[ANN] BitGate pre-ICO Investment Proposal
This a pre-ICO investment proposal is for 5% of the BitGateCoin. The goal is to get valuable feedback from the community, improve our crowdfunding proposal, and get traction for the big crowdfund which will be organized on the 9th of February. For the first 24 hours the post is exclusive to Steemit! This is an opportunity for the community to get involved at a grassroots level before the campaign reaches mainstream. Check out the website for more information:
www.bitgate.no
The pre-crowdfund campaign will run until January 31st.
BitGate is a gateway to the global blockchain-based economy. Blockchain technology enables a world-wide Web of Value with instant, global, frictionless value transfers. The Minimum Viable Product and proof-of-concept for BitGate is BitGate Norway. The goal of BitGate Norway is to enable Norwegians to connect to the new economy in a safe and regulated way.
The current market vacuum in Norway places Bitcoin trading volume in the country at 5% of the EU average, which means that there is a great market potential. It also means that Norway has a great opportunity to leapfrog the centralized exchange paradigm. BitGate is a decentralized exchange gateway, making it both scalable and resistant to regulatory hurdles.
Ever since 2014 BitSpace has been looking into creating a gateway as proposed by Daniel Larimer. In the cryptocurrency space, timing is everything, and we waited for the world to get ready while the concept gained maturity in 2015, the year that banks really started exploring “blockchain”
In 2016 we got the opportunity to present the concept for the legal and financial elite. We pitched the project as BitGate and won first place in the OsloFintech Challenge, before being accepted into the Fintech Factory accelerator in Norway, where we met numerous finance and fintech mentors, lawyers and bankers who were excited about the concept.
It was only recently that we finally cleared the way through the regulatory hurdles with our legal advisor Camilla Wollan of DLA Piper, and Lars Hektoen, founder of Cultura Bank. In addition, Sturle Sunde, the first and largest Bitcoin trader in Norway is now officially on the BitGate team.
The road ahead is clear, and we will most likely achieve a network effect for a decentralized exchange gateway here in Norway.. We already have the first business school assigment on BitGate, by Ioanna - remember her (pic with ned scott) from cryptofinance.no? We were also just a few days ago featured in one of the largest newspapers in Norway, Morgenbladet - see pictures here.
We aim to have the BitGate MVP ready in March.
The Opportunity
There is a gap between the traditional economy and the emerging cryptoeconomy. The problem has been extra difficult to solve in Norway, as the regulatory environment has been highly uncertain since 2013, which saw the announcement of VAT on Bitcoin. In 2014 the biggest centralized Bitcoin exchange in Norway, Justcoin, was shut down. Globally, the financial industry has been exploring blockchain technology as a way to enhance services and cut costs. However, a traditional mindset and approach to regulation leads to an ignorance of permissionless, open blockchain systems. The financial sector tends to employ permissioned, closed systems, with their inherent limitations of centralization and regionality. This creates a gap between paradigms:
In most regions, the emergence of decentralized exchanges is hampered by the dominance of heavily funded, centralized exchanges and private, permissioned ledgers. Because Norway has been lagging behind, we can now leapfrog development with a public, decentralized gateway. This lessens the regulatory hurdles and provides an easier way for Norwegians to invest in the booming cryptoeconomy. In Norway, BitGate will serve as a proof-of-concept for the new cryptoeconomy paradigm, enticing banks, exchanges and remittance services to participate.
The Solution
Instead of resorting to an open, permissionless system or a closed, permissioned system, BitGate offers a hybrid blockchain solution, allowing compliance and regulation while retaining the openness and global reach of the cryptoeconomy. We connect banks, exchanges and remittance services to the emerging Internet of Finance (IoF), giving end users access to a highly scalable, frictionless global market.
The BitGate MVP will use the BitShares blockchain and enable users to purchase Bitcoin with NOK, and NOK with Bitcoin. Users will be registered with the National Banking ID system in Norway (BankID) to ensure high-level compliance, and we will use third-party auditors to ensure KYC/AML verified users. We will start with bank transfers, which are already relatively frictionless in Norway due to heavy modernization and standardization, and quickly scale to accept all dominant payment solutions in Norway, as well as other cryptocurrencies; NOK to STEEM and BTS being a priority.
The business structure of BitGate has been architected in partnership with our lawyer Camilla Wollan of DLA Piper and advisor Lars Hektoen, founder of Cultura Bank. Thanks to the built-in KYC/AML features of the BitShares blockchain, Camilla Wollan has now green lighted the project. This means that Norway’s biggest and best regulated cryptocurrency exchange will be a gateway to the decentralized BitShares system!
Timing
Traditional Financial Economy
Globally, the traditional financial economy is trembling. In Norway, our previously impervious oil sector has come crashing down, and housing prices are reaching bubble territory. There is much talk about creating new jobs, but few know how to put their money to productive, profitable use.
Meanwhile BitSpace and BitGate is growing in harmony with the realization that fintech revolves around CryptoFinance, a new decentralized infrastructure for the global economy that will supplant financial institutions as gravitational centers.
Just in the past few months we have given a demo at Post-Trade, a presentation for Laboremus, a presentation for NUUG, held a presentation at Seed Forum New York, given presentations at Oslo International Hub, and organized the CryptoFinance summit where we gathered an audience of over 150 people, the same list we will draw from for the live BitGate crowdfund on February 9th. At the time of writing, we are also organizing a conference with Liberland at Gran Canaria.
Just a few weeks ago, Norway also announced a Fintech Sandbox solution for startups looking to test our their ideas. This means that BitGate may soon be able test out services that are currently too regulated to touch, including banking and e-money issuance.
The New Cryptoeconomy
The cryptoeconomy has seen rapid growth in the last few years. Bitcoin alone has gone from being virtually worthless to having a market cap above 12 billion dollars. Meanwhile a variety of new cryptocurrencies have appeared that innovate and compliment Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s yearly trading volume is now close to $400 billion worldwide.
We have also seen a gradual rise in total cryptocurrency market capitalization, which touched the $20 billion mark earlier this month.
Among the new developments is the popularization of the concept of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations). These developments allow new kinds of businesses like Steemit to flourish. Just in the past few months, Steemit has had a major impact on the world, as we organized the Oslo Steemit Hackathon in Norway, and legendary @roelandp organized SteemFEST Amsterdam, with participants like @ned @good-karma @fabien @ekitcho @furion @xeroc @cass @svk @noisy attending both events.
We expect that new economy DAOs like Steemit will keep flourishing to create new, global financial, reputation and identity infrastructure. The most pressing issue right now is the gap between the traditional economy and the new economy. The right way to bridge this gap is using a Decentralized Exchange, allowing regulated trusted industries to operate on an open, decentralized system.
BitShares and CryptoFinance
The BitShares Decentralized Exchange was launched in 2014, and has now had time to mature both technologically and conceptually. We are using this platform to create the BitGate MVP as a proof-of-concept and bring in Norwegian users who may be completely new to cryptocurrencies.
By creating a safe, regulated bridge to a global, decentralized blockchain-based platform, we set the stage for the next paradigm of CryptoFinance. In contrast to centralized exchanges, the scaling opportunities for BitGate are endless, as BitGate effectively connects users to the Web of Value. This in turn puts value itself on the exponential information-technology curve and grows it according to Metcalfe's law with each new node.
While FinTech is currently revolving around core banking infrastructure, in the future they will revolve around global, decentralized, blockchain-based platforms. BitGate positions itself in this landscape to facilitate the transition in a safe, regulated, effective and painless manner, helping startups, businesses and financial institutions to connect to the web of value.
Competiton
Internationally, most banks work on private, permissioned solutions while the CryptoEconomy has open, permissionless solutions. However, we increasingly see exceptions to this trend. For instance, Santander recently announced “Cash On The Blockchain” using the open Ethereum-blockchain. This validates the concept of a hybrid solution as the key to 2017.
While Ethereum is a great platform to experiment and try out new types of smart contracts, it was not designed to serve as the global financial infrastructure. By working with BitShares we ensure that we will be able to handle the volume success entails, while still allowing secure, low-cost, and instant worldwide transactions.
In the BitShares space OpenLedger, Cryptonomex, BlockPay and other exchange partners are competition but also good friends and potential partners as liquidity and BitShares adoption is our common problem. The more useful the BitShares platform becomes, the more we all gain. We will all then seek to specialize relative to each other to minimize our mutual competition and maximize our common gains.
The biggest Bitcoin exchange service in Norway is currently bitmynt.no - the volume driven entirely by the reputation of a trusted figure in the community, Sturle Sunde. While he has the best reputation, as well as the highest trading volume and webranking in Norway, he is currently struggling with regulatory challenges and lack of banking partners to scale up his business. Seeing the path we are taking with BitGate, focusing hard on financial and legal partners and regulatory compliance right off the bat, Sturle decided to join the BitGate team, and will ensure a high trading volume from day one.
All in all, with our team, advisors, and national and international partners, we position ourselves as the major Bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange in Norway. This in turn will create innumerable possibilities to expand BitGate, both as a service in Norway, and internationally.
Possibilities
The cost of global scaling is minimal, while the added value of scaling is exponential. By helping to build an alternative global financial infrastructure together with our partners, we target the total market of the world economy. As the market grows, new opportunities will present themselves and all we can do here is indicate some potential candidate services.
In addition to traditional revenue sources from payments and exchange, BitGate provides a gateway to new CryptoFinance markets, including Global Stock Exchange for traditional stock, crypto-equities, and crypto-indexes, as well as services like portfolio-management, remittance, crowdfunding with equity, microfinance, and micropayments for the Economy of Things (EoT).
Experience
BitGate is a daughter company of BitSpace, and has the backing of the BitSpace team and network, collectively carrying over 20 years of experience with Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. We have a global team of blockchain experts, as well as coders, designers, marketers, lawyers, all working to make it happen, as well as a network of bankers, traders, market makers, and remittance service providers.
Core Team
Advisors
Partners
Proposal
We need at least 20 BTC for development, legal and to deploy a proper crowdfunding proposal in February. Participants will be given 5% in BitGateCoin proportional to their contribution with no strings attached. The BitGateCoin will be issued with BitShares.
Early Bird Discounts
Until 5000$ target is reached everyone gets a 2x multiplier on the donation!
Until 10000$ target is reached everyone gets a 1.5x multiplier on the donation!
Until 20000$ target is reached everyone gets a 1.2x multiplier on the donation!
Until 30000$ target is reached everyone gets a 1.1x multiplier on the donation!
www.bitgate.no/ico
The crowdfund will run until January 31!
Use of Funds
Execution
The BitGate MVP is a Bitcoin trading service. It will be released Q1 2017 in Norway. Norway currently has a market vacuum for cryptocurrency trading, and with extensive knowledge about the local conditions, our strategy is to gain a foothold in the market, while our global network of partners allow us to scale globally and build the Internet of Finance.
What’s in it for Investors?
The BitGate Coins issued in this crowdsale are 5% of the total supply.
Terms and conditions are available here: http://bitgate.no/terms/
The value of the BITGATE tokens will be determined by the market. BitGate intends to support the BITGATE tokens when BitGate AS becomes profitable, meaning that BitGate AS has a positive annual profit after tax. BitGate AS will then, for a period of at least 10 years, spend a percentage of its annual profit after tax to buy BITGATE tokens on the open market, and make them unspendable. The percentage of the annual profit after tax used for this will vary from time to time according to the greater needs of the BitGate project, but is estimated to be around 10% of the yearly profit after tax.
BitGate AS profits include fees from all future GateAssets, BitGate BaaS (Blockchain As A Service) profits from integration with banks, exchanges and remittance services. Profit will also come from other business models BitGate AS may adopt, such as collecting interests on deposits or creating a crypto management wealth fund. By participating in the BitGate ICO you get in early before we do the FintechFest crowdsale February 9th, a big event that will be held in Oslo, Norway.
Are you interested in a private investment?
Contact us at [email protected]
Coool
Yes! These are major breakthroughs, in addition to getting together the FintechFest crowdsale February 9th. :D
NEVERDIE ICO is LIVE.
The first block chain based Virtual Reality gaming crypto! NEVERDIE coin will allow monetizing the game items in real cash economy game Entropia Universe. NOW game player can cash out their in-game money earned by playing game and can exchange NEVERDIE coin with other ERC20 tokens such as Gnosis, Golem, and Frist Blood.
https://steemit.com/ico/@maxtill94/nevedie-ico-full-analysus-why-you-should-buy-neverdie-coin-gaming-cryptocurrency-coin-comparision-with-gamecredit-mobilego-first
I've just donated a substantial sum of BTS to the ICO. Have known some of these guys from the early Bitshares days. Looks like a great team with a solid solution. I wish you the best of luck!
Thank you!
After my initial contribution I read the full proposal from your website. I immediately doubled my contribution. Folks, this is an exciting project. I've spent time in Norway; it is a very wealthy and progressive country with a lot of tech savvy people. There is serious pent up demand for crypto that is only going increase in the coming years - and this is a very well structured and realistic solution to serve that demand. The other thing I've learned about Norwegians is that they do not mess around; these guys have connected to a lot of serious players in both the crypto and fiat space. I strongly recommend reading the whitepaper and doing some due diligence on their team members... particularly Sturle Sunde.
I just saw a few presentations by the team at BitSpace and I was very impressed. I really think these guys are on to something. I will be watching them closely.
i have just opened up my account at Bitshares and look forward to seeing centralised hacked exchanges close one by one as people begin to truly understand the true beauty and potential of decentralised independently controlled investment systems ! upvoted and resteemed and shared !! )
Awesome!
This is pretty fascinating. On one hand, forcing crypto compliance with the state just stinks. On the other, it's pretty much inevitable. This looks like an interesting solution. Seems like you have have some good team members too.
So you're selling 5% for a total of 20 btc? It's tiered though, with the first to pull the trigger getting almost twice as much as the last 5 btc?
Thank you. 20 BTC is the minimum amount we will accept for 5%. It's correct that the first to invest will get almost twice as the last, it's hard to be first and they have less knowledge of what the total is.
Is there a cap to the amount you will accept for this first tier? Or a way to track progress of the token sale to get an idea of what percentage we will actually get for our BTC?
You can see the amount donated in STEEM/BTS here:
https://steemit.com/@bitgate-ico1/transfers (donated in steem/sbd)
https://cryptofresh.com/u/bitgate-ico1 (donated in bitshares)
For bitcoin we are generating a unique address for each user, so we'll update as we go along. For now it seems around 30% in BTC, 40% in STEEM, 30% in BTS.
Congrats on getting the ball running! We interacted slightly at SteemFest and had the chance to understand more about your plans and vision. Good luck going forward!
Thank you!
Congrats guys! I'll be reading all of this tomorrow! This is really promising!
Thanks!
Wow! Your project is really impressive. A decentralize Bitshare based gate to crypto currency is so needed.
Bitgate has so much potential. I'll be keeping up-to-date with you guys.
Thanks for sharing, but I guess, I'd rather stick with the BitShares platform...
BitGate will use BitShares as infrastructure. This was the intention of BitShares from the beginning, to enable new gateways in different jurisdictions: http://bytemaster.github.io/update/2014/12/18/Benefits-of-Being-a-BitShares-Gateway/
Thanks for the pointer relating to BitShares, I wasn't aware of this as of yet. So much is happening in relation to the crypto-world right now, it is overwhelming really.
I was wondering how kosher it would be to start moving toward governmental laws, especially because of their design at keeping the poor poor and the rich wealthier and wealthier off? From there my thought can't help but wonder if it would be some sort of stratagem to bypass the decentralization strength to regain the upper hand on the grass-root movement of crypto-currencies?
Thanks for your patience with my ignorance, namaste :)
The idea is to allow each jurisdiction/region to regulate their own assets on the blockchain, while keeping the core exchange and assets decentralized and autonomously governed. 2 years ago we didn't think traditional financial institutions would accept this, but the times are changing. Regulations, lawyers, bankers, are increasingly open to the idea of a hybrid solution. In the end nation-states will be exposed to competition just like any other entity.
Well, I'm absolutely sure the banking system and the layers would be agreeable to a an "hybrid solution", it keeps them going instead of seeing their institutions fall to the alternative, the sole presence of cryptocurrencies, unmanned, autonomous and omnipotent by the algorithms of equanimous justice for all instead of a few...
I'm very curious to see how it will play out and whether or not the tug-o-war of justice will still end up in the hands of the people with money. This seems to be a risky move on our behalf to let this happen, but maybe it will work. I still need convincing in that domain I guess or I simply don't understand the way such a project could and will actually empower everyone equally. Thanks again for your patience and expertise in the domain. Your information is valuable to me and, hopefully, to many others too. All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
Candidly, if the crypto world had taken the Bitgate approach 5 years ago crypto adoption would be far, far ahead of where it is today. As much as the few (myself included) want to see existing financial institutions replaced with decentralized trustless infrastructure it is not going be like switching a light off. There is a transition period that will require solutions like Bitgate. @dantheman saw this years ago and called them on-ramps: interfaces with the current regulatory environment that will allow fiat value to flow into crypto.
Here's the neat thing though... it's a one way trip. ;)
Sounds interesting the concept.
Thank you. :)