LIVESTREAM WITH CRYPTERIUM CEO - THE TAKEAWAYS

Image extracted from Crypterium's materials

On May 24th at 4:00pm GMT, Crypterium had a livestream meeting (on facebook https://www.facebook.com/crypterium.org/videos/175192996501974/ ) with its users and investors, during which Austin Kimm formerly introduced the new CEO, Marc O 'Brien.

Marc then gave a brief of his background (Indirectly projecting his potentials for Crypterium) and gave some of the latest developments around Crypterium.

The following is summary of the 34 minutes livestream.

Meet Marc..Know His Potentials

Marc O 'Brein - CEO, Crypterium

Marc O ‘Brien left Visa 4 years ago as CEO UK/Ireland after which he joined a startup company called Revolut (https://www.revolut.com), as an advisor in September 2014. He was essentially the number 3 man of the company, after Vlad Yatsenko (founder & CTO) and Nikolay Storonsky (Founder & CEO). He was responsible for helping them on product strategy, commercial strategy and fund raising. 

The first fund raise was done in March 2015 and Revolut was able to raise 10 million USD after which series of fund raising has been done. As at today (May 2018), Revolut has 1.7 million customers, 1.5 billion pounds worth of transactions running through its systems monthly and 1.7 billion dollars market valuation.

He was also an advisor to Resolut, Jaak, Taxamo amongst other startup companies.

Marc has been developing himself in the area of Regulation Technology, good knowledge of which will ease the pain and burden borne by so many companies (including Crypterium) that have to operate in the financial services sector which is heavily regulated. 

Latest News

Cards and Payments

POS Payment using a card

Crypterium is working on some card partnership in Europe. They hope a Europe-wide partnership with Visa or Mastercard can be achieved by Autumn. This is necessary to spend Crypto currencies over Point of Sales terminals. However, Crypterium will start operations with companies that already have partnership with visa/mastercard (in what is called white label partnership). These companies already have the licenses required to operate around the world.

Crypterium is also working with a whole range of bill payment partners (IBAN partners). They already have in their work flow a series of those partners around the world. (Asia-pacific, Russia and Europe in particular). Marc proposes a partnership that can enable Crypterium reach up to 300 million users by Autumn of this year.

Exchange 

Although CRPTs are officially listed only on Hitbtc currently, there is an expectation to be listed on another big exchange within the next 3 weeks. This is subject to the exhchange's on-boarding processes which are out of Crypterium’s control. There is the big plan of listing on at least 5 exchanges before the end of the year.

QUESTIONS

Marc and Conflict of Interest

Although Marc still has investment in other companies, he has no active executive role in any other companies. He is 100% dedicated to Crypterium.

Quick Wins

Crypterium sees licenses as the biggest obstacle to the global vision. This is because, it is required for operations and need to be applied for, per region (as license requirement varies per region and sometimes per state within the same country e.g US. In addition, approval could take up to six months per application).

However, they will be taking advantage of the fact that the requirement for each license is uniform across Europe. Thus, the reason for starting Big in Europe. There is expectation for some good news concerning license within the next coming days.

Another quick win is starting with the non-card based payments, i.e IBAN and bill payments.

Marc’s Duty As CEO

Marc’s duty as CEO is to ensure that Crypterium meets the expectations of the shareholders and users based on the specifications of the whitepaper.

Crypterium’s Marketing Plan During The World Cup

As regards the world cup, Crypterium will not be doing any marketing because they are still in rollout stage of the product. However, they have a well-structured marketing team that are ready to publicize in the news, websites and other medium as soon as the product is ready.

Crypterium Partnership With Banks

Crypterium will be partnering with banks in order to provide services necessary for operations. This is to avoid the need to get money transmitting licenses in each country that they will operate (which may be at a huge cost). Crypterium will also be looking towards having a global bank for the purpose of holding fiat currencies.

Australlian Beta Test

The beta test was 100% successful, involving less than 50 payments. The KYC procedure for Australian partners is currently being integrated into the app. All things being equal, the app will be available to Australian users within the next 15 days for utility payments and other types of IBAN payments.

Ico Funds

The ICO funds of $52 million are currently in escrow account until the product is ready. Development of the product is done without making use of the ICO funds. The purpose of the fund is to make Crypterium a global company, and not to develop the product.

Incentive Program Based On CRPT

Crypterium in an attempt to drive up the value of CRPT (in relation to Bitcoin), will carryout incentive programs based on CRPT. 

Fully Fledged App By Half 1, 2018

A bill payment service that works will be released within H1 and this involves integration with the API of our card partners. The app is 99.9% built. It already contains all the key functions required as planned. They are only working on aesthestics and addition of coins. Austin cited an example of a question that was asked during a meeting the IT team (earlier before the livestream), on how long it took to integrate an IBAN partner into the app. And the response was within one day.

Expectations Within The Next 3 months

-Launch of the product. This will be within H1 and would start with bill and services payment functions.

-Achieving card partnership with Visa/Mastercard in the UK (whether physical or virtual card)…Commercial discussion is ongoing.

-New offices are being opened in other regions  - USA, Miami etc

-Features such as IBAN payment, bill payment, bank transfer function (friends & family) will be available

-QR payment services in Asia. Commercial discussion with partner has advanced into integration stage. Thus should be ready before 3 months.

-Users of the Crypterium app would be able to buy the CRPT through the app very soon.

-Within 12 months, full service for token partners would be ready. This means that, users of the tokens of those partners would be able to spend the partner’s tokens using the Crypterium app. So far, Crypterium has announced REM Loyalty and Playchip as token partners.