Fri Dec 18, 2015 11:20 pm

Hello Johann and thanks for doing this AMA.

1) Which companies are Monetas´ main competitors in the industry? Blockstream? Lightning network? And why is Monetas a better solution?

What do you think about Chris Odom´s new company Stashcrypto.com? As far as you both use a similar technology, do you see each other as partners or competitors? Do you plan to work with Chris again in the near future?

the real secret of business success is not ideas, but execution

2) Could Monetas system help Bitcoin to scale? Bitcoin is able to process only 7 transaction per second now, how many tps is able to process the Monetas system? VISA handles on average around 2,000 transactions per second...

3) I´ve noticed that winning the Swisscom challenge included a trip to Silicon Valley and meetings with acredited investors. Did Monetas make any investment deals with big VC´s there or valious network relations for further deals?

4) The commercial launch targeted for March 2016 is only for Tunisia? When will the Monetas mobile app be available to download from Google Play or the App Store for any user in the world? After Africa, are you planning to launch in South America? When?

5) I think Crypto Valley is a very good idea. However I´ve seen that Shapeshift and Xapo don´t appear in the Digital Finance Compliance Association and in the Bitcoin Association Switzerland websites, are they active members in Zug or they just have their headquarters there and nothing else?

What iniciatives or actions do you all carry on to develop the CryptoValley as an important cluster in Europe?

6) Is it easy for Monetas to find good talent in Zug? Most of the brightest people of the world are working in Silicon Valley, how can you compete with them? Do you have a high rotation of employees in the company or the people you hire stay with you for years? I imagine that there is also a battle for the existing talent in the CriptoValley between Xapo, Ethereum, Shapeshift, ... and Monetas. However, are you partnering anyhow to push the industry forward together?

7) We almost hear everyday about some big companies (Coinbase, Circle, Xapo, Blockstream, Uphold, ...) in the news, but a very few information appears about Monetas. Is it because you´re keeping a low profile because you want or because you don´t work the PR and social media channels properly?

8) What´s your vision for Monetas and Bitcoin for the next 5-10 years from now?

Keep up with the good work!

You're welcomeAs I've said at several conferences since 2013, the cryptofinance space is a huge greenfield today. It's like the internet in the early nineties. Our primary concern today should not be about competition, but about nurturing more startups in this important and exciting space, building synergistic partnerships, and pooling resources towards common goals such as business-friendly regulations.Even if someone else started a business today with identical technology to ours, there are so many different ways to apply this technology that there is plenty of space for multiple companies using the same technology, without anyone stepping on anyone else's toes. We have far more inquiries from potential partners than we are able to service.Regarding competition, there's a popular misconception that business success depends on who has the best ideas / technology. Hence the obsession with "intellectual property" and patenting one's ideas so no competitor can use them. But the phenomenon of simultaneous invention shows that at any given time and place, particular ideas / technologies are usually widely available from multiple independent sources. In fact, if you walk into a Silicon Valley VC office with your bright idea and ask them to sign an NDA, they'll laugh at you and say they've probably heard your idea from at least twenty other people before you. They're far more interested in thethat's going to turn that idea into a successful business.In fact, the history of startups shows that a startup team will often start with one idea, then "pivot" in a different direction, often multiple times, until they evolve something that works well in the real world. And the thing that evolves is not an idea, or even a technology, but a complex, multifacetedthat's hard to capture in words, let alone copy. At the heart of this business process is a strong team that builds strong relationships with business partners and customers through quality products, excellent service, and ongoing innovation, which results in a strong culture and brand that distinguishes it from all other businesses. That's the real competitive advantage, and that's very difficult to copy.In short,Now looking at the cryptofinance space, one can distinguish two basic categories of technologies, which I've described in my Age of CryptoFinance talk linked in my intro post above:1. blockchain technologies (and probabilistic consensus systems more generally, which includes systems such as Ripple), and2. off-blockchain technologies (deterministic non-consensus systems) such as Monetas.The blockchain space is getting a lot of attention, but there is almost no attention being paid to the off-blockchain space in which Monetas operates. So we are not aware of any significant competition in our area and market strategy.Just to say again what I've said many times before,. A complete ecosystem needs both a, and an. Blockchain technologies provide secure digital asset storage, but they are not efficient. Off-blockchain technologies provide secure, efficient trading of assets. By integrating blockchain with off-blockchain technologies, we can have the best of both worlds.Yes, absolutely. The Monetas platform executes transactions about 1,000 times faster and 1,000,000 times cheaper than the Bitcoin network. And we have no upper limit for transactions per second. In fact, our technology is so efficient that we've calculated we can run the entire world's transactions – literally trillions of transactions – on a single tower of servers that's the size of a large refrigerator. And if you need to run more transactions, you just add more servers. So our technology is ideal for addressing transaction scalability. By integrating blockchains with the Monetas system, they can offer both secure storage of digital assets, and secure, extremely fast, extremely cheap trading of those assets with unlimited scalability. This way, you have a system that does not need to compromise on secure storage or efficient trading.We're an unusual company that innovates in every area – not just our technology, but also how we structure and operate the company, our business and market strategies, etc. For example, we like to keep things really simple, with healthy incentives that align everyone's interests in the same direction. I mentioned above that we have a single class of shares with identical rights for all shareholders. Most VCs, especially in Silicon Valley, like to structure complicated deals that give them special privileges over other, earlier shareholders. So Monetas does not fit the template approach of most VCs. It requires someone who is willing to think outside the box to really understand what we're doing and why. We're now in discussion with a large, prestigious Swiss VC whose values are closely aligned with ours. They are likely to take a substantial chunk of our next funding round.Yes, the March 2016 commercial launch is only in Tunisia. But it will be followed shortly afterwards by commercial launches in a series of additional countries starting in Q2/2016. By the end of 2016, we expect to cover more than 300 million people in Africa. We are in discussion with potential partners in Latin America and Asia but don't have any announcements as yet.We are planning to launch a global digital gold currency later in 2016 that will give access to the Monetas platform to any user in the world. The app will be available for download from Google Play and the Apple App Store.ShapeShift has already said they'll join the DFCA, and we've had early discussions with Xapo. We have a variety of initiatives to make companies aware of the benefits of locating in Zug, and we help them get set up here by introducing them to leading service providers, friendly local authorities, etc. We've trained local legal professionals, tax professionals, and local authorities on cryptofinance technologies and the importance these technologies hold for the future of Zug, Switzerland, and the world. We're doing the same with leading Swiss banks. In addition, we're actively working on creating a business-friendly regulatory framework for Switzerland, and some of our recommendations have already been written into law. Our efforts are increasingly being recognized at all levels in Switzerland and beyond.We have a hybrid team model that includes both offices and remote working arrangements. Half our team is based in Zug, the other half is distributed around the world. We hire the best people we can find, regardless of geography. We started Monetas to make the world better for people, and that includes the people inside Monetas – we put a lot of thought and resources into making Monetas a great place to work for our team. This includes important, challenging, interesting work, an open, participatory culture, supportive leadership, good salaries, attractive working environment, flexible hours and work-life balance, team events (we went skiing together last weekend), attending leading tech and industry conferences, opportunities for personal growth and development, and so on. We only really started building our engineering team in April 2014 when our CTO Muharem Hrnjadovic joined Monetas. We've built an awesome team culture since then, and are investing to make it truly great in years to come.There are different approaches. The Silicon Valley approach is to create a lot of sensation and use that attention to raise a lot of money before you even have a MVP. Then you use the money to build the MVP. Then you exit and start another company. The Swiss approach is rather more quiet and conservative. We prefer to build a real product with real customers before creating a lot of sensation. Now that our product is real, and we have real customers, you're going to hear more about us. But it's important to note that we're primarily a B2B company, not a B2C company. So our marketing strategy is focused more on partnerships than on consumer awareness. We have a white label strategy, so consumer awareness is primarily the job of our partners.Our primary focus for the next few years is rolling out our platform to the 3.8 billion unbanked and underbanked adults of the world. That's a huge market. When that strategy is well underway and we have the needed resources, we'll consider additional markets.Bitcoin's market cap is roughly USD 7 billion today. That's a thousand times less than the market cap of gold, which itself is a tiny fraction of global financial assets . Here's a great visualization:So Bitcoin's market cap needs to grow hundreds of times before it becomes a big player in the mainstream global economy and the price becomes more stable and is widely used as a unit of account. This will take years. There'll be more bubbles and crashes along the way.But ultimately, I'm sure cryptocurrency will win (whether that's Bitcoin or some yet-to-be-invented superior cryptocurrency). Because the laws of economics always win, and cryptocurrency is better in every way than traditional fiat and commodity currencies.