On a recent trip to Tokyo, Japan I attended the Startup Token tour featuring some up and coming players in the Crypto and Blockchain space. I will not be covering each speaker at the event, just a few who caught my attention and seem to be gaining a lot of traction. These are Pesabase, Energimine, and Dether.

Pesabase

The first person I met at the event was Nhial Majok, CEO of Pesabase. Pesabase aims to bring low cost remittance, payments and banking for Africa. One of the first things that caught my attention was that they are teamed up with OmiseGo. If you have not heard of OmiseGo, please read this short article I wrote about it here. Given the fact that Vansa Chatikavanij, managing director of OmiseGo is on board is huge. Nhial is a former tech leader at IBM which gives him additional leverage as CEO. As far as Pesabase goes, it describes itself as a remittance, payment, and banking e-wallet solution that uses OmiseGO and Ethereum blockchain to provide financial simplification and inclusion in Africa. Some of the key benefits are that no bank account is needed, simple token based reserves across the platform, cheap customer payments for small to large businesses across Africa, instant settlement pickup and deposit cash at all agent locations, loyalty programs for consistent users.

Pesabase offers Three products: “Coinremit” remittance, which is a stable source of income for most Africans. “Bithela” Bitcoin exchange, which simply aims to be a major exchange for trading Cryptocurrencies in Africa. “Pesabase” the multi-currency ewallet. I liked the presentation about Pesabase and believe it has the ability to gain traction in African markets. Given that OmiseGO is aligned with their project is major.

Energimine

Sitting next to me at the event was CEO of Energimine Omar Rahim. His company aims to decentralize global energy markets by rewarding energy efficient behavior. Energimine has a strong team and powerhouse advisors such as Lord Rupert Redesdale, who has an extensive history in the energy sector as spokesman for energy in the House of Lords. Eddy Travia, who I also spoke to at the event, a pioneer investor in blockchain startups and CEO of Coinsilium, a London based venture builder, Yacine Terai, founder of Startup Token.

Some facts about Energimine: It is a fully functional commercial entity based in Manchester, UK. Customers include one of the largest law firms in the world, one of Europe’s largest fuel retailers, and the UK’s biggest independent construction materials group. The company also actively manages $140m worth of energy on behalf of it’s large industrial commercial customers. They also use AI & Deep Learning which lead to more enhanced insights. This will be the key feature in Energimine’s launch.

Energimine is aligned with some powerful names and is already established in the UK. I see this as a very promising project in the energy sector.

Dether

Lastly, Dether. Dether aims to solve a simple problem, trading Ethereum. Currently, most people are limited to Coinbase as an entrypoint. What I like about Dether is that it currently has a platform that has been built unlike a lot of projects in Crypto which are just Whitepapers and ideas. The company was founded by Abdelhamid Benyahi and Mehdi Amari who both have experience in the Blockchain space. They are also advised by Eddy Travia, Blockchain pioneer investor, Yacine Terai, founder of StartupToken and William Mougayar, Toronto based investor and author of “The Business Blockchain”.

The goal of Dether is “Ethereum mass adoption in the world”. Given the fact that Dether already exist and has a user base is huge. I agree with the co-founder regarding the purchase of Ethereum and some of the difficulties obtaining it for new and less tech savvy people in the space. It allows another avenue for people to purchase Crypto in a less centralized way. I think Dether will continue to grow and we should be seeing a larger user base in the years to come if it can continue it’s progress forward.