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This Upstart Cryptocurrency Exchange Is Making Inroads in Canada

This upstart cryptocurrency exchange is making inroads in canada

This Upstart Cryptocurrency Exchange Is Making Inroads in Canada

This upstart cryptocurrency exchange is making inroads in canada

Cryptocurrency and precious metals exchange Coinsquare is taking steps toward its goal of leading the cryptocurrency exchange market in Canada. On February 20, 2018, it announced a new partnership with Processing.com, after wrapping up a recent investment of $30 million, for a total $47 million raised in the last four months.

The partnership with Processing.com will allow Coinsquare to facilitate instant fiat currency payments of digital currencies for the general public through debit and credit card transactions.

In a release, Processing.com’s James Bergman said:

“We are very excited to partner with such a respected and fast-growing trading platform as Coinsquare. As digital currencies increasingly make their way into the mainstream conscious, service providers have a responsibility to ensure the broader public can access the rapidly growing blockchain ecosystem.”

Marketing Strategy

Besides increasing its Canadian market share, Coinsquare also has plans to move on to establishing new exchanges internationally, initially in the U.S. and the U.K.

Coinsquare CEO Cole Diamond acknowledges that he is continuing original owner Virgile Rostand’s marketing strategy of emphasizing Coinsquare’s Canadian foundations, with its economic and political stability and relatively light regulatory environment.

Diamond said: “Virgile Rostand, Coinsquare’s founder, was an early industry pioneer and blue-chip banking industry veteran. He built a custom platform that is unrivaled in Canada, boasting extremely high security standards.”

Coinsquare is also continuing Rostand’s unprecedented service to the French-speaking community.

In an interview with bitcoin Magazine, Diamond noted: “We are the only trading platform that we know of that has a French website. Five percent of our users view our website in French, and we have been commended for it and are proud of it.”

A recent review of exchanges by education website Blockgeeks, placed Coinsquare in the top 10 exchanges. Forex also reviewed Coinsquare and gave it a thumbs up.

Despite positive reviews, however, there have been some dissatisfied customers who have voiced concerns on social platforms and below the Forex review. Common complaints cite long wait times, lost funds, high fees and a non-responsive staff. Comments on other sites also mentioned an unclear fee structure and lack of customer support. Coinsquare has not responded to request for comment from bitcoin Magazine regarding these concerns.

Canadian compliance expert, Amber D. Scott, CEO of Outlier Solutions told bitcoin Magazine: “With price volatility and a massive influx of new clients, most exchanges are likely having some growing pains and Coinsquare is likely no exception.”

Diversification as a Priority

Coinsquare, based in Toronto, Canada, wants to diversify its business beyond cryptocurrency holdings.

The company already has its own mining operation with 2 MW of power and 1700 mining units in operation.

They are planning to invest in two more mines. Canada, particularly the province of Quebec, is attracting lots of interest from mining companies based on inexpensive electricity and cooler temperatures.

“Canada is about to become a central source,” explained Diamond in a recent interview with Global News. “I think there’s definitely a rush happening now. I think we’re going to have a significant amount of mining in the next few months.”

Trading precious metals is also a part of Coinsquare’s diversified holdings. They trade in silver coins and silver and gold bars.

Coinsquare is planning a Trading and Arbitrage division to take advantage of cross exchange and hedge opportunities.

Also in the works is the launch of CoinCap Funds, a group of funds focused on investments across the digital asset landscape.

Security

According to Coinsquare, they store 98 percent of their assets in cold storage and their trading platform is based on the same technology as that used by the NYSE.

While Bitfinex and Coinbase announced recently they are adopting SegWit, Coinsquare does not have any plans to follow suit just yet.“The decision to use Segwit is an ongoing discussion at Coinsquare and we are not for or against it at this time,” said Diamond.

Meanwhile, they are working on developing trading platforms for international markets and white labelling and licensing its technology for markets around the world.

Coinsquare offers trading in bitcoin, bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Dash, Dogecoin and Litecoin and has a special OTC service for those wanting to trade large amounts.

Scott is optimistic about the future for Coinsquare: “At this stage, Canada has taken a relatively light touch from a regulatory perspective. This has been a boon for exchanges like Coinsquare in many ways. They’ve been able to focus on managing their risks and building their business, rather than fitting into paradigms that weren’t built with them in mind.”

Published at Wed, 21 Feb 2018 21:02:03 +0000

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Second Life Creator Uses Blockchain Tech to Enhance New VR Gaming Experience

Second Life Creator Uses Blockchain Tech to Enhance New VR Gaming Experience

High Fidelity, a next-generation platform for virtual worlds currently in open beta, is the brainchild of Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life. Readers who don’t know what Second Life is are excused because it’s not on the media’s radar these days. But 10 years ago Second Life was often hailed as the Next Big Thing in social media.

In Second Life, players can create an avatar and explore a huge 3D virtual world created by the users themselves. The expectation was that the “Metaverse” imagined by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his cult novel Snow Crash (1992) would soon materialize and billions of users would flock to Second Life.

Therefore, a strong presence on Second Life would be a strategic need for all sorts of businesses and organizations, from online retailers and advertisers to universities and government agencies. This perception created a thriving Second Life development and consulting sector, and some companies (this writer owned one) made good money for a couple of years.

Then, Second Life faded into oblivion, sort of. In hindsight, the problem was that Second Life isn’t immersive enough (users don’t really have the impression of “being there”) and it is too difficult to master.

High Fidelity wants to change that by supporting highly immersive Virtual Reality (VR) interfaces, including VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, sensors for hand and body motion, and 3D audio. Rosedale hopes that a fully immersive 3D world, like the OASIS world described in a more recent cult novel (Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, 2011), will be both more appealing and easier to use than Second Life. For example, if you want to shake another avatar’s hand, you just do it, instead of having to remember a Ctrl-Alt-Something command.

Another important difference is that High Fidelity is much less centralized than Second Life, and it allows creators to host independent virtual worlds using their own equipment and infrastructure.

As for Second Life, it’s still there and business hasn’t entirely disappeared. While the big corporations and organizations are mostly gone or inactive, there’s a thriving virtual retail market for things like design avatars, virtual clothes, gadgets and prefabs. It’s small business, but some developers earn a living on the Second Life Marketplace. Of course, counterfeited and pirated virtual goods represent a problem.

Second Life virtual goods are priced in Linden dollars, a virtual currency fully integrated with the Second Life platform. Introduced long before 2009, the Linden dollar is not a blockchain-based cryptocurrency.

Now, Rosedale has a cryptocurrency in the works dubbed HFC for the High Fidelity Marketplace and a whole ecosystem including externally-operated servers. Contrary to the Linden dollar, which is only a payment means, the HFC will leverage blockchain technology’s ability to track transactions and ownership.

“We are getting ready to deploy blockchain software to create a new currency for virtual worlds, called HFC,” says Rosedale. “In addition to providing the basis for in-world transactions, the HFC blockchain will also be used to store information about the ownership of digital assets in virtual worlds. We plan to use this aspect of the blockchain to provide an open way to protect intellectual property by embedding certification, affirming item ownership into the blockchain.”

In another post, Rosedale provides more details on the intellectual property protection mechanisms envisioned for High Fidelity. “This system will work across an open network of many different servers, does not need to use ineffective DRM systems, and is not dependent on or controlled by any central agency (other than the initial first registration of unique assets),” he explains.

According to High Fidelity, the open, permissionless nature of the bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains cause limited throughput (transactions per second) and high transaction fees, which makes them unsuitable for HFC. Therefore, Rosedale’s team is developing a public but “permissioned” blockchain, where only a subset of trusted participants can verify transactions. It could be argued, however, that High Fidelity is being too quick in dismissing new scaling solutions that could lead to higher throughput and lower fees in the bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.

Rosedale notes that the Linden dollar, not based on a blockchain, shows remarkable stability in price, with much less volatility than blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. High Fidelity plans to achieve a similar stability “through active management […] voting, smart contracts and other mechanisms to regulate the monetary policy.”

The High Fidelity community is encouraged to provide feedback on HFC. “We’ve been discussing and getting feedback on these designs in our ongoing community meetings in High Fidelity,” says Rosedale.

More information is available on related discussion threads in the High Fidelity Forums.

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