BlockNovum — January 2019 Update. Monthly update featuring news regarding…
By: Remo Kyburz
Tags: Switzerland, Investment Research, Research, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

Remo here from BlockNovum. I hope all of you had a great start into 2019!

I wanted to give you a brief overview about any relevant news around BlockNovum and a short summary of what happened in the crypto markets in January. Furthermore, I’ll share my favorite crypto & investing articles that I’ve read in the last few weeks and I’ll highlight some interesting projects that I came across.

To get future updates like this sign-up to BlockNovum’s newsletter.

Let’s get started.

📈BlockNovum & Market Updates

BlockNovum:

In addition to keeping up with all the crypto & blockchain related news, some of BlockNovum’s other activity highlights of the last few weeks include:

I was invited to attend Protos Asset Management’s Blockchain Summit at the Dolder Grand in Zurich on January 16th. It was a very high-quality event that featured interesting conversations about future trends within crypto. The list of outstanding guests and panelists included names such as Ryan Zurrer (Web3 Foundation, ex-Polychain Capital), Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner (Frankfurt School Blockchain Center), Dr. Boaz Barack (Numbrs, ex-UBS & CS), Dr. Christian Nagel (Earlybird VC), Fabian Vogelsteller (Ethereum / Lukso), among others.

Security tokens and investment regulations were some of the most trending topics for 2019.

Security tokens and investment regulations were some of the most trending topics for 2019. BlockNovum was selected to beta test a high-profile tokenized securities exchange platform. Very exciting stuff. More information to follow.

I had several interesting discussions with a few banks & corporates in Switzerland/Liechtenstein regarding BlockNovum’s research services and potential future collaborations.

As a result, I might be able to announce some exciting news soon.

Markets:

Crypto markets have been mainly flat for the past month with a slight downward trend nevertheless.

The last-minute postponed Ethereum hard-fork “Constantinople” scheduled for Jan 16th due to security concerns (revealed by Zurich-based blockchain security firm “ChainSecurity”) was one of the biggest news in the past month. The hard fork is now expected around February 27th.

Other handpicked news were:

The withdrawal and re-submission of VanEck-SolidX Bitcoin ETF in the US.

in the US. Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX reportedly lost $190 million of customers’ money after founder dies.

reportedly lost $190 million of customers’ money after founder dies. Aragon’s “Aracon” conference in Berlin attracted a large audience of over 500+ attendees and was one of the highest quality blockchain conferences lately, which shows that development activity and the enthusiasm in the crypto community is far from over.

“Aracon” conference in Berlin attracted a large audience of over 500+ attendees and was one of the highest quality blockchain conferences lately, which shows that development activity and the enthusiasm in the crypto community is far from over. Blockchain project Polkadot (interconnectivity and interoperability of different blockchains and Web 3 technology layers) is seeking to raise up to $60 million through a second token sale later this year.

🔍Recommended Reads

Find below a selection of articles that I recommend to read. Since we’re early in the year a common theme of these articles are predictions and trends for 2019:

💡Interesting New Projects

Here a few cool projects I came across and that might be worth keeping in mind:

Veil

Consumer grade front-end for Augur that is now ready for mainnet. I’m personally very interested in the real-world application of prediction markets and oracles, so this is great to see. Furthermore,since UX is often a key obstacle in the way for consumer-adoption, this is a big step forward.

Consumer grade front-end for Augur that is now ready for mainnet. I’m personally very interested in the real-world application of prediction markets and oracles, so this is great to see. Furthermore,since UX is often a key obstacle in the way for consumer-adoption, this is a big step forward. Another noteworthy project is Guesser, which is also another Augur front-end that just launched for a closed round of 1'000 users.

Staked

A “staking as a service” (I guess another type of “SaaS” ;) ) provider for institutional investors. This US-based service allows staking of selected cryptoassets, such as Decred, Tezos, or Dash.

A “staking as a service” (I guess another type of “SaaS” ;) ) provider for institutional investors. This US-based service allows staking of selected cryptoassets, such as Decred, Tezos, or Dash. Ledgy

Not a crypto project per se, but this is a very promising Swiss Fintech startup that I recently came across. Ledgy offers a SaaS accounting software for equity and ESOPs to startups and private companies. While similar solutions exist in the US, to my knowledge this is a very unique offering for the European marketplace. The impressive founding team consists of recent ETH graduates.

🚀Startup Data Entry

Based on the success of BlockNovum’s public Blockchain Startup Newcomer reports (Part 1 & Part 2), I heard some feedback that early-stage startups not yet listed on the map are interested in a way to let BlockNovum know about them & submit a short description.

As a result, if you are a founder of a new exciting startup (preferably Crypto, but I’m also interested in FinTech, Wearables, E-Commerce, Media, Gaming etc.) and would like BlockNovum to know about you / include you in upcoming research, feel free to send me the following at info@blocknovum.com :

Name of your startup + website

Industry

Short description of the company / your mission

Funding category (bootstrapped, VC, Token sale etc.)

Location (where are you based)

I will definitely have a look and include you in BlockNovum’s startup database, where you will also be considered for future research reports.

If the demand is big enough, I might also add a form where projects can automatically fill-in their data on BlockNovum’s website.

🙏 Thanks for your interest.

If you got this newsletter forwarded — Subscribe here.

If you are a subscriber and liked this newsletter, I’d appreciate if you could forward it to someone who would find it valuable.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me, if you’re interested in BlockNovum’s tailor-made investment research services or want to get access to future cryptoasset valuations.

I’m also happy to hear from you if you have any feedback or questions.

Best wishes,

Remo / Founder BlockNovum

About BlockNovum

BlockNovum is a Swiss Blockchain and Cryptoasset investment research & consulting firm. We provide professional assessments, fundamental valuations, and market research reports for the emerging asset class of cryptoassets & blockchain startups.

You can also find us on: Website, Twitter, LinkedIn