Hello

Some of you may have seen my previous posts about our new crypto exchange, Voltaire. Since I first publicly shared our plans to launch a BCH-paired exchange, we’ve been working tirelessly to make it a reality. It’s been an challenging five months of coding, designing and travelling the world. From sharing our vision with traders and investors, to consulting experts from across the globe, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all been on a heck of journey.

I’m glad to say we’re now a week away. In a matter of days you can start trading on Voltaire.

And we believe it will be a game-changer.

Just before we launch, it’s worth recapping what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

What?

Voltaire is an exchange built to appeal to early cryptocurrency adopters and fundamentalists alike. We do this primarily by integrating Bitcoin Cash as our base pair. We’re trying to drive crypto adoption by building utility in the currency. The exchange will offer zero trading fees for the first two months, and no fee trading for our first 100 users, forever. Voltaire is the first iteration to achieve our vision of daily, peer-to-peer electronic cash transactions.

Who?

We’re based in the heart of London’s startup scene: Shoreditch. I’m a young entrepreneur, involved in cryptocurrency since 2013. I’m joined by a team of prodigiously talented engineers, commercial-headed folks, operations heavyweights and a heck of a Creative Director. Over the coming months you’ll see and hear more about us — we have no intention of staying in the shadows. Voltaire will be a conversation between you — from traders, crypto-enthusiasts or newcomers — and the Voltaire team. That’s how we’ll make our exchange and this community better.

What have we been up to? The engineering team has been working tirelessly putting together the finishing touches to our Trading View. We’ve finalised the cryptocurrency engine. Our DevOps wizard Ian has been working his magic on infrastructure engineering to make sure our platform can handle demand. Jamahl (Head of Biz Dev) and I have been on the fundraising trail, speaking with potential investors from London to Hong Kong. We’re extremely excited about the potential partners that will fund our next stage of growth. More of that soon.

Sam (Creative Director) has been putting together our final website pages, press kits and designs to ensure Voltaire stands out as a beautifully designed product. Voltaire will reshape the look and feel of traditionally complex and clunky platforms. Aesthetics aren’t superficial. We passionately believe financial exchanges should be inclusive and accessible — so that means great to look at and easily understood.

I’ve spent a great deal of time with our Engineering and Security Leads Stephane and Konrad to make sure Voltaire is 100% watertight as a platform. Keeping your currency safe is paramount to us. That’s why we brought in expertise from a ‘Big Four’ firm to fully scrutinise and help shape our security measures across the business. To meet our own strict security standards — and future-proof the platform for regulators — we’ve completed 3 months of unit and end to end testing.

Why?

So why are we doing this?

We believe we’ve got a model and a philosophy that sets us apart. We’re a team driven by a shared vision: that is to see cryptocurrencies used for daily peer-to-peer transactions.

We believe cryptocurrencies can transform the financial system for the better. We want to see a fairer, open and more transparent global economy driven by the most revolutionary invention since the Internet (in our opinion). And it’s not Blockchain that’s the killer invention; it’s peer-to-peer, borderless payments.

Adoption is vital. That means ensuring trading, spending and accepting cryptocurrencies is practical and simple. We’ll provide value for traders from the moment we launch — zero trading fees.

We’re also going to play our part in building BCH as foundational cryptocurrency. And we’ll constantly push ourselves to innovate: realised through building a social media platform on Bitcoin Cash, adding support for new currencies and integrating fiat into BCH.

Crucially, Voltaire is about real people. We commit to being open in everything we do. The team and I will answer any questions you have on our platform or the wider trajectory of the company or industry.

With commercial success comes the opportunity to make a difference. We’ll use our resources and internal expertise to support, evolve and expand the BCH community. We promise to give a percentage of our profits to not-for-profit organisations that have a focus on helping the technology community.

Change comes from innovators with a mission. Voltaire will be a challenger brand in the truest sense. Our transparency, product, fee structure, market execution, consumer focus and insatiable drive towards adoption will underpin everything that we do.

Final Thoughts

Launching a financial exchange is a complex business with massive responsibilities. We don’t take this lightly and will always strive to create the most secure platform on the market. As the founder, I’ll ensure we navigate the fluid regulatory issues that will inevitably appear over the coming years.

It’s just the beginning. You’ll hear from us soon talking about the launch of the Voltaire Philanthropy program. You’ll see us shipping great product updates and features and expanding our team with world-class talent.

But for now, it’s all hands-on deck. Don’t forget to jump on the mailing list so we can keep you in the loop. We’ll be back in touch on launch day very soon.