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Kenyan startup Veva is aiming to help African filmmakers earn more revenues via its video-on-demand (VoD) platform that offers a better share of profits and focuses on local content.
It might sound like Veva, which was formed in late 2017 and launched its platform formally in November of last year, is going up against the likes of YouTube and Netflix, and that’s because it is.
The startup believes African filmmakers are essentially locked out of platforms like Netflix, and don’t earn enough revenues from YouTube, while such platforms don’t offer enough African content anyway. Veva looks to solve all these problems, and help filmmakers drive deeper viewer engagement with its analytics tool.
“African filmmakers have limited ways of making money from their content. TV stations have a limited time of 24 hours, so most filmmakers miss out on this opportunity. If the content does not make it onto the few TV stations, they have no option but to either give it for free on platforms like YouTube, which are hard to monetise, or just keep it on their hard disks,” founder Gathukia Mwangi, co founder and chief executive officer (CEO) told Disrupt Africa.
“Now with penetration of smartphones, and high speed, almost affordable internet, there is a great opportunity for filmmakers to deliver and monetise their content. We aim to provide a platform where no filmmaker is locked out and all filmmakers are able to create revenue.”
Self-funded until now, Veva is in talks with investors about securing additional finance to build on positive initial uptake. The site has over 10,000 page views so far, and 10 artists have signed up.
“We are at this point concentrating on signing filmmakers so that we can pursue the subscribers. We are happy because the filmmakers get the concept,” Mwangi said.
The benefit for filmmakers that do take the leap of showcasing their content on Veva is the revenue share package, which is better than international competitors.
“We are committed to giving back more than 60 per cent of our revenue back to the filmmakers so that they are able to better tell African stories and grow the film industry,” said Mwangi. Veva’s revenues come from its subscribers.
The startup is currently only operating in Kenya, but hopes to expand to other East African countries in the coming months.
On Jan. 17, the blockchain and cryptocurrency company OB1 released Openbazaar version 2.3 which provides users with the ability to use a multi-currency wallet within the marketplace. Since then, there’s been a large number of added listings and an increased amount of people trading cryptocurrencies in a peer-to-peer fashion.
Experimenting With Openbazaar Version 2.3 and the New Multi-Currency Wallet
With Openbazaar 2.3 now out, I decided to explore the recently added features to give readers of news.Bitcoin.com an insight into the platform. The Openbazaar marketplace has been out for a while now and OB1 released a 2.0 version last year. The latest protocol version 2.3 gives users a multi-currency wallet allowing them to store, send, and receive bitcoin cash (BCH), bitcoin core (BTC), litecoin (LTC), and zcash (ZEC). Before, Openbazaar users were once restricted to choosing a single currency to operate with on the platform.
The Openbazaar download page offers three operating system choices.
In order to experiment with the new version, I downloaded the 2.3.0 release for Mac OSX, but the application can be used on a Windows and Linux operating systems as well. I backed up my existing Openbazaar app and then opened the .dmg file I downloaded from the official landing page. After giving my computer permission to run the new file, Openbazaar opened as it usually does and I was greeted by my home page.
The multi-currency wallet supports four cryptocurrencies and OB1 developers say ethereum (ETH) will be added next.
The differences you will see from the prior version are in the wallet section, which reveals a BTC, BCH, LTC, and ZEC multi-currency wallet. Each wallet does basic operations like sending and receiving and there’s also a log for recorded transactions. The wallets also tell you the value of your cryptocurrency holdings using a local fiat currency. Inside the wallet section is a tab that allows users to create a cryptocurrency trade listing, which means they can swap cryptos in a peer-to-peer fashion.
After clicking the “view listings” tab it is noticeable that users are trading a bunch more coins than when I visited the platform during my last Openbazaar review. There are so many more listings now when you select trades for all four cryptocurrencies. Some trades I noticed were quite fair, set at only 2-5 percent above spot value, but there are other trades that were 995 percent above market value. Still, there are plenty of traders and listings available with a large variety of the 1,500 available digital assets enabled on the marketplace.
Since our last review, there has been a significant increase in traders buying and selling cryptocurrencies in a peer-to-peer fashion.
Many of the traders are rated and you can view some of their other listings as well to see if they are reliable. If people are in search for a place to trade cryptocurrencies without revealing their identity and going through the hoops of a KYC process, then Openbazaar might entice them. Moreover, if desired, they can run an Openbazaar node using the privacy-centric Tor software.
Connecting to a trader in order to swap BCH for XMR.
In order to make a trade, simply choose the kind of cryptocurrency you are interested in swapping. For instance, if you chose to trade BCH for monero (XMR), you will find the vendor W.H. Lewis who is charging 3 percent above spot rates for this trade. All of Openbazaar’s trade listings can be filtered by cryptocurrency. A trader will sometimes list how much they have in inventory and in this case Lewis’s XMR inventory says “unknown.” However, this particular vendor allows the trade to be moderated by a verified Openbazaar moderator. Purchasing and selling digital assets is not much different to checking out your items after choosing to buy physical goods. Traders have different rules on how they settle the crypto trade on Openbazaar and these will vary between vendors, especially with premiums and settlement times. Most trade guidelines are clearly stated on the trader’s listing page.
Traders explain how to execute exchanges with them and some offer a verified Openbazaar moderator to oversee the deal.
Marketplace Listings Increase
Moving on to the marketplace section where users sell other types of goods and services there’s been a noticeable influx of vendors selling wares. Four days ago the r/btc community noticed this trend when BCH listings spiked from 1,000 to 5,200. Another notable sight I saw on the marketplace was how litecoin listings had around 4,800 on the OB1 browser. Zcash listings hover at around 4,600 listings at the time of publication. BTC listings total 11,400 but while surfing through the listings on the marketplace, it clearly shows that many vendors have decided not to take the ‘maximalist’ route and have chosen to accept multiple cryptocurrencies since the upgrade.
Over the last week, BCH listings have spiked from 1,000 to 5,200. Listings include comics, music, books, clothing, art, and more.
Openbazaar 2.3 definitely adds more variety to the platform and the number of listings added since the release on Jan. 17 shows vendors like the fact they can accept more cryptos. The trading section could still use a lot more liquidity than what is offered at the moment. The platform may suffice for a person who wants to obtain some crypto in an anonymous manner, but won’t be good enough for someone looking for deep pools of liquidity. Still, there’s been a significant spike since the startup added all four cryptocurrencies, and OB1 says ethereum support is near completion and will be added soon, alongside other coins.
It seems many Openbazaar vendors have simply opted to accept all four cryptocurrencies since the wallet upgrade on Jan. 17, 2019.
Overall, the platform continues to improve and its user base and a number of product listings have increased a great deal. It still needs to gain mainstream traction, which might not happen until cryptocurrencies themselves gain mass adoption. Until then, Openbazaar’s marketplace has seen slow and steady growth and the multi-currency wallet has opened the platform to more people.
What do you think about the new Openbazaar version 2.3 with the multi-currency wallet? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Disclaimer: This editorial should be considered Review or Op-ed material. During the review process, the opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support views, opinions or conclusions drawn in this post. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the review article. Review editorials are intended for informational purposes only. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned company or any of its affiliates or services. There are various steps mentioned in reviews and some of them are considered optional. Bitcoin.com and the author are not responsible for any losses, mistakes, skipped steps or security measures not taken, as the ultimate decision-making process to do any of these things is solely the reader’s responsibility.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Openbazaar, and Jamie Redman.
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Iran is exploring various options, including holding negotiations with other countries to introduce cryptocurrency in global trade, as the Islamic state moves to sidestep U.S. economic sanctions. Mohammad-Reza Modoudi, the acting head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO), said the country was negotiating the use of cryptocurrency in its financial transactions with eight countries.
Negotiations Aim to Dismantle U.S. Dollar Hegemony
Speaking to local Tasnim news agency on Jan. 28, Modoudi said: “Representatives from Switzerland, South Africa, France, England, Russia, Austria, Germany and Bosnia have visited Iran to hold related talks about the issue.” He expressed hope that Iran was capable of luring foreign investors into the country.
In November last year, the U.S. announced severe economic sanctions against Iran that, with the exception of just eight countries, cut the rest of the world off from the country’s oil, shipping and gas market, including its financial system. An earlier round of sanctions in May targeted Iran’s currency, aviation industry and other sectors, as President Donald Trump broke away from his predecessor Barack Obama’s engagement with Tehran.
Measures against the financial system have already started to hurt international settlements. The U.S. arm-twisted global banking network Swift into severing ties with Iran’s central bank, leaving the country and its citizens in limbo. In the cryptocurrency realm, global exchanges such as Binance and Bittrex have unofficially dropped Iran from the list of supported countries to receive services.
Now, the oil-rich Middle East country has set its sights on virtual currency. Iran, the world’s third largest oil producer, is hoping to leverage cryptocurrencies to compensate for the squeeze in petrodollars arising from the economic sanctions. The blockade has also throttled trade relations with much of the world, where the U.S. dollar still dominates.
Since mid-2018, Iran has engaged in research and development of its own digital currency that is likely to be linked to the rial, mainly for use in expanding banking system services and to fend off the sanctions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently indicated that Russia was “actively working” with partners to establish financial systems that are fully independent of Swift, without naming partner countries. This was after Iran had signed a trilateral blockchain cooperation agreement with Russia and Armenia on Nov. 14.
Iran Publishes Draft Crypto Regulation Framework
Meanwhile, the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has published its draft framework, dubbed “Version 0.0,” on regulating cryptocurrencies. According to an Al Jazeera report, Iran has reversed a previous ban on crypto assets “but still imposed restrictions on the use of digital currency” within the country.
The bank said the framework “is aimed at organising and defining boundaries of ongoing crypto operations in the country, and allowing traders to plan for their future.” The CBI recognized and approved the use of virtual currencies like bitcoin, the article said, and permitted initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency exchanges as well as mining operations.
However, CBI said that “Using global cryptocurrencies as methods of payment inside the country is prohibited.” Also, Iranians are prohibited from holding large volumes of crypto, just as they aren’t allowed to possess fiat amounts exceeding €10,000 – something that has elicited sharp criticism from Iranian bitcoin investors.
Aljazeera quoted Perhman Azhdarpour, a 28-year old trader, as saying: “The ban on using internationally accepted cryptos as payment methods can negatively affect the work of me and many like me. We were hoping the central bank’s stance would not again restrict the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in any way.”
More than $10 million worth of BTC is traded in Iran each day, according to the Iran Blockchain Association. The Islamic republic banned its banks from handling transactions in popular cryptocurrencies like bitcoin last April, concerned about issues of money laundering and other alleged criminal activities. But the move was widely interpreted as a way to block capital flight in light of impending United States sanctions.
What do you think about Iran’s plan to tackle economic sanctions using cryptocurrency? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Pinterest, the 11-year-old, San Francisco-based site known for the photos its users post about everything from wedding to beauty to art world trends, has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase as lead underwriters for an IPO that it’s planning to stage later this year. Reuters reported the news and TechCrunch sources have since confirmed the development.
A Pinterest spokesperson separately declined to “comment on rumors and speculation,” when reached this afternoon.
Pinterest has raised roughly $1.5 billion over the years and was valued at $12 billion by its private investors during its last fundraising round in 2017. Notably, its backers include Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, among many other investment firms, both early and later-stage, like Valiant Capital Partners, Wellington Management, Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners.
The company’s revenue last year was $700 million, more than double what the company generated in revenue in 2017. It has 250 million monthly active users, compared with the 200 million monthly active users who were on the platform as of mid 2017.
Whether Pinterest has ever been profitable, we couldn’t learn this afternoon. But the company employs 1,600 people across 13 cities globally, including Chicago, London, Paris, São Paulo, Berlin, and Tokyo, and 50 percent of its users now live outside the U.S., with the international market its fastest-growing segment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, more than 80 percent of people access the service via its mobile app.
Assessing how Pinterest’s shares might be received by public market shareholders has become a favorite parlor game for Silicon Valley denizens. In a recent report, the outlet The Information posited that Pinterest’s offering could suffer because it’s a social media company that’s frequently lumped together with companies like Facebook and Twitter that have repeatedly raised concerns about users’ privacy and having been facing a nearly year-long backlash as a result.
It’s worth noting, though, that Pinterest is far afield from what most users think of as social media and more akin to a visual search and discovery platform, with people looking for ideas and inspiration rather than to reach other people.
“I’m a bull,” venture capitalist Venky Ganesan of Menlo Ventures told us recently on a TechCrunch podcast. Partly why, Ganesan explained, is that “there are no Russian trolls” on Pinterest. More, he’d said, “I haven’t seen Pinterest sell [users’] data. They’re using data to [figure out] advertising on Pinterest; they aren’t brokering [that information] to others.”
Pinterest, which could reportedly raise up to $1.5 billion in its IPO, is also entirely dependent on advertising, which is often the easiest expense for companies to slash when an economy begins to cool, as may be happening here in the U.S. Here, too, however, Pinterest could prove more durable than some of its competitors. While brand-image driven advertising often gets cut when budgets tighten, direct response advertising often does even better in down markets, as companies seek out clearer returns on their investment, and much of Pinterest’s revenue is driven by direct response advertising. Users see, they click, and they buy. As Ganesan offered during that same sit-down with TC, Pinterest might actually be “playing into the healthiest part of the economy. I’ve gotta tell you, I’ve got three daughters at home, and they spend a lot of time on Pinterest, and they buy stuff.” (Ganesan isn’t an investor in the company; neither is the broader Menlo Ventures team.)
Pinterest could reportedly seek to raise up to $1.5 billion in an offering, according to past media reports. Whether it targets more or less, we’re likely to learn soon, but an IPO has been expected for some time, in part because the company is now getting up there in years as startups go, in part because of its continued growth, and in part because of some new hires that seemed to suggest the company has been gearing up to become publicly traded.
In November, for example, Pinterest brought aboard its first-ever chief marketing officer in Andréa Mallard, who joined the company from Athleta, Gap’s activewear brand, and now oversees its global marketing and creative teams. Roughly a year ago, Pinterest also recruited its first COO, hiring Francoise Brougher, who was previously a business lead at Square and a VP of SMB global sales and operations at Google before that.
In fact, unlike many of today’s buzziest companies, Pinterest seems to have retained almost all of the executives who work at the company with one notable exception, In late 2017, it parted ways with its then president, Tim Kendall, who’d been with Pinterest for more than five years at the time and who left to start his own health wellness company called Moment.
from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2GfnMVJ
The cryptocurrency market has its very own long tail trend that sees the majority of all value flow to BTC, with altcoins left to fight for the scraps. With a $60 billion market cap and a dominance of 53 percent, BTC has ruled the market since day one. As altcoin investors endure the persistent pain of an ongoing bear market, they may be entitled to ask: is the long tail a long-term trend?
At the time of publication, the top seven cryptocurrencies by market cap are BTC at $60B,XRP at $12B, ETH at $11B, EOS at $2.05B, USDT at $2.04B, BCH at $1.97B and LTC at $1.86B.
Over the years there have been significant spikes and falls in bitcoin core’s decade-long dominance, but BTC has always retained the highest market cap. But this could yet change.
Jan.28 2019
Based on ripple’s $12B market cap – a figure which is hotly disputed – it would it take a 5x for second-in-line XRP to dethrone BTC. Currently, bitcoin core is sitting pretty and leading the way by a considerable margin, just as it has done for the majority of its history. It is also listed on the most exchanges, making the mother coin tough to take down.
Market Cap Is a Poor Metric
According to crypto analysts, market capitalization is a poor metric for measuring the value of the cryptocurrency market. Mati Greenspan of Etoro told news.Bitcoin.com: “Trying to measure the value of a crypto network using the market cap is like evaluating the health of a person based on body weight.”
Is it even possible to predict which cryptocurrency might one day overtake BTC? Hugo May, investment analyst at Invictus Capital, said: “I am wary of predicting which of these sides will eventually prevail. It is often said that ‘hindsight is 20/20’ in terms of vision, and it is likely we will look back one day amazed at how seemingly obvious the natural progression of adoption was. But for now, we can merely look to where the users and development resources are migrating.”
Crypto Market Is Packed With Opinions
May stressed that the crypto space is packed with opinions regarding future asset prices and technical developments. “A very contentious dispute exists between the supporters of maximalism and those that lean to multi-tokenism,” he noted. “The maximalists, often referred to as bitcoin maximalists, generally believe that the genesis blockchain would serve all of the blockchain needs and that the bitcoin asset would regulate all appropriate value transfer.”
The concept of multi-tokenism envisions a network of networks, which comprise small applications that connect with large protocols at various junctures. May explained the movement has come about through the creation of Turing complete blockchains, specifically Ethereum, which today hosts a magnitude of tokens and decentralized applications.
May noted how, compared to Ethereum, the traditional first-generation blockchains such as Bitcoin Core and Litecoin tend to have smaller developer communities, which are comprised of highly competent developers who consistently develop the protocols. “Some of these developers even get paid salaries to produce updated code and advancements. The vast majority of blockchain engineers and IT professionals that enter the space do not work for Blockstream, the largest [BTC] blockchain development company [but] are involved with smaller endeavors,” he explained.
Most developers are focused on so-called second generation blockchains where interoperability is one of the technical challenges that currently has the highest resource allocation within the industry. May explained that if these interconnected networks and tokens become migratable and the establishment of some development standards is successful, it is plausible that we could see a multi-token ecosystem in the future. The experience, he added, would be akin to visiting a grocery store, with several producers equally connected at the UX layer.
“In terms of value transfer and applications, the backend is built by a magnitude of projects that interact and communicate with each other, but the user in the front experiences a seamless and simple process when engaging the interface.The long tail thesis is only possible if decentralized … [projects] develop with some sort of standard in terms of interoperability,” said May.
Lesser Known Cryptos Likened to Dodgy Watches
The crypto market downturn has seen many casualties.Stefan Neagu, the co-founder of Persona, told news.Bitcoin.com: “I believe that what we see, and what we have right now in the cryptocurrencies market, is similar to what we see in the movies when a guy opens up his jacket and on both sides, you can pick a shiny new watch, whichever one you want. But just like in the movies, in which the buyer will have no guarantee that the watch will function properly or that it’s an original not a counterfeit, the same occurs in crypto. You don’t have much information about the project or a team’s ability to deliver, you have no idea about how successful or not that project will be.”
Neague explained that it makes more sense to have a long tail on cryptocurrencies where one coin performs a specific purpose. “What would make them more valuable, in the sense of raiding their utility, is a way to interconnect these long tail tokens, so a user of blockchain X is not stuck in that blockchain but has the ability to get outside the borders and perform whatever action it wants in another blockchain.”
As the crypto market evolves, only a handful of digital coins currently near the top of the market cap charts are likely to survive. Whatever the outcome, it’s likely that the long tail trend will continue, with BTC leading the charge and the chasing pack coming in a distant second.
Will BTC ever be dethroned as the dominant cryptocurrency? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Knotch announced yesterday that it has raised $25 million in Series B funding.
The round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with NEA’s Hilarie Koplow-McAdams joining the Knotch board of directors. Rob Norman, the former chief digital officer of ad giant GroupM, is also joining the board.
“Brands have a desire to understand the effectiveness of their digital content across all channels, a gap that hadn’t been filled before Knotch,” Koplow-McAdams said in a statement. “Our conviction around the Knotch platform and team is driven by their impressive traction and comprehensive product offerings. We’re thrilled to partner with Knotch as they continue their growth trajectory, providing transformative marketing intelligence at scale.”
When we first wrote about Knotch back in 2012, it was a consumer product where people could share their opinions using a color scale. It might seem like a stretch go from that to marketing and data company, but in fact Knotch still collects data using its color-based feedback system — now, it’s using that system to ask consumers about their response to sponsored content.
“As [brands are building] their own content hubs and recognizing content as a really key piece of their marketing stack, as they’re turning to this space, there’s not a lot of great options for them to turn to and say, ‘Here’s a way to know in advance which creative themes and topics and formats [are going to resonate]. Here’s how we optimize this content, here’s a way to benchmark what you’re doing,” founder and CEO Anda Gansca told me.
And it sounds like Gansca’s vision goes beyond sponsored content.
“In this convoluted landscape, you need a partner that is going to be your Switzerland of data, who’s aligned with you, collecting transparent digital performance data across paid and own channels,” she said.
Knotch has now raised a total of $34 million. Customers include JP Morgan Chase, AT&T, Ally Bank, Ford, Calvin Klein and Salesforce.
from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Sg34ez
Allie Burns is managing director of Village Capital, and co-author of a recent report, “Capital Evolving: Alternative Investment Strategies to Drive Inclusive Innovation.”
There is plenty of blame to go around for tech’s monoculture of thought and ideas: VC firms stacked with Ivy League-educated white male partners; a reluctance by investors to seed businesses outside a few major cities on the U.S. coasts; investors’ obsession with a narrow set of capital structures.
The most common option for funding early-stage ventures in the U.S. is equity. But stepping back to take a look at the bigger picture of American entrepreneurship, it becomes apparent that equity is not the right fit for many businesses.
In July 2018, the Kauffman Foundation found that at least 81 percent of American entrepreneurs do not access venture capital — or, for that matter, a bank loan. This reflects not only the obstacles founders face when trying to access financing — debt often requires significant collateral, for example — but also the fact that not every company’s business model provides the scale and quick exit that investors expect with an equity investment.
But what alternatives are out there?
Quite a few, actually.
Over the course of 2018, we interviewed more than 200 investors and asset managers to gauge their interest in various alternative capital strategies. We looked at everything from new fund vehicles to alternative decision-making processes, but the one option that received the most interest from investors — with 63.1 percent willing to explore or co-create such a structure — was revenue-based financing.
What is revenue-based financing?
Revenue-based financing isn’t some groundbreaking new idea, at least outside of the venture world. A revenue-share deal typically involves a capital investment that is later repaid from a share in the revenue of a growing business. It has historically been used to invest in businesses with potentially predictable cash flow and high profit margins, from Hollywood movies to high-margin service businesses.
But the concept has been gaining steam in the venture capital industry. An increasing number of venture funds are actively deploying revenue-share tools. Novel GP has a $12 million fund focused on revenue-share investments in software-as-a-service companies. Indie.vc recently raised their second $30 million fund that invests through a “profit-sharing” structure by which the fund receives disbursements based on net revenue or net income, depending on which is greater. Candide Group, Adobe Capital and our affiliated fund VilCap Investments are a few more examples.
Why now? The past few years have seen a swell of criticisms of Silicon Valley’s insular culture and broken power dynamics, as well as several high-profile disasters, from Theranos to Bodega. There’s been a welcome uptick in investors looking to branch out to overlooked and under-capitalized communities and industries.
Revenue share is not a silver bullet for all investment opportunities.
These investors will soon find that equity can often be a square peg for a round hole. Equity investments can work quite well for businesses that have a clear path to scale and exit. But many investors told us they see a gap in the market for companies that do not meet the requirements for traditional financing structures, but do reach profitability faster and grow revenue more quickly. The main benefit of a revenue-based financing vehicle is that it can provide a risk/return profile in “the middle” of traditional debt or equity.
This could mean better returns. A recent Cambridge Associates report found that, over a 10-year period, the stock market yields slightly higher return on capital than the average (equity-dominant) venture capital fund.
How would a revenue-share fund perform? After backdating a hypothetical revenue-share investment in the 30 companies, we found that, on average, it would take around 4.4 years to realize a 3x return on the initial investment amount, which ranged from $20,000 to $100,000.
Revenue share is not a silver bullet for all investment opportunities. Any revenue-share fund will face challenges in implementation. And investors are taking on the risk that the companies they support will gain traction in the market; if the companies fail to generate revenue, positive cash flow or profit (depending on the structure), the investors may not be able to recover any capital at all.
The structure also presents some challenges to entrepreneurs. The repayment obligation of revenue-share agreements can prevent startups from reinvesting revenue back into the company’s growth. This obligation could also scare away investors who are unfamiliar with revenue share and reluctant to invest in companies with outstanding commitments on their capitalization tables — which includes several of the investors we interviewed.
Finally, based on the experience of VilCap Investments and other practitioners like Candide Group, we’ve found that revenue-share financing is generally only appropriate up to a certain size of investment, generally between $50,000 and $500,000, depending on the expected return multiple and timeline, and the company’s annual growth rate and traction at time of investment.
When we talk about innovation in venture capital, it’s generally in the context of the new and transformative products and services that the companies we support are building. But as those of us in the investment community branch out to support businesses that are more reflective of the diversity of American entrepreneurship, we need to start innovating in investment structures and processes themselves.
from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2RYdDn2
Darkstore, a technology-driven fulfillment solution for companies like Nike and others, has raised a $7.5 million Series A round. With the additional funding in hand, Darkstore plans to expand its fulfillment center into more categories.
Currently, Darkstore fulfills products for brands in the areas of footwear, home and consumer electronics. With the funding, Darkstore will expand into lifestyle, health and beauty and athletic leisure, Darkstore founder and CEO Lee Hnetinka told TechCrunch over the phone.
“There are other categories where we get inbound and turn it down,” Hnetinka said. Down the road, Hnetinka said he envisions additional categories, including groceries and perishables.
Darkstore works by exploiting excess capacity in storage facilities, malls and bodegas and enables them to be fulfillment centers with just a smartphone. The idea is that brands without local inventory can store it in a Darkstore and then ship out same-day. Darkstore charges brands across three areas: fulfillment, storage and delivery.
“Up until now, Darkstore has really been behind the scenes,” Hnetinka said. “We want to continue to do that and to be a superpower to our brands. Our mission is to enable the brands to be direct to consumer and we believe we can help them do that even better by creating what we call a branded movement.”
Specifically, Darkstore envisions creating a badge for brands to place on their websites to signal that it offers same-day delivery via Darkstore. Brands currently see Darkstore as a competitive advantage, Hnetinka said, so they’re unwilling to promote its use of Darkstore, but he hopes to change that. That change would ideally help brands to increase trust with its customers, while also undoubtedly providing more visibility and therefore more business for Darkstore.
Also on the docket for 2019 is to explore a new giving initiative. Tentatively called Darkstore Giving, the idea is to make it easier for brands to reduce return-driven waste. Instead of throwing away lightly used items, Darkstore could facilitate the donation of those items to nonprofit organizations.
Darkstore first launched in 2016, counting mattress startup Tuft & Needle as one of its first customers. To date, Darkstore has raised almost $10 million in funding.
from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FYHaXm
A new report alleges that just two groups of hackers dominate the majority of cybercrime directed against cryptocurrency exchanges. Together, these groups have responsible for stealing about $1 billion of cryptocurrency so far.
Digital surveillance company Chainalysis has released its latest “crypto crime” report, claiming to identify two groups responsible for the majority of hacks in the field. Its findings were obtained in part by analyzing the different practices the thieves used for laundering their illicit gains.
On average, the incidents that the researchers traced from the two hacking groups involved $90 million per incident. They suspect that the first group is a “giant, tightly controlled organization” that may be partly driven by non-monetary goals. The second group is found to be smaller and less organized but absolutely focused on money and without much regard for evading detection.
“Hacking dwarfs all other forms of crypto crime, and it is dominated by two prominent, professional hacking groups,” the Chainalysis team wrote. “Together, these two groups are responsible for stealing around $1 billion to date, at least 60% of all publicly reported hacks. And given the potential rewards, there’s no question hacking will continue; it is the most lucrative of all crypto crimes.”
Most Stolen Crypto Laundered on Exchanges
According to the report, at least 50 percent of the stolen funds were cashed out through some type of conversion service within 112 days of the hacks. The researchers found that 64.3 percent of the funds were sent to centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, 11.9 percent to peer-to-peer exchanges and the remaining 23.8 percent went through other conversion services such as mixing services, bitcoin ATMs and gambling sites.
“Exchanges are regularly processing the stolen funds, allowing the hackers to convert the funds to traditional currencies or other cryptocurrencies,” the Chainalysis team explained. “This is in part because unless you’re the exchange that was hacked, these funds look like they have come from legitimate owners (that is, the original entities who were hacked); it is hard to tell which funds have been stolen and which haven’t without specialized investigation software.”
Chainalysis recently announced the launch of Know Your Transaction (KYT) for stablecoins, an anti-money laundering (AML) compliance solution for monitoring stablecoin transactions from issuance to redemption.
What do you think about the findings of this report? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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When the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network split last November, prominent platform developer Unwriter decided to focus on building applications for the BSV chain. Since then, a group of BCH developers has forked Unwriter’s 21 Century Motor Company. On Jan. 27, a few BCH programmers revealed the Fountainhead Cash project and explained they had decided to keep building the anonymous developer’s valuable platforms such as Bitdb and Bitsocket.
Fountainhead Cash Developers Continue to Build On Unwriter’s Projects
On Sunday a group of BCH developers publicly announced they are working on a project called Fountainhead Cash. The project is basically a forked model of the developer Unwriter’s 21 Century Motor Company which incorporates blockchain applications like Bitdb, Bitsocket, read cash, and data cash. The name Fountainhead derives from Ayn Rand’s quintessential novel, which emphasizes that a person’s ego is “the fountainhead of human progress.” With Fountainhead Cash “Bitdb development on Bitcoin Cash lives on,” the team of programmers detailed.
“Fountainhead Cash is a community developed fork of 21 Century Motor Company that continues development on Bitcoin Cash — We run our own nodes of Bitdb and Bitsocket on multiple servers, and continue to build on and improve these pieces of infrastructure for Bitcoin Cash developers,” explained the developers.
The announcement continued:
We have fixed multiple bugs, worked on new optimizations for the future, and have been discussing new ways to improve and grow the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem — The end-game goal is to make developing for Bitcoin Cash as easy as any other sort of development.
‘The Point Is, Who Will Stop Me?’
Essentially, Bitdb is an autonomous database that continuously synchronizes with the BCH network and the platform Bitsocket is a message bus service for building real-time bitcoin applications. The three main developers working on the Fountainhead project consist of Kosinus the creator of Bookchain, Jt the producer of Craft.cash, and the Badger Wallet creator Spend BCH. On the website, the team has published code, documentation, and a link to its public chat room on Telegram. The creators say that anyone is welcome to join the discussion and help develop future BCH applications with Fountainhead tools.
Meanwhile, and per usual, Unwriter continues to publish a mind-boggling number of experiments and they are always open source. A great advantage to open source software is how the practice invites collaboration and sharing, even if programmers are not on the same development team. Open source projects also permit another development team to make modifications to a project that another set of programmers wouldn’t commit. Couple this scenario with market dynamics and ultimately the free market decides on which incorporated changes suit consumers best. The Fountainhead Cash project is an exemplary model of two competing development teams sharing open source ideas. Just as Ayn Rand’s main character Howard Roark defiantly asked: “The point is, who will stop me?”
What do you think about Fountainhead Cash? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Fountainhead Cash, and Bitdb.
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