Tokyo (SCCIJ) – SBI Crypto Investment, a subsidiary of the Japanese financial services provider SBI Holdings, has invested in the crypto company Breadwinner AG. SBI Crypto Investment did not disclose how much it invested. The Swiss company is partnering with the best crypto-focused fintech companies worldwide to build the largest decentralized financial platform for businesses and consumers alike. Its smartphone-capable crypto-wallet BRD is available in 170 countries and has already been downloaded by almost 1.8 million users for Android and iOS. SBI Group is very active in the crypto industry and offers deposit opportunities for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP) on its own crypto exchange Vctrade.
Complicated initial coin offerings
Breadwinner’s goal is to facilitate the process of “initial coin offering” which is the creation and distribution of a virtual currency by making it a user experience as smooth as buying at Amazon or ordering an Uber car. “To create the optimal user experience, we first need to better understand how people use crypto in general and wanted to see what our users actually do with their assets,” the Swiss company said. Many of its users are so-called HODLers – people who are holding virtual currencies rather than selling them – who use Breadwinner as the most secure wallet to store their assets in the long term.
Breadwinner application on a smartphone
However, among people who actively use their assets, one of the most common use cases turned out to be participating in ICOs. One out of three users the Swiss interviewed had attempted to participate in an ICO. Breadwinner learned that very few people had positive experiences. The reason is that there are many steps involved – starting from setting up a wallet and move funds there, avoiding telegram scams, hacked websites, and mistakes when sending their funds, making sure to buy on time, with correct data and gas limits, receive or redeem your tokens and store them in a wallet. Currently these pieces are not connected in any way, and it’s entirely up to the user to figure out how to move through the process on their own.
Bridging the two sides
Breadwinner launched its own successful ICO in December 2017 and is intimately familiar with the painful process of both running an ICO and attempting to participate in an ICO from the end user’s perspective. Combining its own experience with what it has learned from users, the Swiss team created a process that integrates all the above steps into a single experience they are calling BRD Secure Checkout.
From the moment a potential participant clicks on the BRD Secure Checkout button on a partner ICO website, they are directed onto the Breadwinner’s website where they follow a simple flow from registration all the way through to actual purchase. After they buy, their tokens are automatically delivered to their BRD wallet.
No support for scams
Breadwinner’s goal is to create a platform that is as easy to use as PayPal or Stripe for both users and businesses. Just like putting a “Pay with PayPal” button on a website, ICO issuers who sign up to use the BRD Secure Checkout service only need to paste in a couple lines of code and the Swiss software takes care of the rest.
All ICOs that Breadwinner partners with are taken through a rigorous screening process by its business development team. The process includes interviewing the team, evaluating the white paper and business model, and other metrics. Some of its team members come from the VC world, and this is not dissimilar to what a venture capital firm would do in its due diligence. Its analysis does not predict the future success of the company, but the Swiss startup is careful to not offer its service to any project that appears to be a scam.
Text: SBI Holdings (translated by SCCIJ) and Breadwinner; Photo: SBI Holdings
