With the gold rush of crypto, it is no wonder that the people selling the shovels make the most money. In the Bitcoin world, this is the miners and chip manufacturers that are making a killing.
In the broader crypto world, it is the exchanges that trade these cryptos. After all, an exchange gets a small fraction of every trade, no matter whether the market is going up or down. Literally billions of dollars are traded today on crypto exchanges, with volumes rivaling those of NYSE and NASDAQ. That’s serious money, and we are no where near peak adoption.
However, one big problem with the crypto exchanges has always been trust. Decentralized exchanges are far from production ready today, and therefore have very little trading volume. However, with centralized exchanges there is always the fear and risk of something going wrong. After all, many storied exchanges have failed outright and taken user’s money with them (Cryptsy, Bter, Mintpal … the list goes on). Also, as the space matures, it needs more regulated exchanges that are doing things the right way, and not the amateurish way. Regulators are also keeping an eye out on this space, and will step in if they see too much misconduct.
Enter GBX
With this backdrop, let’s look at GBX. GBX stands for Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange. It is building a truly institutional grade crypto exchange and ICO platform.
ICOs raised over $3.5 billion in 2017. Let that sink in for a moment. This is an industry literally born a few years prior, and the amounts raised used to be in the order of a few million dollars a year. ICOs have seen an incredible amount of growth. Even as the hype grows, new ICOs haven’t really stopped much. It has become a problem of discoverability of course – it is hard to separate the signal from the noise. How do investors find new ICOs? This has become a big challenge amidst the scams.
With an ICO platform like the one GBX is building, investors can be more confident that there has been some level of due-diligence already performed. Plus, some of the basic functionalities, like keeping the funds safe, would likely be more reliable with GBX than with each ICO by themselves. ICOs will also find a one single place to list. GBX can really build up a network effect here if it can attract enough popular ICOs and investors on the same platform. This way, investors can find new ICOs new ICOs can find investors easily.
This will benefit projects in other ways too. With regulation catching up, some ICOs need to do basic AML/KYC operations (Anti-Money Laundering/Know Your Customer) on the investors. This is hard to do for individual projects. There is also a lot of sensitive data collection and storage requirements that small teams are not very good at. If they can use an overarching service like GBX for this, they can raise money from investors without that point of friction.
Finally, GBX has its own token called the Rock Token (RKT). This is an access token, which is required for new project listings for projects and early access to ICOs for investors.
RKT is currently undergoing a token sale. If you’re interested to learn more, check out their website. If you want to invest, make sure to read their whitepaper.
Photo Credit: Agent Smith