Since 2001, AuthenticID has been the pioneer and global leader of the identity authentication marketplace, supporting 192 countries, and a variety of uses, cases and industries. “AuthenticID is positioned to immediately help the blockchain community to make their crowdsale results AML and KYC compliant,” said AuthenticID Chief Evangelist, Blair Cohen.

AuthenticID announced today their intent to offer a cryptocurrency token sale this Fall. The whitepaper describing the token sale in greater detail is expected to be released by August 18, 2017. The AuthenticID token is part of a larger “Smart Identity” effort to give an array of options to people and businesses who have requirements to authenticate the identity of a person, usually initially with a government ID.

AuthenticID already offers solutions which are faster and easier than ID/password authentication, and extending these services to the blockchain community will enable both individuals and businesses to perform activities which are not easy, let alone automated, today.

The AuthenticID token will provide identity intelligence solutions for both on and off blockchain use cases, including solutions which provide mobile phone based identity authentication to meet anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) requirements. This will enable customers to convert cryptocurrency to fiat currency after a successful crowdsale. AML and KYC needs, and other factors in blockchain architecture, have inhibited or stalled adoption in industries such as healthcare and financial services. AuthenticID believes this token will be key to opening blockchain to wider use.

“The ability to properly qualify investors so that crowdsale proceeds can be exchanged to cash is as important as being in compliance with SEC securities regulations for an ICO or crowdsale,” said Andy Singleton of Maxos. “This is a real issue presently facing the blockchain community and AuthenticID provides both services today,” concluded Singleton.

While the AuthenticID tokens will be sold, the long-term vision AuthenticID has for embracing and extending the blockchain includes the development of an Open Source protocol for Smart Identity Contracts that manage identity trust in all transactions utilizing the integration of on-blockchain and off-blockchain data. Having a free option through Open Source will help the AuthenticID model become a widely accepted, and expected, standard for identity authentication.

“AuthenticID is positioned to immediately help the blockchain community to make their crowdsale results AML and KYC compliant,” said AuthenticID Chief Evangelist, Blair Cohen. “We are excited that this is the first piece of our Smart Identity offerings to roll out and we think our customers will be excited by their range of options as well as their flexibility,” added Cohen.

Today KYC compliance is an expensive and intrusive process costing $5B in North America alone. A manual process in the on-boarding pipeline acts as a bottleneck for growth, and its intrusive nature turns away a lot of users. The centralization of user identity information at a company website makes it an attractive target for identity thieves, and the regular theft of identity information from major financial and other services is a serious concern to users. AuthenticID is a leader in automated Identity verification. Using market-proven technology, AuthenticID can remotely and automatically verify possession and authenticity of official identity documents and, with biometrics and device-related factors, determine if the person on the ID document is actually present. In addition, AuthenticID enables proving verifiable claims, for example that the user is 18+ without having to disclose additional information such as the user’s date of birth. This enables the user to control exactly how much information is granted to any service he/she interacts with. Businesses can also store cryptographic proof that they did verify all legally required information for legal and audit reasons. Using decentralized identity and so-called “zero-knowledge” authentication enables AuthenticID to bring real-world identity to the blockchain, enabling blockchain apps to verify real world identities. This greatly expands the scope of blockchain applications to include services like Airbnb, which require real-world identity verification.

About AuthenticID

Since 2001, AuthenticID has been the pioneer and global leader of the identity authentication marketplace, supporting 192 countries, and a variety of uses, cases and industries. Visit http://authenticid.co/ for more information.