After an action packed week in New York and dozens of meetings, we’re off to our next destinations. Daniel spent the last few days in Las Vegas at Money 20/20. You’ll be able to find me at DevCon3 in Cancun and in London November 8th-10th. We know we didn’t get to meet with everyone that reached out to us to meet, so please continue to message us your questions on Slack and email and we will do our best to respond to everyone.

Meet Bloom at DevCon3

I will be attending DevCon3. My schedule is filling up fast and I’ll only be at the event for the first three days.

I would love to meet as many people as possible, so please don’t hesitate to send me an email. If you can, please include as much information on your background and any specific context so that I can prepare for the meeting and make sure you’re looped into the right people at Bloom.

You can reach me to setup time at: Jesse@HelloBloom.io

In Case You Haven’t Seen It…

Press play on the video below!

We’re incredibly excited to distribute our 2 minute overview video. We put a significant amount of time trying to capture the core of Bloom in just a short video, please share widely and let us know your thoughts!

Community Spotlight:

CryptoSpark

This week we’re featuring a video by CryptoSpark. Crypto Spark highlights a number of key questions, dives deep into the background of the team, competitors, Thiel fellowship, Equifax and the protocol/token.

Take a look!

“Let’s get to know about the Bloom Team”

“What’s it like being in the Thiel Fellowship?”

“The Equifax Hack, Bloom. How do you see this?”

“Why do people even need credit?”

“What makes Bloom Unique / How does it compete in the market?”

“Would you say Bloom is the ‘Ethereum of Credit’?”

“How do you see the value of the token?

“It seems like you’re everywhere. Are you spending enough time developing?”

“How can people get even more involved?”

Bloom in TechCrunch

Bloom featured in Reputation category of TechCrunch’s Blockchain Ecosystem

We were pleased to see Bloom featured in Josh Nussbaum’s post on TechCrunch, “Mapping the blockchain project ecosystem”.

One person suggested that we might fit better in the “lending” category.

It may seem confusing on why Bloom was classified as “reputation” instead of lending. But this is actually the correct bucket. Bloom doesn’t lend any funds, instead lenders & financial institutions leverage Bloom. Think of Bloom as decentralized credit bureau / credit score, not a lender.

Have a podcast, blog, or write about the space? We would love to hear your feedback on some upcoming announcements.

We’ve launched our Subreddit!

We have over 4,000 people on Slack, tens of thousands of sign ups to our newsletter, and while we’ve been active on Reddit, we haven’t started building a community there.

Which is why we’re super happy to announce that we will be maintaining an official Subreddit.

Please subscribe to www.Reddit.com/r/bloomtoken and join in the conversation!

What Else is Happening?

Community: Last week we launched the new iteration of our public website, we published the launch video above, we continue to see incredible Slack growth, Reddit engagement and are working with a number of YouTubers to spread the message.

Development: We’re dialed into the development of the protocol. We’re on time and ahead of schedule to release the first live aspects of our protocol within the next 2–3 months.

Business Development: At this time, we’re deeply focused on relationship building with the community. We’ve had over 50 in person meetings, 100 calls, and more than 200 key partners have reached out. If you think you know anyone that might be valuable, don’t hesitate to send an email to Jesse@HelloBloom.io and Daniel@HelloBloom.io

Meetups: We just finished ETHWaterloo two weeks ago, New York last week, Money 20/20 this week. We have team members regularly meeting the community in San Francisco. You can find us at DevCon3 in Cancun November 1st and in London November 8th.

In the News

China is launching a new “social credit system” that influences someones credit score based on their political affiliation, purchasing habits, public opinions, and support of the government.

Wired posted an excellent read on the topic here.

“A futuristic vision of Big Brother out of control? No, it’s already getting underway in China, where the government is developing the Social Credit System (SCS) to rate the trustworthiness of its 1.3 billion citizens. The Chinese government is pitching the system as a desirable way to measure and enhance “trust” nationwide and to build a culture of “sincerity”. As the policy states, “It will forge a public opinion environment where keeping trust is glorious. It will strengthen sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, social sincerity and the construction of judicial credibility.”

How does it work?

It’s Amazon’s consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist,” is how Johan Lagerkvist, a Chinese internet specialist at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, described the social credit system. Rogier Creemers, a post-doctoral scholar specialising in Chinese law and governance at the Van Vollenhoven Institute at Leiden University, who published a comprehensive translation of the plan, compared it to “Yelp reviews with the nanny state watching over your shoulder”.

The article continues:

Posting dissenting political opinions or links mentioning Tiananmen Square has never been wise in China, but now it could directly hurt a citizen’s rating. But here’s the real kicker: a person’s own score will also be affected by what their online friends say and do, beyond their own contact with them. If someone they are connected to online posts a negative comment, their own score will also be dragged down.

Follow the direct sources:

As we’ve been iterating, no token sale has been announced yet.

Please follow:

Our newsletter (www.hellobloom.io) Our twitter (www.twitter.com/bloomtoken) Our blog (blog.hellobloom.io)

From a security standpoint, this is critical. Any major announcement will be posted on those official outlets. You should cross check all sources. Be extremely skeptical of Slack. We will not DM you for funds.

If you have not followed all the outlets above, you’re at an increased exposure to scammers and hackers. Please take the 30 seconds for your added security.

Beware of Scams:

To reiterate and add on the above: we received a couple of reports from community members that fraudsters were falsely claiming that the Bloom team is collecting funds. These are scams.

How can you stay secure?

Do not send funds to any Ethereum address claiming to be the Bloom team: We have not announced a token sale yet. We are not collecting any funds. Any announcements will be posted on our Blog, on our Website and on our email newsletter. We will never cold message you directly on Slack instructing you to send funds to any address. Join our newsletter for the most direct information: To further reduce any chances of getting scammed, please join our newsletter. This, along with the blog/website, will be the primary sources of official announcements. Be very weary of Slack, even if it appears to be coming from us. You can join the newsletter here: https://hellobloom.io/ Double Check: Our Blog URL is https://blog.hellobloom.io/ — At any point, if you are wondering if we have announced a token sale or anything similar, just check the blog. Message Us: The team is always available on Slack and if there are any concerns, please message us directly. If you notice a potential scammer, please let one of the team members know.

Ways you can help: