BraveNewCoin: Bitcoin, Blockchain And New Technologies Analysis Company, Raises $400K On BnkToTheFuture In The First Week

BraveNewCoin (BNC), a cryptocurrencies technology analysis website, raised $400K in the first week on the BnkToTheFuture global online investment platform. The added capital will allow BNC to increase its services both to the website viewers and to subscribers.

Brave New Coin, funded in January 2014 is a Data and Research company focused on the Blockchain and Digital Equities industry. By collecting, indexing and building reports on countless digital assets with their market and industry activities they help developers and investors make their choices when building infrastructures or support for digital currencies. The BNC data-engine “taps into every exchange on the planet, tracking the new Asset-Class of Digital Equities”, as stated in the campaign page.

Simon Dixon, CEO of BnkToTheFuture is excited about this fund raising round and believes the work of companies like BNC is fundamental for the development of this industry:

“Financial media is a sector that investors find hard to understand. After all most investors don’t know the business models behind how data gets to Bloomberg and Reuters, they just know that there is big business behind it. Big Data is a complicated sector for investors to understand. Combine Big Data with the Blockchain and you have a very interesting opportunity that is very attractive to a certain type of niche investor. We were delighted that our online investment platform had that exact niche of investors that resulted in BraveNewCoin getting very close to their minimum funding goal of $500k within the first week. It has been popular with our online investors and it looks like it will be passing the minimum funding goal shortly. The sector is going to need a reliable big data provider for Blockchain feeds and many of our investors believe BraveNewCoin may just be the one.”

We reached out Mr. Fran Strajnar, BNC CEO, and asked about the future of the company:

CT: Where will you be putting the funds in the beginning?

Fran Strajnar: New capital will go mainly towards getting more products to market & driving sales. This includes more developers, and sales support resources. We are sitting on a mountain of data and we would like to unlock its value by bringing Reports, API's & Developer tools to the marketplace faster. It is clear that there is plenty of demand for what we do, especially in the last few months as both main street and Wall Street have started jumping on board in a big way.

CT: What functions will be added to the website?

FS: The website is being redone to meet our vision of creating a simple and elegant hub for resources, tools & products. So far it's been an extensive project. It will be rolled out in stages. Think of CB insights meets Bloomberg. There will be more and more items to unlock as a free user over time. Logical items like a user panel to manage subscriptions & settings, through to more intuitive options to make content relevant. This is all the aesthetic components which will be layered on the framework of the new site but our main focus is to build a great UX for our revenue driving products. We will feel much less 'news' in the coming weeks & months.

CT: What research and what services will be created for subscribers?

FS: We are building what I'm simply referring to as 'the library'. This is a collection of industry reports, white-papers, reference papers and various other industry resources. We are also deep in research on 'Blockchains Trends', 'Blockchains for Banks' and Seasonal Reports that focus on different topics every quarter.

CT: How do you see the trend in Bitcoin evolving over the next 10 years? (I hope this isn’t a subscribers-only information!)

FS: Hah - no! Our mission is to give a ton of valuable information for free. We will have paywalls on premium items.

As for Bitcoin, it’s working out just as I expected. We started building resources to track consumer adoption of the currency back in very early 2014 and before we spent too much time on it, I realized that bitcoin as a currency is not going to replace any national currency anytime soon.

People quickly forget that Bitcoin is 4 things at the same time:

A Currency A Store of Value A Payment Protocol A piece of clever software

All at the same time. Considering the price fluctuation from 2010 through to 2014, it was clear that bitcoin as a currency competed against Bitcoin the value-store, Bitcoin the protocol and Bitcoin the software, for which will make it to mainstream first. Therefore it was safe to assume that bitcoin the currency was not guaranteed to be the immediate adoption winner and could potentially take some time to enter the mainstream. The infrastructure would need to be built first. This is exactly what we have been seeing with over one billion USD invested primarily into what can be considered infrastructure companies. Now we are seeing non-currency applications of Blockchain technology spreading like wildfire. By non currency I mean everything from settlement solutions to securing personal medical records and creating brilliant new identity management solutions.

What I expect to happen next is a formation of protocols and standards, something I have written about often, in the past three months especially. Parts of this protocol and standards formation, we are already seeing today with the like of R3 CEV, Ripple Labs and others. From here I anticipate that we will have various Blockchains and protocols for the specific vertical use of distributed ledgers in general, that will split the industry into key application based categories.

During the next 5-7 years we will see a mass migration of trade and documentation to Blockchain powered solutions. Meanwhile Bitcoin the currency becomes more valuable because Bitcoin the Blockchain becomes more valuable. I can make the bold statement that not everything will be on the Bitcoin Blockchain and for good reasons. But compared to now, there will be a thousand fold more applications running on the Bitcoin Blockchain within 5-7 years, rendering the original Blockchain more and more useful as a network. This will result in a few more booms and busts in the price of Bitcoin but inevitably Bitcoin will simply become too-big-to-fail and with that you can be all but assured that its market value will make the current price look like a clearance sale.

Even if bitcoin explodes in price over the next 1-3 years, I do not believe that Bitcoin the currency will be stable enough or convenient enough to go through what can formally be described as mass adoption. I do believe this to be likely in less stable geographies but more like 5-7 years from now as further stability and infrastructure has to first mature to support stability which in turn pacifies volatility concerns and all of that simply takes time.

Ten years from now, the first trillion dollar company will be a middleware solution. The one that realizes today that networks always end up demanding inter-operability. The main reason BNC has been predominantly sitting on the sidelines, quietly working on our infrastructure, until recently, is because we realized that no matter what Blockchain we're dealing with, there's almost always a token component worth tracking. Either a token or smart-contract, we will see billions of assets registered on the Blockchain, some publicly traded, some privately. Solutions that can track, report and integrate the new economy into existing legacy systems, will be far more valuable than people realise.

CT: Do you have a stance on Altcoins? Is there one (or more) that are favorably impressing you at the moment?

FS: Unless an Altcoin 'does' something and does it in a way that does not require Bitcoin's massive network effect, there is little point in its existence.

Example of altcoins that do something: any coin that represents a share certificate or is tied to real-world value. This can be an Altcoin, a NXT asset, next generation Blockchain - it doesn't matter. There will always be arguments that these assets could be tokens on bitcoin or NXT or some other platform - the point is that these are representation of real-world value and immediately get the first tick in my book.

The second requirement I have is inter-operability. Can this Altcoin do something with something else? Is it a fuel for a service like Storj, Maidsafe or Ether?

Outside of that, it's worth noting that altcoins are getting blurred with the rise of 2.0 and now 3.0 platforms as well as the complexity and commodification of smart-contracts.

I do not hold a favorite.

CT: What is your opinion about large projects like Ethereum and NXT? Do you think they could revolutionize the internet and are they competing with each other?

FS: I think they already are. It will be a race to create a network effect. Bitcoin did not have competition when it was invented. Each of these 3.0 platforms like Ethereum and NXT are to some extent competing with each other. However, for a long time they won't really be competing because for the next 3-5 years the world is more than big enough to feed each of these platforms what will feel like endless demand. Ultimately, as I mentioned earlier, these networks will demand inter-operability, especially as they start to spill over onto the real world and virtual world through VR tech and IoT. This is where lines will get blurred and things become very interesting.