BitcoinVend— Telegram AMA — March 09
On Tuesday, March 09, we had the pleasure to welcome to our Telegram chat:
Chris Cousins, Founder, and
Joe Jewson, Co-Founder.
We asked him questions about the development of the BitcoinVend.
Some sentences have been slightly edited for readability but the meaning has been conserved.
Summary
BitcoinVend is the first mobile application that empowers crypto users, small merchants, and non-crypto users with the means to pay friends, accept crypto at one’s store, and experience the power of crypto without investing capital.
The App combines a marketplace, like eBay or Facebook; a payments system, like Revolut or Nubank plus Stripe, and a peer-to-peer exchange, similar to Localbitcoins & decentralized exchanges.
BitcoinVend is all-in-one, safe, easy, and convenient to use for people and businesses to carry out their business with no interference. It’s self-contained, borderless and frictionless, for people new to crypto and experts.
A user can build a trust score, making other users more inclined to do business with you. Where disputes arise, users with high trust scores will be able to mediate, they need a stake in the game (BCVT).
Introduction
Q — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS: Let’s start by hearing a bit about you. What did you do before crypto and did you have any other previous venture in crypto?
A — Joe from BitcoinVend: I spent most of my life working in the health and wellbeing industry, started in a family-owned business, and went on to build several small ventures, mainly surrounding nutritional supplements but also doing things like teaching Karate.
I discovered Crypto in 2013, taught myself how to trade, and got stuck in, later in 2016 I met one of my business partners and spent the last 4 years with him in an apprentice-type role, he is a high-level agile consultant, marketing and business strategist. This has been a very eye-opening journey for me.
The last several years in my spare time I have been doing institutional OTC trades (that’s how I met Chris), and working with automatic trading tech. And now I find myself here!
Today I am in charge of general operations, project management, and marketing management — my role in BitcoinVend.
Q — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS: How did the switch to BitcoinVend happen?
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: I was a buy-side trader for a US-based family office for many years, after this, I joined an Internet infrastructure and technology fund. I was involved in crypto since 2010 as an early investor in a mining operation.
A — Joe from BitcoinVend: How could I not? I have known Chris for a while and OTC is a tough business — high failure rate haha. BitcoinVend is not going to be easy,, but Chris and I have built a solid relationship that bodes well for ourour mission. Our respective skills (along with the other founders and team) make a strong synergy.
Chris asked if I wanted to get involved, it wasn’t a hard answer. I jumped straight in and dropped most of my other commitments to make this happen.
About BitcoinVend
Q — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS: Let’s find out some more about BitcoinVend then. What is the project about in a few simple sentences?
A — Joe from BitcoinVend: What we want to do with BitcoinVend is make Crypto spendable, and to do that we need to create an economy that has everything you might need. And make it super easy for everyone. We like to say that BitcoinVend is much more than an App, it is an eConomy in the palm of your hand.
It enables businesses to easily process payments, people or businesses to buy & sell in the marketplace, anyone to exchange peer-to-peer, and lots more. Think of it like the birthchild of Stripe, eBay & Revolut — but with Bitcoin & Crypto as default currencies.
Q — Telegram user Nathan: What does the BitcoinVend name stand for? There are interesting stories behind every successful project, and of course, you have to work hard every day. Can you share one of these interesting stories with us?
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: This is a nice question and an interesting story. In 2013 I was thinking to make a bitcoin vending machine and payments processing business, I registered the domain name, and of course, the market was not really ready for this, not in the tech, and also the network was too slow and bitcoin did not have the best reputation. Now all these years later, the technology and market finally caught up with my idea, and BitcoinVend was born
Also since all the transactions settle in bitcoin, we use it for what it was originally intended a global decentralized payment system.
Q — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS: How long have you been working on the project? And how many people are on the team?
A — Joe from BitcoinVend: Chris came up with the concept a long time ago but the timing wasn't right neither was the tech. Now is a perfect time. We have been working on it for just over 1 year. There are 7 Core team members and we will probably expand that quite soon.
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: We have a team of 7 and we have been working on the software for the last year. It’s now in a beta stage and the plan is to launch it on app stores by May 15th. Don’t hold us to this date, we will make an official announcement soon. But that's our intention right now.
Q — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS: How do you see your project being used by individuals or other projects? Are there incentives for participating in the eConomy
A — Joe from BitcoinVend: There are lots of incentives, we are going to be giving away BCVT to people who join the App. And there will be nodes auctioned so that the community can participate in revenue sharing via the BCVT transactions. But these are only two of several.
The main incentive is that we are making crypto spendable, people will be able to buy and sell whatever they want without having to convert into fiat — this is the biggest incentive we have. Naturally, by making crypto more easily spendable it will grow as a whole.
Crypto is mainly speculative right now, it is not really currency per se because you can’t really spend it on everyday items. If you are using one of the major payments processors it’s more often than not that a fiat conversion is happening somewhere, here we are eliminating the need to convert back into fiat which reduces friction and cost for everyone
Q — Twitter user @galojb: Sometimes long conversion processes are made in some payment systems, which, which wastes time. Is the conversion of cryptocurrencies through BitcoinVend automatic or manual? What percentage of fee does BitcoinVend receive?
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: The process is totally automated, all payments are settled in BTC, the platform auto converts this for the seller. For buyers, they can use any crypto which has a BTC pair.
In short, users connect a crypto wallet to the application — like meta mask or Coinbase — funds are then sent to the app when you want to buy something or you can just top it up and keep funds on the app. When funds are on BitcoinVend all transfers to contacts are instant and free.
This is a good way to get around gas fees and so on and makes it easy for merchants to see your payment right away. For example, if you wanted to buy a Pizza or beer, the merchant would not want to wait a few minutes for the ETH or BTC transaction to clear, this is what our software helps avoid.
Q — Twitter user @Nancy_LH_ : I read that I can receive or make free payments to my contacts through BitcoinVend, how does this work? What should I configure so that these payments do not generate fees and how does the system associate my contacts with me?
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: It’s pretty easy, the app will look at your contacts on your phone and compare them with other accounts on BitcoinVend, if they are there you have free payments to them. Very similar to Revolut.
Q — Telegram user Sofía Isla: You say that BitcoinVend is ideal for new users thanks to its good technology and its respective functions. Is this a business application too? What other things do you offer me? Can a professional use it or is it only for beginners?
A — Joe from BitcoinVend: It’s super user-friendly and we have all sorts of sub-features that make it easy for business such as auto-convert, amazon API, CSV uploads, etc. All this can be seen in the features section on our site.
Individual users will have access to more or less the same functions — more info on this coming soon as we approach preleases and then full release sometime in Q2.
Q — Telegram user 🎖Sir DeFi🎖: BitcoinVend has the intention to include a marketplace within itself, but wouldn’t it be a bit smarter to use it as a payment method in big marketplaces like Amazon in the beginning? It would be a big push to get it accepted.
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: We actually have an API integration with Amazon on the roadmap, which will release Q3 2021 — this will allow anyone with an amazon store to load in the products in BitcoinVend and sell there.
Token
Q — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS: What is the token use case and how does it capture the value of the ecosystem you’re building?
A — Joe from BitcoinVend: First and foremost, it’s the fee token for marketplace and merchant transactions. But soon it will be much more than that.
It enables the decentralized aspects (nodes) and brings game theory into play in terms of user management… such as dispute resolution, trust score, etc.
A user can build a trust score, making, making other users more inclined to do business with you. Where disputes arise, users with high trust scores will be able to mediate, they need a stake in the game (BCVT). And dispute mediation will be costly… which is another element where game theory comes in… it will make more sense, to be honest, and very costly to cheat. There are all sorts of use cases, some are solidified, others we want to community to have a say in.
Finances
Q — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS: Did you raise funds so far? If so, how did you handle them? Are you planning to do any future raises?
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: Yes, we already raised funds on TrustSwap, and the token is now trading. The project was financed by myself and VCs in the early stages
We don’t plan to do future fundraise. When we start to look to onboard more users outside crypto, we might consider a raise on Crowdcube or another similar platform, but this would be more for marketing purposes.
Business Development
Q — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS: What stage is the project at? And what should we look forward to in the coming months?
A — Joe from BitcoinVend: We just raised money and the token is trading so we will focus on creating a nice trading market over the next month or so before we move into pre-releases and full releases of the App in the coming months. Right now we are focused mainly on the token market as the developers finalize various parts of the App.
We will build community awareness, get people involved in the journey and invite them to take part in Beta testing for example… along with the token trading, this will be our main focus for the next several months. Then the full release of the App!
Q — Telegram user Liz Katt: The hot new term in crypto is “Yield Farming & NFT”. Do you have a plan to develop the Yield Farming & NFT system?
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: NFT is simply a token that can represent an asset or something in real life, which only once exists. This is interesting for users that believe in the digital ownership of goods. It’s like a car title. We do see people selling lots of NTFs on Bitcoinvend. It’s a market we are targeting.
Yield Farming is something else altogether and with Bitcoinvend we don’t really cater anything towards that.
Q — Telegram user Amina Peter: In BitcoinVend we can buy and sell anything locally or internationally, swap crypto and cash with peers, or exchange crypto and pay online all in Crypto. But we all know one of the main obstacles for crypto has been mass adoption and access to merchants in different countries for our daily transactions. So how do you see BitcoinVend overcoming these obstacles? Thanks.
A — Joe from BitcoinVend: In the coming weeks, we will make an update to our roadmap which will include more insight as to how we plan to target and capture the mass market
Q — Twitter user @Wildans21: Community support is one of the biggest aspects of a project’s success. Most projects have programs that interact with their users. Do you have any special plans to attract and expand the community and improve the user experience?
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: The community on Bitcoinvend is the most important aspect, without a strong community the app will not be viable. All users have a say in how the app works, they can vote on what features we will make next, and ultimately the app’s direction will be determined by our users.
Q — Telegram user Deleted Account: Ambassadors play a very important role in every project, Do you have an ambassador program? If yes, how can I be one?
A — Chris from BitcoinVend: You should email us.
Thanks for coming in today, guys. It was a very informative session. — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS:
Join our Telegram. You can also see the supply data here, and track the token here and here. The only place to buy right now is Uniswap. Dont be fooled by fake tokens.
Thank you for your amazing questions! To get $25 in free BCVT please sign up here, and join our chat here. — Chris from BitcoinVend
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