During the 12+ hours I’ve spent consuming every resource available surrounding Bitquence, I’ve spent a long time thinking about what the opening line of this article would be…
This seems to be the most apt one :)
Although there is plenty of information available about Bitquence, most reviews offer limited information or are created for the sole purpose of getting people to sign up through their referral code, giving the authors 5% of tokens you purchase. Despite having purchased a decent chunk of BQX tokens, I will NOT be posting my referral code in this article to prove to you that the main goal of this article is to be informative. I want anyone considering to invest into this project to have all the information they need in one place, period.
If you've never heard of Bitquence, watch this first:
I started getting passionate and excited about Bitquence for a variety of reasons, the main one being that it is in alignment with my strongest desire which is to spread the use of cryptocurrencies to the masses. Blockchain technology has the power to make a massive positive impact on the world, significantly decreasing the inequality between the rich and the poor and giving the power back to their rightful owners - the people!
At it’s heart, Bitquence was created to fulfill the philosophical mission of our crypto grandfather, Satoshi Nakamoto, which is to democratize blockchain technology by making it easy and safe to use and accessible to anyone, including your skeptical parents, your technologically challenged granny and even your tail chasing semi-retarded dog.
Let’s face it, investing and transferring cryptocurrencies is a daunting and arduous process which no-one should go into without significant research. This is a problem which desperately needs solving if we’re going to see wide scale adoption of the technology.
So is Bitquence the platform which is going to solve this?
I’m skeptical by nature so I conducted an interview with the founder, Shingo Lavine, in order to get him to answer tough questions such as the following (and many others)
What makes you a great fit for the CEO of the project compared to other team members? What would you say to people who say you are too young to be the CEO of a project like this with many other older and more experienced team members?
You are the CEO of a company in which your dad is working. Have you both worked together on projects before? Do you foresee any potential issues?
Several of the team members of the Bitquence team including yourself were involved in Funmobility, with Dennis being a key player there. Are you all still working on Funmobility?
I will be posting within the next 24 hours, so follow me here on Steemit to stay updated about that.
As for now, below you will see an overview of the features of Bitquence, an overview of the team and the community, many screenshots of relevant conversations in their Slack chat and finally my conclusion with the pros and cons of this project.
NEXT GENERATION UNIVERSAL DIGITAL WALLET
When I first heard this as being one of their main features, I was skeptical to say the least. How are they going to make something better than what is currently on the market?
However it was the picture below from their whitepaper outlining the features of their wallet compared to ones on the market now which got me sold:
In addition to offering the many great features we have come to expect from our hot wallets they also have cold storage, asset allocation (see Dynamic Asset Allocation below) and bulk trades. This means that not only will users funds be more safer than in traditional wallets but that it will also be cheaper to trade between currencies within the wallet due to the bulk trades that Bitquence performs.
Another key strength of their wallet which is in alignment with their goals of bringing their product to the masses is the focus on a user friendly interface. Their team has extensive experience when it comes to mobile applications & mobile micro transactions (see Team section below) so they are well prepared for creating a mobile wallet with the best UI and UX on the market for cryptocurrencies.
They want to do for cryptocurrency what Apple did for mobile phones - make it attractive and easy to use for the masses - something which the cryptocurrency market is in desperate need of.
Their ambitions do not end there though as they also want to become the go-to platform for all currencies by enabling fiat gateways as well as offering users the ability to send funds simply using a phone number as demonstrated here:
DYNAMIC ASSET ALLOCATIONS AKA BASKETS/COLLECTIONS
This feature allows users to seamlessly invest into a diversified set of cryptocurrencies within the wallet platform with one click, providing a number of benefits (detailed on Page 10 of the whitepaper:
Risk Diversification - New adopters of cryptocurrencies can diversify their portfolio with one click to decrease overall risk
Accessibility - Make purchasing a wide variety of currencies as easy as 1-2-3.
Community expertise - Benefit from experts all weighing in on the fundamentals of a coin, providing summarized investing advice to newcomers
Low Cost - Fees will be less than 1% and will even adopt the high-water mark so you don’t pay performance fees unless you profit from investments
Time Savings - Save time and stress managing multiple wallets with many keys
Some examples of Asset Locations include Big Cap Coins (coins with $1B+ in market cap), Privacy Coins (PIVX, MONERO etc) and Cloud Computing Coins (e.g. GOLEM, SIACOIN etc.) Users can also manually edit their asset allocations to add higher or smaller %’s of their desired coins.
Watch how this feature plays out in the product which they have already created for mobile devices (not available to the public yet) in this YouTube video:
Looks pretty slick if you ask me.
COMMUNITY CONSENSUS RISK PROFILES
This was one of the most exciting features for me. BQX token holders will be able to stake the outcome of a coin (e.g. that it will go up by 25% within a one week period) and get rewarded based on how many BQX tokens they stake and how accurate their prediction was. Of course they will also lose some of their stake if their prediction is wrong.
The great part is that this information will be publicly available so anyone can piggyback the predictions of these stakers by buying/selling the specified coins. Unlike traditional communities where leading figures may “promise” that they will HODL, stakers are putting their money where their mouth is for everyone to see and benefit from. Win Win for everyone.
Here is a video showing how it works:
Read about other components of how the Bitquence Platform by checking out the Liquidity Network and the Cold Storage & Security in the white paper.
THE TEAM
I think that the importance of communities and teams are underestimated when people invest in new blockchain projects which is why I set out to gain as much information as possible about the team. I was happy to see that unlike many blockchain projects out there, there was a bio for each team member on the main website. Shingo informed me that himself, Dennis, Lincoln, Adam and Pete are working full time on the project while the other team members provide mostly advisory roles.
The most striking thing about the team you may first notice is how young Shingo is. However when you consider how skilled of a leader he must be to have pulled together such an experienced team of people older than him, it becomes clear that he is far from the average 20 something year old entrepreneur. It is also worthy to note that he co-founded Jobs University, a successful venture with over 20,000 unique students from which he's earning passive income.
The team is highly qualified for the job of bringing this project to life. They include the likes of Yu-Jen Dennis Chen who was CTO at Funmobility which generated applications that managed over $1B in mobile micro transactions.
Then there is Maurice Herlihy who is a world class Ethereum smart contracts expert with a dizzying array of academic achievements, just one of them being a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT.
Adam Lavine has built dozens of mobile products for Fortune 100 U.S. companies, holds several patents and served as Chair for the MMA’s Mobile Standards Committee, defining industry standards for the multi billion dollar mobile compliance segment.
With almost three decades of experience, Lincoln Lydick has become an award winning engineer and mobile visual experience designer. He was also the lead architect behind FunMobility DXP which was used for campaigns by brands such as Pepsi and Chiquita.
Pete Rodgers is an IT, security and data center specialist with years of experience maintaining carrier-grade global applications for clients including Verizon, Sprint, Metro PCS, AT&T, GLobe and U.S. Cellular.
Furthermore Bitquence also have relationships with Morrison & Forrester, a world-class legal firm that specializes in financial services and regulation signed on to represent Bitquence. Relationships such as these will be crucial when it comes to expanding in the US and including fiat currency gateways.
Further team members include Aiko Numora, Ken Nowak, Freya Stevens and Kevin Saechew. You can read about all the team members by watching this YouTube video, checking out the bios of the team on the website, or by simply talking to them directly in the Bitquence Slack chat.
COMMUNITY
Bitquence have setup the common community channels such as Reddit, Slack, Telegram, Twitter and Facebook and have someone around the clock answering people’s questions including Shingo himself. As of now they have 458 Slack members, 388 Telegram members, 1834 followers on Facebook and 4811 followers on Twitter.
If you have specific questions for team members who are not in the Slack chat to answer them, simply message @Bitquence (that’s Shingo) on Slack to get the answers you want.
I was happy to discover that Shingo was very willing to answer the tough and grilling interview questions, the answers to which I will post shortly.
I took the liberty of taking a number of screenshots from the Slack chat, shown below.
Pro Tip: Use the search bar in the Slack chat to jump to a specific conversation
When will the platform be released?
What is your service in 2 sentences?
No Git Repo and not much marketing
Why the price may rise a lot very quickly
What will you do with the funds raised upon receipt?
How does the exchange work? Will there be a fiat gateway?
Investing safely
Dennis and Maurice
Just something I found amusing from the Telegram channel :)
RESOURCES AND PRESS RELEASES
11min video interview with Shingo Lavine, CryptoFizz interview, InvestInIt interview
Bitcoin.com paid press release, Bitcoin Insider paid press release, NewsBTC paid press release
Suppoman's Facebook Page - he is one of the main crypto personalities who is strongly promoting Bitquence and he has a lot of fans who are excited about the token too.
CONCLUSION
One crucial consideration for any project is “What is the problem they are solving and is this problem a big one?”
It’s clear that the cryptocurrencies market faces a big problem which hasn’t been adequately solved. Everyone within the community believes that blockchain technology has huge potential but attracting people from outside of the community to adhere to this vision has proven difficult for one simple reason which is that everything related to buying, trading understanding and storing cryptos is so damn complicated and cryptic, pun intended!
As you can see from the illustration below, cryptocurrencies have an enormous potential and when considering that 20% of the $20 trillion USD S&P are made up of financial services companies, it is clear that as cryptocurrencies continue to gain traction, Bitquence will have the opportunity to play a key role in bringing cryptos to the masses.
The next important question is whether or not the Bitquence team have what it takes to solve this problem. While Shingo himself does not have the most impressive resume, it distracts from the fact that he was capable of recruiting a team of world class talent with diverse and relevant skillsets relating to the product they are creating. Those types of leadership and recruitment skills are paramount to the success of this extremely ambitious project.
It is somewhat concerning that Shingo is completing his computer science studies in conjunction with leading the Bitquence project of which some of the other team members also still involved with FunMobility. Still, it seems to me that this is the case for several other existing blockchain ventures and after having talked to and interviewed Shingo personally, my gut feeling is that he will do everything in his power to make Bitquence a success.
At the time of writing, they have raised 10,500 ETH which is double the minimum threshold needed to operate for two years but far from the hard cap of 150,000 ETH which are offered in the tokensale. This seems to me like a sweet spot for anyone considering investing since the project has gained just above the minimum that they need but they could still use more funds in order to significantly accelerate their roadmap. Not only that but their token distribution is reasonable and transparent and as @jtrader111 from the Slack chat pointed out in one of the Slack chat pictures above, the value of the token has the potential to grow much higher due to the artificially high market cap created by the 40% of tokens reserved for the liquidity network.
That being said we are currently in a bear market and since they do not yet have a product available for use by the public, it may not be wise to purchase this token with the hopes of huge payoffs in the very short term. This will be one to HODL until they release their product for the public to use in 3 to 5 months.
Overall I think this is a project which has the team, resources and leadership skills to potentially resolve a huge pain point which I have experienced personally and I’m excited to follow their development.
Disclaimer:
I wrote this review out of my own volition, it was not endorsed or altered by the Bitquence team.
I have invested a decent chunk into this project.
Please don’t treat this article as investment advice and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
PS. Feel free to contact me if you also do extensive analyses on blockchain projects and wish to connect.