDC, digix (gold), globcoin (a mix of fiat currencies), and AAA reserve (governmental bonds),” the whitepaper details. Additionally, the WBTC creators emphasize that the system’s smart contracts have been audited by several reputable third-party audit firms such as Coinspect, Solidified Technologies, and Chainsecurity.

“The first WBTC on the main Ethereum chain have been minted and burnt which can be observed onchain on Ethereum  — The proof of reserve is onchain, which shows the exact 1:1 between minted WBTC tokens and bitcoin stored by the custodians,” the WBTC announcement notes.

The Wrapped Bitcoin Project Has Officially Launched on Ethereum

The WBTC topic has been a hot discussion on social media and forums since the protocol launched. The crypto economy has seen many newly introduced stablecoins and other types of smart assets like RSK Labs’ smart bitcoins, and Blockstream’s federated system Liquid. Besides stablecoins backed by fiat, the Maker protocol has produced a stablecoin called dai that’s bolstered entirely by the backing of collateralized cryptocurrencies. WBTC will add a different flavor to the world of proof of reserve based coins that have entered the economy in the last few years.

What do you think about wrapped bitcoin (WBTC)? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.


Image credits: Shutterstock, Bitcoin.com, the WBTC website, and white paper.


Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. 

The post The Wrapped Bitcoin Project Has Officially Launched on Ethereum appeared first on Bitcoin News.

from Bitcoin News http://bit.ly/2GcmYR7 The Wrapped Bitcoin Project Has Officially Launched on Ethereum

#USA Meet the 20 startups in this year’s GCT Startup-in-Residence program

//

At the end of last year, Grand Central Tech announced plans to work with the Milstein real estate family to transform a midtown Manhttan high-rise into a tech hub called Company. And startups remain an important part of the mix — in fact, Company is unveiling a list of 20 startups participating in this year’s GCT Startup-in-Residence program.

What does Startup-in-Residence mean? Well, Company CEO Matthew Harrigan said the program will continue to offer what it’s always offered — desk space, as well as access to events and amenities, for a select group of early-stage entrepreneurs. And participants don’t have to give up equity or pay rent.

The deal might seem too good to be true, but Harrigan argued that the startups make Company more appealing to its enterprise tenants: “We are retrofitting this building to look and feel and operate like a brand new building … but the one amenity that cannot be simply rolled out is people.”

He also said the program is only taking up 15,000 square feet of the building’s 150,000 square foot total.

“It sounds like an exceptionally generous offering and it isn’t,” he said. “It sounds like it doesn’t make a ton of business sense but that’s actually wrong … Fifteen thousand square feet of space to great early-stage founders helps establish a truly remarkable program and campus in New York City. Those are resources are well spent.”

In the past, we’ve written about Grand Central Tech as an accelerator program, but Harrigan said, “We weren’t and aren’t an accelerator” — it just used “the nomenclature that’s known.” Now the program is taking on a more fitting name, though it sounds like the operations won’t be changing too dramatically.

“We typically have very sophisticated founding teams, giving them an ideal environment in which to work,” Harrigan said. “By and large, our companies are left to their own devices — we don’t presume to create a curriculum or some series of programming. It’s a somewhat passive approach, but we make sure all people in the community are linked up with each other.”

Also worth noting: This year’s class consists of 40 percent women founders and CEOs, and it covers industries like energy, mental health, e-commerce, biotech, adtech and food.

Here’s a list of the companies, with descriptions provided by Company (and edited by me for clarity and length). We’ve also written about a number of them before, so I’m including links to past coverage when possible.

    • Octave​ ​is a full-stack mental health provider, purpose-built to capitalize on evolving consumer habits and a new wave of interest in the space.
    • Vowel ​is a multi-user enterprise voice platform operating in stealth. The company enables businesses to analyze, manage and drive actionable insights from audio data generated in the workplace/meetings.
    • Nara Organics​ ​is a natural baby food company that is manufacturing the first biodynamic infant formula in the US.
    • Twine Labs​ ​is a workforce analytics platform that’s creating a single source of truth on employee data across various disaggregated internal corporate databases. Data is then benchmarked against industry standards to help Chief People Officers gain vital, previously unavailable perspective.
    • Taskade​ ​is a new workplace collaboration platform that enables more efficient team management and product workflows.
    • Oova​ is a biomedical technology company for women’s health that uses smart connected devices to actively monitor hormone levels and help manage women’s fertility health. The company is a spinout of Mt. Sinai.
    • Summer​ ​is a next-generation student loan management and repayment platform providing users with a comprehensive view of their debt and targeted recommendations on how to alleviate it which evolve based on their current life circumstances.
    • Chartable​ ​is creating a new enterprise adtech and analytics platform for audio. It’s aiming to do something similar to what DoubleClick, AppAnnie, Flurry and others did when apps were first introduced.
    • Particle Health​ ​is creating a new medical record data company, leveraging blockchain technology to enable a single health record tying together previously disparate information from a patient’s various doctors, and yielding valuable data insights in the process.
    • Project OTC ​is a holistic new consumer brand targeting outdated over-the-counter brands and products such as antacids, Vitamin-C/immunity support and headache relief. The company is operating in stealth.

Moved team

  • Moved​ ​is building a new concierge layer on top of the disorganized, disaggregated moving services supply chain. A user calls Moved, shares details and is given a concierge who manages the move and coordinates across all the various service providers, including the landlord or real estate owner.
  • Hydra​ ​is a ​new network of membership-based wellness spaces in metropolitan areas that complements the growth of small format fitness classes and provides its members areas to refresh, regroup and recharge.
  • GoodTalk​ ​is a new consumer app meant to distill and amplify one of primary aspects of social platforms. For example, five experts on a given topic can form a chat thread, which other users of the app can view but not comment on.
  • Otis​ is building a new investment platform to enable distributed ownership in fine art and collectibles.
  • Snackable​ ​uses natural language processing to intelligently digest podcasts into “snackable” 30-60 second moments to enable easier social sharing of podcast content — something which has plagued the burgeoning podcast space.
  • Lolli allows users to receive Bitcoin for their online purchases

  • Lolli​ ​is building a new ecommerce platform that allows customers to accumulate Bitcoin rewards through simple brand and retail purchases by capturing the rebate/coupon value already broadly distributed throughout ecommerce.
  • RaisedByUs​ ​is a nonprofit workplace social good program for companies that already includes Casper, Squarespace, Shutterstock, Seatgeek, Sailthru, Birchbox, MongoDB, DigitalOcean among others. RaisedByUs helps teams do meaningful, team-building, vetted volunteer work easily.
  • Nesterly​ ​i​s a home sharing platform that is working to bring affordable housing to the next generation by allowing senior homeowners to easily rent out their extra space.
  • Bokksu​ ​is a subscription-based food company that curates exclusive artisan snacks in local markets and uses video and written storytelling to detail origin stories through an immersive customer experience.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2UyiZ5D

#Blockchain Currency.com Allows Crypto Traders to Buy Leveraged Equities, Indices and Metals

Currency.com Allows Cryptocurrency Traders to Buy Leveraged Stocks and Metals

The worlds of traditional finance and cryptocurrency have always been divided, for regulatory and technical reasons. Until recently, it was difficult for cryptocurrency traders to gain exposure to stocks and commodities. Currency.com is looking to remedy that through launching the “Bitmex of stocks,” a crypto-friendly platform that promises high leverage and low barriers for entry.

Also read: Wikipedia Now Accepts Bitcoin Cash Donations via Bitpay

Currency.com Launches With 150 Tokenized Assets and Another 10,000 to Come

Currency.com Allows Crypto Traders to Buy Leveraged Equities, Indices and Metals
Ivan Gowan

In mid-January, news.Bitcoin.com reported on Currency.com, a Belarus-based trading platform for tokenized securities. Unlike other platforms of this nature, Currency.com promises entry to retail investors and a marketplace of readily tradable assets from day one. What’s more, these comprise globally recognizable assets such as Microsoft stock, gas, oil, and the Nasdaq 100. The platform is now live in invite-only mode, with around 1,000 traders putting it through its paces. Another 113,000 and counting are on the waiting list.

This week, news.Bitcoin.com spoke to Currency.com CEO Ivan Gowan to learn more about the interest the exchange has received, and the regulatory logistics of launching such an operation from Belarus. Gowan explained how much of that interest has come from the English and Russian speaking worlds, with 70 percent of those on the waiting list hailing from Eastern Europe. Western Europe, Japan, and Korea account for the remaining regions that have shown strong interest in the exchange. U.S. citizens, however, are unable to sign up at this time.

“I think there’s a lot of excitement where people see this kind of merging of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and capital markets and they see tokenized assets as a big part of that future,” began Gowan. “We’re not setting ourselves up to be focused on the institutional market – we’re focused on people who want to trade with us directly, people who value simplicity and ease of use.”

Currency.com Allows Crypto Traders to Buy Leveraged Equities, Indices and Metals
Assets can be filtered by a range of metrics on Currency.com

Institutional Assets for a Retail Audience

The ease of use that Ivan Gowan speaks of is evident when accessing the exchange. While professional traders might balk at its simplicity, it has clearly been designed with a retail audience in mind, introducing them to a world of tokenized assets while retaining the familiarity of the crypto exchanges they’re accustomed to trading on.

For traders raised on the volatile thrills of the crypto markets, stocks, which typically move no more than a couple of points a day, can seem dull. Currency.com has found a way to inject some fun into these tranquil “nocoiner” markets by adding leverage. “On the one side, you’ve got the more deliverable side of tokenized assets without leverage,” explained Gowan, “and then on the other side, you can use your cryptocurrencies as collateral for trading with leverage.”

With 20x margin trading available for equities, and up to 100x for other assets, even the slightest movements can generate major wins – or losses – for traders. While it is the responsibility of traders not to get carried away in this marketplace of maximum leverage and multiple possibilities, there are at least some general safeguards built in.

Currency.com Allows Crypto Traders to Buy Leveraged Equities, Indices and Metals
The Currency.com exchange

“If you run low on margin, the client protection systems kick in so you don’t go into debt,” explained Gowan.” Because Currency.com purchases the underlying assets or their derivatives, there are limitations on the extent to which traders can get rekt. “If you did have a trade open on Facebook and it dropped by 10 percent overnight because they missed an earnings call, say, then we would take on some of that risk, and we would give negative balance protection.”

Proactive Regulation From the Belarusian Government

Currency.com Allows Crypto Traders to Buy Leveraged Equities, Indices and Metals
Twitter stock can be leveraged up to 20x on Currency.com

CEO Ivan Gowan divides his time between London and Belarus, where Currency.com has a large technical team operating out of the country’s High Technology Park. He speaks warmly of the “innovative legislation” that’s been created to incubate cryptocurrencies and blockchain in Belarus in a bid to drive economic growth, and of the quality talent pool that includes highly proficient programmers with a strong work ethic.

Although getting regulated in the U.S. is on Currency.com’s long-term roadmap, there are significant hurdles that must be overcome to gain SEC approval. In the meantime, there is work to be done onboarding the tens of thousands of users on the waiting list. Once through the exchange’s virtual doors, they will be free to deposit funds with BTC or ETH, as well as fiat currency, and there are plans for other crypto assets to be added in future including BCH and LTC. There will also be a mobile app rolled out in February. The gulf between the traditional finance and cryptocurrency worlds is gradually narrowing. Currency.com may be one of the first crypto exchanges to provide a bridge, but it is unlikely to be the last.

What are your thoughts on tokenized securities? Would you trade stocks and metals using a platform like Currency.com? Let us know in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Capital.com


Disclaimer: Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support this product/service.

Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

The post Currency.com Allows Crypto Traders to Buy Leveraged Equities, Indices and Metals appeared first on Bitcoin News.

from Bitcoin News http://bit.ly/2HFyCGO Currency.com Allows Crypto Traders to Buy Leveraged Equities, Indices and Metals

#Blockchain PR: MoneyToken Is Launching Its Own Exchange – in Collaboration With Huobi Cloud

MoneyToken Is Launching Its Own Exchange – in Collaboration With Huobi Cloud

This is a paid press release, which contains forward looking statements, and should be treated as advertising or promotional material. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the press release.

MoneyToken, one of the leading global crypto-lending platforms offering crypto assets-backed loans, has announced the launch of their new MoneyToken Exchange platform in a collaboration with Huobi Cloud.

This gives MoneyToken the ability to leverage Huobi’s technical expertise and security know-how, plus gives users access to the liquidity that Huobi Cloud has to offer.

The Exchange has been launched at 1:00 PM UTC today, and the team has also announced that a lottery with a 200 ETH prize fund is in the pipeline, as a way to engage and thank all of MoneyToken supporters.

MoneyToken is one of 2018-19s top ventures, with a thriving community of more than 50,000 active users and a number of well-known advisors and supporters such as Roger Ver.

With the launch of their Exchange, MoneyToken is starting to fulfill the dream of their founders and developers, creating a financial ecosystem that revolutionizes the finance industry and opens the door to new opportunities for their customers.

MoneyToken’s current user base will be crossing over to join the Huobi Cloud ecosystem while getting unique access to one of the biggest liquidity pools in the world. If we were to make a prediction, then in our opinion this will dramatically accelerate MoneyToken’s growth potential.

MoneyToken users can expect all kinds of new opportunities from the partnership between Huobi Cloud and MoneyToken – right away:

  • Lending platform users will have the unique ability to trade their collateral, not only gaining access to liquidity through the loan process, but also getting the chance to work their crypto-assets and gain potential growth.
  • MoneyToken will be able to liquidate collateral much quicker, accelerating a service already known for its speed of operation.
  • More features, like derivatives contracts, margin trading, OTC, withdrawal to fiat and short selling will become available on the MoneyToken Exchange as it is rolled out to users.

With MoneyToken Lending platform combined with MoneyToken Exchange the opportunities are endless. By sharing one order book with Huobi Cloud, MoneyToken ensures sustainable volume to make smoothly processing unlimited orders possible.

It seems that initiatives like MoneyToken and Huobi Global are leading the way to a bright future for cryptocurrency. Why not join them on the journey? To participate in the MoneyToken Exchange beta test, go to exchange.moneytoken.com and find out what the future looks like…

Contact Email Address
james.hendersonmt@gmail.com
Supporting Link
http://exchange.moneytoken.com

This is a paid press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

The post PR: MoneyToken Is Launching Its Own Exchange – in Collaboration With Huobi Cloud appeared first on Bitcoin News.

from Bitcoin News http://bit.ly/2sTUvb9 PR: MoneyToken Is Launching Its Own Exchange – in Collaboration With Huobi Cloud

#USA How business-to-business startups reduce inequality

//

When considering the structural impact of technology companies on our economy and society, we tend to focus on questions of scale and monopoly.

It’s true that the FAANG companies and more recent winners (Airbnb, Uber) have surfed a combination of network effects, preferential access to capital and classic efficiencies of scale to generate tremendous value for their shareholders—to the detriment of new entrants who attempt to unseat them.

At their high water mark in mid-2018, FAANG alone made up 11% of the total market cap of the S&P 500 and 38% of the index’s year-to-date gain, representing a doubling in their influence in only five years. The question of regulating technology companies—to the point of instituting anti-trust actions—has even become a rare point of relative concord between Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

But is the narrative of tech companies in the 2010s only a story of economic consolidation and growing inequality? Many of the most successful B2B startups of the last decade are aligned by a theme that paints a different picture. By transforming the nature of the costs required to start a business, these startups are reducing the influence of capital and leveling the playing field for new entrants to share in the surplus generated by the secular shift to a tech-mediated economy.

Source: Getty Images/MIKIEKWOODS

A Path To Equal Opportunity: Turning Fixed Costs Into Variable Costs

What do AWSWeWorkStordGusto and RocketLawyer have in common? They provide cloud computing services, office space, warehouse storage, payroll management and access to legal templates, respectively—at first glance, not a particularly congruent set of services.

But they are alike in the economic purpose they serve for their customers. Each of these services takes a fixed cost—a bank of servers, a lease, a legal retainer—and transforms it into a variable cost. As a refresher, a fixed cost stays constant regardless of output, and variable costs scale with the output of a business.

When my father started his software consulting business in the early 1990s, I remember the giant boxes of AIX servers that arrived at our apartment, and tagging along to office tours in central New Jersey before he decided to run the company out of our spare bedroom. Back then, starting almost any kind of business was hard because of high fixed costs. Without AWS or WeWork, you shelled out up front for hardware and a lease.

Access to capital, whether in the form of a bank loan, savings, or friends and family was a prerequisite for entrepreneurship.

Today, startups make it possible to start and scale almost any kind of business while incurring few fixed costs. Want to found an ecommerce store? Start with a free Shopify account and dropship your inventory. Want to become a freelance designer? Put a shingle up on Fiverr and meet clients at a Breather you rent by the hour.

Whether software or hardware or labor, building a business is way easier when overhead is transformed into a string of flexible microservices that you only pay for as you grow.

Image courtesy of Getty Images

Lower Fixed Costs Means Capital Matters Less

Taken together, startups that turn fixed costs into variable costs make it less capital intensive to start a business. This decreases the influence of gatekeepers and aggregators of capital—an impact evident in the way entrepreneurs think about starting businesses today.

It’s no coincidence that the rise of B2B startups fitting this theme has coincided with the bootstrap movement, in which tech entrepreneurs with major ambitions demur from raising venture funding because—well, they don’t need the money anymore.

It has also coincided with a renaissance in freelance entrepreneurship: 56.7 million Americans freelanced in 2018. Beyond the economic benefits of working for yourself—the fastest growing segment of freelancers earns over $75,000 a year—freelancers can access the lifestyle and health benefits of owning their destiny, which aren’t directly captured but play a role in the economic picture. 51% of freelancers said no amount of money would lure them into a traditional job, and 64% reported feeling healthier and happier.

When capital plays a reduced role in new business formation, access to capital plays a smaller role in determining who will succeed. More companies are founded, and the economy becomes more likely to birth new Davids that will unseat the Goliaths. Economics 101: lower barriers to entry create markets that converge on perfect competition instead of oligarchic concentration.

Sourlce: Getty Images/ERHUI1979

Variable Costs Don’t Scale, But That’s OK

Variable costs have their downsides. A startup with a relatively higher proportion of fixed costs—the profile of the classic high-tech software business—can achieve higher profit margins as it scales. Compare Microsoft or Google, which pay high fixed costs in the form of salaries and servers but few costs in delivering their services and achieve operating margins of 25-30%, to Costco, which takes in more than $100B of annual revenue but earns an operating margin in the single digits.

That’s OK. Neither type of cost is “better” or “worse,” but having the option to decide how to structure costs through a company’s lifecycle can meaningfully impact an entrepreneur’s ability to execute a business idea.
Founders investigating startup ideas—and politicians debating the impact of technology—would do well to pay attention to how B2B companies have democratized access to entrepreneurship.

Equality of outcome arrives from equality of opportunity—and a future where millions of people can start businesses, differentiate, and succeed on the basis of their ability and value proposition, rather than their access to capital, sounds like a promising representation of the egalitarian ethos Silicon Valley wants to bring to pass.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2S0HRWP

#USA How business-to-business startups reduce inequality

//

When considering the structural impact of technology companies on our economy and society, we tend to focus on questions of scale and monopoly.

It’s true that the FAANG companies and more recent winners (Airbnb, Uber) have surfed a combination of network effects, preferential access to capital and classic efficiencies of scale to generate tremendous value for their shareholders—to the detriment of new entrants who attempt to unseat them.

At their high water mark in mid-2018, FAANG alone made up 11% of the total market cap of the S&P 500 and 38% of the index’s year-to-date gain, representing a doubling in their influence in only five years. The question of regulating technology companies—to the point of instituting anti-trust actions—has even become a rare point of relative concord between Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

But is the narrative of tech companies in the 2010s only a story of economic consolidation and growing inequality? Many of the most successful B2B startups of the last decade are aligned by a theme that paints a different picture. By transforming the nature of the costs required to start a business, these startups are reducing the influence of capital and leveling the playing field for new entrants to share in the surplus generated by the secular shift to a tech-mediated economy.

Source: Getty Images/MIKIEKWOODS

A Path To Equal Opportunity: Turning Fixed Costs Into Variable Costs

What do AWSWeWorkStordGusto and RocketLawyer have in common? They provide cloud computing services, office space, warehouse storage, payroll management and access to legal templates, respectively—at first glance, not a particularly congruent set of services.

But they are alike in the economic purpose they serve for their customers. Each of these services takes a fixed cost—a bank of servers, a lease, a legal retainer—and transforms it into a variable cost. As a refresher, a fixed cost stays constant regardless of output, and variable costs scale with the output of a business.

When my father started his software consulting business in the early 1990s, I remember the giant boxes of AIX servers that arrived at our apartment, and tagging along to office tours in central New Jersey before he decided to run the company out of our spare bedroom. Back then, starting almost any kind of business was hard because of high fixed costs. Without AWS or WeWork, you shelled out up front for hardware and a lease.

Access to capital, whether in the form of a bank loan, savings, or friends and family was a prerequisite for entrepreneurship.

Today, startups make it possible to start and scale almost any kind of business while incurring few fixed costs. Want to found an ecommerce store? Start with a free Shopify account and dropship your inventory. Want to become a freelance designer? Put a shingle up on Fiverr and meet clients at a Breather you rent by the hour.

Whether software or hardware or labor, building a business is way easier when overhead is transformed into a string of flexible microservices that you only pay for as you grow.

Image courtesy of Getty Images

Lower Fixed Costs Means Capital Matters Less

Taken together, startups that turn fixed costs into variable costs make it less capital intensive to start a business. This decreases the influence of gatekeepers and aggregators of capital—an impact evident in the way entrepreneurs think about starting businesses today.

It’s no coincidence that the rise of B2B startups fitting this theme has coincided with the bootstrap movement, in which tech entrepreneurs with major ambitions demur from raising venture funding because—well, they don’t need the money anymore.

It has also coincided with a renaissance in freelance entrepreneurship: 56.7 million Americans freelanced in 2018. Beyond the economic benefits of working for yourself—the fastest growing segment of freelancers earns over $75,000 a year—freelancers can access the lifestyle and health benefits of owning their destiny, which aren’t directly captured but play a role in the economic picture. 51% of freelancers said no amount of money would lure them into a traditional job, and 64% reported feeling healthier and happier.

When capital plays a reduced role in new business formation, access to capital plays a smaller role in determining who will succeed. More companies are founded, and the economy becomes more likely to birth new Davids that will unseat the Goliaths. Economics 101: lower barriers to entry create markets that converge on perfect competition instead of oligarchic concentration.

Sourlce: Getty Images/ERHUI1979

Variable Costs Don’t Scale, But That’s OK

Variable costs have their downsides. A startup with a relatively higher proportion of fixed costs—the profile of the classic high-tech software business—can achieve higher profit margins as it scales. Compare Microsoft or Google, which pay high fixed costs in the form of salaries and servers but few costs in delivering their services and achieve operating margins of 25-30%, to Costco, which takes in more than $100B of annual revenue but earns an operating margin in the single digits.

That’s OK. Neither type of cost is “better” or “worse,” but having the option to decide how to structure costs through a company’s lifecycle can meaningfully impact an entrepreneur’s ability to execute a business idea.
Founders investigating startup ideas—and politicians debating the impact of technology—would do well to pay attention to how B2B companies have democratized access to entrepreneurship.

Equality of outcome arrives from equality of opportunity—and a future where millions of people can start businesses, differentiate, and succeed on the basis of their ability and value proposition, rather than their access to capital, sounds like a promising representation of the egalitarian ethos Silicon Valley wants to bring to pass.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2S0HRWP

#USA FabFitFun raises $80 million for its growing lifestyle brand

//

Nine years after launching its online magazine, and three years after diversifying into the subscription box business, FabFitFun has raised $80 million in a growth round of funding, led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from its previous investors Upfront Ventures and NEA. 

The Los Angeles-based company has steadily expanded its retail and lifestyle empire through subscription boxes, video… and even an augmented reality app.

Last year the company crossed $200 million in revenue and managed to net more than 1 million subscribers for the service.

In a statement the company said the new financing would be used to expand FabFitFun membership offerings and consolidate its position as a marketing partner and platform for brands.

As a result of the investment, Kleiner Perkins general partners Mood Rowghani and Mary Meeker will join as board member and observer, respectively.

It’s been a long ride for co-founders Daniel and Michael Broukhim and Katie Rosen Kitchens. From a newsletter and blog to the subscription box to the launch of live programming last year.

For brands, the pitch is a new way to find customers and engage with them. The seasonally curated boxes and special exclusive co-branded box opportunities with Los Angeles’ pool of influencers results in hundreds of millions of targeted impressions, according to the company.

“FabFitFun has emerged into an exciting and entirely new distribution channel that brings retail to the platforms where consumers are most engaged,” said Mood Rowghani, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins, in a statement. “The company’s personalized connection with its community allows brands to better understand and interact with consumers – establishing a long-term relationship rather than simply a transaction.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2GbbUUn

#Blockchain Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash

Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash

On Tuesday, Jan. 29, Bitcoin Cash developer Mark Lundeberg revealed two planned features for the scheduled May 2019 BCH upgrade. In the gist published to Github, Lundeberg described a specific improvement that’s been discussed by cryptocurrency developers for years — implementing Schnorr signatures in place of ECDSA signatures. This could upgrade the BCH chain to a new level of innovation by bolstering scaling and privacy all at once.

Also read: A Look at Openbazaar’s Multi-Currency Wallet and Vendor Listings

The Bitcoin Cash Chain May See Schnorr Signature Support in the Near Future

Every six months, the BCH network upgrades its protocol in an effort to advance the blockchain in readiness for cryptocurrencies gathering mainstream attention. Back in November, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the proposed specification for the May fork, so developers could discuss the proposals and begin coding. One of the biggest concepts on the table was the implementation of Schnorr signatures to make the BCH protocol more robust. On Tuesday, Lundeberg published a description of two important features and one of the additions consists of supporting the Schnorr signature scheme.

Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash

A Schnorr signature is a digital signature scheme invented by Claus Schnorr that is lauded on account of its simplicity. One of the main benefits of Schnorr is multisignature aggregation, which can benefit both data scaling and privacy. Traditional bitcoin transactions include a lot of data like multiple inputs, but Schnorr’s method simplifies this process by creating a single merged signature. For instance, when a multitude of bitcoin signatures produce one aggregated signature, it is estimated that Schnorr’s scheme could reduce blockchain storage and bandwidth by at least 25 percent.

Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash

In addition to this advantage, the operation helps produce better privacy when combined with different protocols. One example privacy benefit Lundeberg notes is called “Hiding as P2PKH,” which allows an aggregation scheme with the standard pubkey script that Pays To PubKey Hash (P2PKH).

“Schnorr signatures allow very simple multi-party aggregation schemes, where multiple parties collaborate to produce one aggregated signature under one aggregated pubkey, checked with OP_CHECKSIG as in pay-to-public-key-hash (P2PKH) addresses,” explains Lundeberg’s Github gist.

Lundeberg’s research continues by stating that the Schnorr scheme can even avoid second-party malleability:

Schnorr signatures cannot be malleated at all, even in the aggregated case, except when all signers collaborate to create a new signature from scratch.

Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash
CLTV payment channels.

The Combined Benefits of BIP62 and Schnorr

The BCH developer also describes the advantages of Schnorr-Spilman payment channels. Before the introduction of OP_CLTV, developers discussed the idea of Spilman payment channels, but the technique was insecure on BCH due to malleability, Lundeberg notes. However, by upgrading to Schnorr, not only can programmers use Spilman channels, they can also opt out of using OP_CHECKMULTISIG and use regular P2PKH addresses instead. The channels can be bolstered by using an aggregated signature and BIP62 malleability restrictions, the developer notes.

“I’ll repeat that for emphasis: we will be able to do payment channels which merely use P2PKH — completely indistinguishable from ordinary transactions,” Lundeberg states.

Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash
Schnorr-Spilman channels.

The gist also highlights the possibility of hidden atomic swaps and high-frequency microswapping. Lundeberg had previously described how trustless cross-chain swaps could be hidden in payment channels, but the procedure can be done with Schnorr-Spilman payment channels as well. In addition to the benefits of Schnorr signatures, Lundeberg details how combining the upgrade with a completed version of BIP62 malleability restrictions adds enormous amounts of innovation. One example is the ability to create unmalleable smart contracts as Lundeberg explains it will be “possible to write smart contracts whose scriptSig inputs cannot be malleated.”

Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash
Atomic swaps can be concealed in Schnorr-Spilman channels. Lundeberg is also the creator of the Openswap protocol.

In conclusion, Lundeberg details the “advantages and disadvantages” of BIP62 + Schnorr compared to the Segregated Witness (Segwit) approach. The BIP62 technique only requires a small change to wallet code, in order to quickly transition to Schnorr from ECDSA. However, smart contract developers must practice due diligence when designing contracts to prevent malleability, although Lundeberg says it’s not too difficult. A big difference is that Segwit makes a total of 66 types of addresses and the BIP62 + Schnorr approach only modifies one legacy address class (p2pkh). “For privacy reasons, it is desirable to have as few address types in use as possible, so as to not fracture the anonymity set,” the developer remarks. Lastly, Lundeberg emphasizes that backup transactions are more straightforward to set up with Segwit in certain cases.

Overall, the Bitcoin Cash community on social media and forums were elated to hear about the possible introduction of the Schnorr scheme and the completion of BIP62. Over the past few years, Bitcoin Core (BTC) developers have been discussing implementing Schnorr into the protocol, but removing the ECDSA signatures and replacing them with a Schnorr scheme is a major upgrade. With the rate of upgrades in favor of the Bitcoin Cash protocol, it’s likely BCH will see this improvement well before the BTC chain.

What do you think about the Bitcoin Cash chain supporting the Schnorr signature scheme? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.


Image credits: Shutterstock, Mark Lundeberg’s gist, and Bitcoin.com.


Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. 

 

The post Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash appeared first on Bitcoin News.

from Bitcoin News http://bit.ly/2HGIIXI Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash

#USA Rebooted startup program WeWork Labs celebrates its one-year anniversary

//

It’s been just about a year since the relaunch of WeWork Labs, an accelerator-type program operating under the WeWork umbrella. Since then, it’s grown to 37 locations in 22 cities. And it’s truly international, operating in 12 countries, including Brazil, China, Germany and India.

These Labs offices are often — but not always — housed within a larger WeWork space, and, like an accelerator, they offer mentorship and programming. However, WeWork doesn’t take any equity; instead, it simply makes money by charging rent. (In New York, a desk costs between $450 and $550 a month, but the price varies by location.)

I spoke to Roee Adler, the program’s global head, about how the program has evolved over the past year. Adler actually has a long history with startups — in fact, his company Soluto won the very first Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt. He’s held a number of positions at WeWork, including chief product officer, and he said that as his role was evolving, he found himself asking, “What is the next startup we can build inside WeWork?”

The answer: “We decided to reevaluate our level of commitment and investment with the earliest of stages for startups.”

WeWork actually had a startup program called WeWork Labs back in 2011, but it languished in the years since. Adler relaunched the program with its first New York space in January of last year, and he’s been opening locations at a furious pace since then.

Roee Adler

Roee Adler

Each Labs office is supervised by a Labs Manager, who Adler said is usually “a former entrepreneur whose life’s mission is to manage startups.” For example, before Mor Barak joined the program last year to launch Labs in Tel Aviv, she was the general manager of Israel’s oldest accelerator program, The Junction.

“I got to a point where I felt like I finally found what I loved to do, which is to work with startups and to support startups and understand how our connections and our network can help them move forward,” Barak said. “And then I wanted to take that and do that on a bigger scale, as part of a company that can reach new geographies and bring forward local entrepreneurs.”

As a Labs Manager, Barak said her main role is to “be that that business connector for the startups,” which means meeting with the entrepreneurs on a weekly basis to understand their needs and challenges. At the same time, she emphasized that Labs is a global program: “As a Labs Manager in Tel Aviv, I can quite easily connect to my colleagues around the world find the people that I need to get to in order to help the startup.”

Adler made a similar point about sharing resources between the different locations.

“A lecture that is at our Najing Xi Lu Road space in Shanghai will get captured, summarized, translated and become available to all of the entrepreneurs around the world,” he said. “Does that mean every piece of information is relevant for everyone? No. But truthfully, who knows?”

Adriana Vazquez of Lilu

Adriana Vazquez of Lilu

To celebrate the one-year anniversary, WeWork Labs held a pitch competition at the company’s New York City headquarters last week, with $250,000 in funding distributed among the winners. The $150,000 grand prize went to Lilu, a startup making a compression bra that helps mothers pump milk. (It’s another Startup Battlefield alum.)

CEO and co-founder Adriana Vazquez told me that Lilu has been working out of the WeWork Labs in Dumbo since August. Vazquez has participated in other accelerator programs and worked out of other coworking spaces, and she said Labs is different from either — it allows you to “get the community of an accelerator without the prescribed schedule,” and it offers a very different feeling from a coworking space.

“There is that understanding and respect everyone’s really busy and has fires to put out,” she said. “We had a brief stay at another coworking space with creatives and small businesses, and there wasn’t that camaraderie, where you see someone that’s working on a weekend and you know you’re not here because they want to hang out on a Friday. It’s almost an unspoken understanding: Yeah, I know what you’re going through.”

As for what Adler has planned for Labs’ second year, he said he wants to do more work connecting startups with larger corporations: “WeWork has really become the only natural nexus in the world where you can have a three-month-old startup entrepreneur bumping shoulders with a senior vice president of Microsoft going to get coffee from the same machine and engaging in a conversation about the future.”

WeWork Labs Dumbo

WeWork Labs Dumbo

And of course, he plans to open more offices, with the goal of reaching 100 locations by the end of 2019.

“The three of us are sitting in Manhattan right now, one of the wealthiest cities in the world … but it’s not about here,” Adler said said. “It’s about the people who aren’t sitting in the big tech hubs or bubbles. That is exciting.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2METZqp

#USA Cosmic JS wants to simplify web development, so you can focus on content

//

If you are a web developer, you know how complex many of the traditional web content management systems have been. One of the big problems has been managing the underlying infrastructure for the system. Cosmic JS, a member of the Winter 2019 Y Combinator class, wants to simplify that by taking care of the infrastructure part for you, while providing a flexible front end for content creators.

“Our customers benefit from using Cosmic because they can avoid the pain of building and maintaining their own CMS infrastructure. For a monthly service fee, we provide a seamless infrastructure for them, and it allows them to focus on what really matters, building great products and user experiences,” Cosmic JS CEO and co-founder Tony Spiro told TechCrunch.

As with so many YC companies, this one started with a pain point the founders were feeling in their jobs developing websites in an agency setting in 2014. Spiro was building the websites and CMO and co-founder Carson Gibbons was servicing accounts, and they saw a problem with the infrastructure piece.

“We found that there was a huge bottleneck just installing and maintaining our own backend infrastructure management. So around that time, I began building out Cosmic on the side. I thought it would be great if there was just a web dashboard and an API to deliver content as a service. And so that’s how it all got started,” Spiro explained. By removing infrastructure management from the equation, Cosmic was freeing developers to concentrate solely on the customer-facing bits.

Cosmic JS content edit view. Screenshot: Cosmic JS

Spiro and Gibbons left their jobs to concentrate on Cosmic full time after the release of the initial version in 2016. They aim the product at web development teams with between 5 and 100 members. The product has three main user types: developers, site managers and content producers. So far, it has attracted 250 customers in 100 countries.

While it’s not open source, it does rely on community members to build extensions and apps. “We have hundreds of apps (ready-made websites and applications) and extensions built by our community,” Spiro said. These tools enable Cosmic to connect to best of breed services and tools like photos, videos or search without having to create them from scratch.

Cosmic JS website templates and apps. Screenshot: Cosmic JS

Spiro says that they joined Y Combinator at the behest of their advisors and investors and it has been a formative experience. “We applied and got in, and and now we’re surrounded by just some of the most impressive and intelligent people in technology.” Spiro said.

So far Cosmic JS includes the two co-founders with some contractors and freelancers helping out along with the extended development community. The company has received some funding, but the founders weren’t ready to share the amount just yet.

Their goal is to continue building the paid user base, and increase community participation through outreach and events.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FY4XXt