The BitRush Blog

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BitRush Invited to Present ANOON Payment System to Swiss FinTech Association

Even though we are more or less in stealth mode with our cryptographic payment system (launch scheduled for end of June 2016) we alredy gvie presentations to selected partners to collect feedback and adopt to industry demands. And we gave a presentation a few weeks ago to a large Zurich bank. And obviously we have been able to attract it’s attention with our soon-to-be-launched ANOON payment services.

Thus we received an invitation to give a pitch to the Swiss FinTech Innovation, a Zurich based assocition of Swiss Financial institutions committed to drive digital innovation in the financial services industry. Sounds great, right?

Well, we’ll do our best to impress the audience with our pitch. Among others experts from Credit-Suisse (Bank), Helvetia (Insurance), Hypothekarbank Lenzburg (Bank),  Lombard Odier (Bank),  Raiffeisen (Bank),  SIX-Group Swiss Life (Insurance),  University of Zurich,  Vontobel (Bank),  Zürcher Kantonalbank (Bank) will attent the event.

Anyway, we are proud to have the chance to present! See you soon in Zurich then :)

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AdBit: BitRush’s Cryptographic Ad Network

The cryptocurrency ecosphere is developing fast. More and more people start using cryptocurrencies to do their online business. We are definitely on the road towards a Crypto-Economy. The total market value of all cryptocurrencies is estimated at around USD 30 billion (read here). Bitcoin (as a cryptocurrency) alone has an estimated market value of USD 20 billion. Not too bad for a market that has not even existed 3 years ago, right?

You don’t have to be a rocket scientiest to expect high growth rate around the different public and private blockchains and along with that a significant expansion of the Crypto-Economy. And advertising is for sure a very promising market space within the Crypto-Economy.

In line with the overall market growth AdBit, BitRush’s Cryptographic Ad Network, shows impressive numbers. In the first 5 months of 2016 the number of registered users increased from appr. 38,000 to more than 75,000 (97%). The number of publishers (website owners) increased from appr. 2,4000 to more than 5,100 (112%). On an average AdBit makes a gross profit of BTC 0.8 per day which is not too bad too, right? On an average more than 450 concurrent ad campaigns are online at any given time and the ads are seen from more than 500,000 Unique Users per day (see CloadFlare graphics below):

AdBit as well as the whole Crypto-Economy are still in its very early stage. Many things have to be improved before mass adoption but we on this road already. AdBit has intruduced a campaign feature to make live easier for advertisers and publishers. We, too, have implemented a multi-cryptocurrency payment feature to go beyound Bitcoin. And in the very near future we’ll integrate FIAT payment systems like PayPal and Credit Cards/Debit Cards too.

For us AdBit is a great case in point for the promising development of the Crypto-Economy!

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BitRush and Axxelerate: building Bridges between Europe and Canada

BitRush is a truly global FinTech startup with operations and projects in Toronto, Vancouver, London, Vienna, Bratislava, Kiev and Hongkong. And BitRush has already been “officially recognized” by the Canadian establishment. We have been invited by the Canadian Ambassador and the Trade Commissioner in Vienna to present ourselves.

Important shareholders of BitRush have been among the founding members of Axxelerate GmbH, a “freshly squeezed” Vienna based incubator. Axxelerate has teamed up the the Vancouver based WAVEFRONT to build a commercial bridge between Canada and Austria with BitRush as it’s first showcase.

Andrea Geyer, Bitrush shareholder and CEO of Axxelerate: “We have founded Axxelerate to overcome the problems that innovative companies are facing: lack of funding and lack of networks in the industry lead to slow take-off and long time to market. Our radical collaboration approach in cooperation with WAVEFRONTTM a leading North American Accelerator and Canada´s center of excellence for the wireless  industry helps to overcome this and lets companies grow and go international leveraging our huge networks in industry, research, funding institutions and governments.  The goal is to establish a strong pipeline for collaboration between Canadian and Central European enterprises; we launched this venture at the Canadian Embassy in Vienna in May.”

Hey, sounds like a great project, right? And BitRush should definitely benefit from being part of it! Axxelerate is a very important part for us to build the necessary ecosphere around BitRush.

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Our soon to be launched “provably fair” gaming portal in sketch mode: single-sign-on for all games connected and with our cryptographic payment system intregrated. Gaming is a huge opportunity for our technologies and payment services.

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Next Generation Decentralized Cryptographic Payment Systems in Gaming

In a previous post (read here) we discussed how one blockchain solution may not be the same as another. Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies have been on the rise in real-time online gaming and betting, however in most cases we have not seen any new payment solutions tailored to the gaming and betting scene.

In short, while a cryptocurrency typically is associated with a blockchain, it does not mean that a user or gaming provider using the currency enjoys the benefits of its decentralized cryptographic system. For instance, in the case of bitcoin, this is mainly due to the relatively slow transaction verification rate.

To clarify, let us consider the following example.

A user wants to place a bitcoin bet on a dice roll website owned by a provider. The roll has to be executed instantly and in case of a win, the payout should be instant as well.

Either the user has to have a balance with the provider, where the provider has a public bitcoin wallet set up and a single database keeping track of the balances of the user, or the provider only waits for one verification from the user’s personal wallet.

In the former case, the user has to trust the security of the provider’s single database. Overwriting this database would result in a lot of the users losing their balance within the provider’s wallet. It is obvious how this single database is not a distributed ledger (and a blockchain solution). Such a wallet may be very attractive for attackers, as its balance would be publicly visible.

In the latter case, the provider is only waiting for one node to verify the transaction, wherein the provider puts his trust. Additionally, a new address has to be generated for every new bet by which the user’s bet is identified. This may lead to usability problems, as the user may copy the address, accidentally refresh the site (creating a new address), and copy the first invalid address into the receiver’s field when sending the funds.

In conclusion, we can predict demand for true blockchain solutions for gaming. A true blockchain solution could address the problems listed above; it would provide practically instant transaction verification by multiple distributed nodes. Each player would therefore have their own wallet backed up by this blockchain (or sidechain) specifically designed for gaming, and each gaming provider would have the burden of security and responsibility alleviated from them.

Surprise: we are working on such a solution in close cooperation with online gaming & betting providers. Stay tuned ;).

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The first drafts for our soon to be launched cryptographic debit card. Pictured is the premium card. As part of the debit card launch we’ll start a rebranding campaign from “P2Nex” into “ANON”. Why ANON? Well, the late Old English “anon” ment "into one," thus "continuously” “straightway" and “at once". And our payment systems are designed to be “straightway”. The debit cards will be available to our users in June 2016.

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We are well aware that we operate in a new business with new (maybe disruptive) technologies. And we have to be adaptive to our high-speed environment. Hence we try to be as transparent and communicative as we can. To give you, our readers and investors, the chance to track what we do, why and how we do it. We try to keep you updated on the FinTech industry (Magazine), our day-to-day activities (Updates) and the big picture of BitRush (Blog). And, of course, we are open and grateful for any feedback and critics.

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Our board member Franz. He is an old hand within the Toronto capital market scene with great connections into the Asian markets. As his job is quite demanding he’s forced to have a healthy diet and daily workouts ...

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Our president Karsten, the only one wearing ties. Well, he has to deal with the establishment :). Karsten is German-Canadian and heads our office in Toronto.

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Cryptography in the Age of Buzz Words

It wasn’t so long ago that cryptographic technologies commonly employed today were restricted to cutting edge research and discussions among university professors. Notably, public-key encryption only emerged in the seventies, with the early example being the RSA encryption algorithm and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

Years later, these cryptographic technologies found their way into the daily lives of millions of people mainly in the form of online electronic communication. Though these modern encryption techniques are common, they are rarely understood by users beyond the level of basic concepts and ideas.

However, something happened in the past couple of years that sparked an explosion of new tech companies and their salesmen blazoning the advent of a new era of cryptography brought about by the one and only “blockchain”. The blockchain is supposed to be key to some magical cryptographic paradise, where secure peer-to-peer transactions are decentralized and impossible to hack, though rarely do we hear that the most famous blockchain, the bitcoin blockchain, is far from peer-to-peer (but rather, it is node-to-node), and that with improper usage of encryption algorithms, even theoretically unbreakable encryption can be easily attacked.

The reason why I first wrote “blockchain” in quotation marks is that the term is very vague to the point where it does not have meaning anymore. Sure, it is a useful term to introduce the concept, such as the word “vehicle”. But when you start selling a “vehicle”, you may be selling a bicycle where the customer expects a tractor. And so it is with a blockchain. Any blockchain is actually a form of a hash tree (proposed by Ralph Merkle back in 1979), where a tree is a generalization of hash chains and hash lists.

 Along with public encryption methods, it is evident that the ingredients for this revolutionary blockchain concept have been around for quite some time now (likewise ideas for digital currencies and secure transaction systems).  I believe it just happens to be now in the last couple of years that we have uncovered truly practical usage of Merkleing and asset transactions. Its proper application is not straightforward, as evidenced by the many problems of the bitcoin blockchain for instance. It takes skill and experience to develop the idea further into a bulletproof and proven product.  

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BitRush is Part of FinTech Ecosphere

For 2015, KPMG said that $13.8 billion was invested in Fintech companies in North America alone. Seems like everyone is catching on! This is great news for consumers and business as better solutions and services are on their way from FinTech companies like BitRush (CSE:BRH, Frankfurt:0XSN). We truly believe in the power of competition and that it is the main force behind innovations.

Yes, it was a shameless plug, but what we have simply rocks! And yes, you can invest in us and join us on this awesome adventure ;) You can have multiple currencies in our BitRush Online Wallet at the same time, you can send it instantly around the world for less that any competitor we know of, you can exchange currencies for super low fees and you can pay with our soon to be released Bitrush Debit card anywhere Visa and MasterCard are accepted world-wide.

We hope that the world will become a better place with BitRush ;).