May 01, 2018.
A majority of the people in the world aren’t going to wake up tomorrow and begin using cryptographically secure wallets to hold their personal wealth, nor are they going to switch to using tokens as a mechanism for all exchange.
Written by Chris Herd - Originally published at this link.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t — it simply appreciates the difficulty in getting people to switch from a system they know even when the alternative is a lot better. These things take time but that shouldn’t stop us sprinting towards that future as fast as we can, or trying to lead others there with us.
At Nexves we are imagining the future and building the products and services we need to get there. We believe humanity should begin climbing the ladder now to receive the benefit of technology that currently exists as well as those that are coming. We need “money” to survive — but we must seek innovative products, services and platforms that allow us to save as much as possible, expanding our wealth instead of allowing it to remain dormant. The internet has enabled access to excess capacity on an unprecedented scale — just look at Uber and Airbnb, and we believe this model is equally as applicable to money.
We need to make our money work for us
The reason for this is clear. Banks have exploited us for too long, they have gambled with our money and cost us a fortune. The reward for warehousing our capital in these institutions is derisory. Interest rates on our savings are borderline offensive but little has changed in 100's of years. Banks still make unimaginable profits by putting our money to work for them. Why shouldn’t we benefit equally, or more so, than those using our money to get rich?
At the same time, money isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. You‘d think that because a currency is tied to a Country it means something. The reality is that money hasn’t been anything but a collective belief in the myth of value for nearly 100 years. The day the Dollar was divorced from the value of gold, no currency in the world was underpinned by a commodity or asset.
$19million was recently transferred internationally for a fee of $0.40 cent. Banks are terrified. For centuries they have monopolised the transfer of wealth, taking a cut of every exchange with no possible way to avoid it. Even using the most efficient transfer service of today would cost over $100,000.00 in Traditional Money.
At the same time, you are unable to participate in asset classes reserved for the Richest 1%. The reason for this is that ‘Sophistication’ rules determine who can invest in what. We don’t think this is fair, and as long as there is a diversified portfolio of assets why shouldn’t everyone be able to enrich themselves more efficiently? That’s what we are building at Nexves
- Money wants to be digital and free, the problem is being tied to 70's technology means it’s impossible to achieve this with traditional money.
- Relying on central Banks policy leaves us at the whims of government who can devalue our money whenever they want (quantitative easing). They already have during the 2008 Financial collapse.
- Inflation contributes to this problem. Money becomes worth less year by year, it’s the reason the price of the Freddo has risen so enormously. This doesn’t affect governments, it is a mechanism used to enrich them.
- Money wants to be free, why should I give up anything when I simply want to transfer you money? Just because something has been a certain way for a long time doesn’t mean it’s the right way to do things now.
We now have the technology to change our path to the future
Whether we choose to take it is up to us. The future is invented by those who have the boldest vision of what it can become and who relentless persevere in pursuit of its realisation. This is the future we are trying to realise at Nexves.
To realise it we need you to see it and help us shape it — Join us
Steps to realising this future
To begin doing so we must reinvent what money is and our expectation of what an account should offer. We must create a central focal point, which enables innumerable spokes of services to extend from it. The limiting factor of what can be achieved by this should be the depth to which we can imagine a better future. The central hub becomes the key to enabling trust on the internet on an unprecedented scale, without the need to divulge identities. The ability to conceal your identity online is critical to enabling certain actions, but it should not provide a cloak for impunity.
The easiest ramp to participation is an account which resembles the one you currently use as closely as possible. This removes any perceived barriers while endowing you with the technology necessary to begin participating in this new world. Where you place your money in the account, it remains yours forever, with no risk of loss. What this acts as is the mechanism to create a new currency. Proof-of-savings acts as a form of ‘mining’ to endow you with something which becomes a tangible asset. Your actions can be measured and used to earn additional tokens. For this to be appealing there must be an incentive or collective belief that the tokens you receive will be worth something in the future, or that there will be a market for exchange. Simultaneously, that belief isn’t 100% necessary. If you hold the tokens you will receive payment on them each time there is a liquidity even.
Stage 1 — Asset-Backed Digital-Currency
Cryptocurrency/Tokens are the future of money for a number of reasons, but most pertinently they enable the exchange to be incredibly efficient— both in terms of speed and cost but our initial problem still runs true. If people aren’t ready to participate in this field, how can we help them do so with the lowest barrier to entry? We can get them there by providing benefits which exceed what they currently have by several orders of magnitude.
Achieve this through services to which they are already familiar
That means a money management platform which they already understand. By replicating the features on an existing account — iterating on them and improving the user experience significantly, we can create a compelling offering which doesn’t alter behaviour or require changes. By doing this, the barrier to entry becomes zero. Everyone needs an account to manage their money, Nexves becomes a far better version of this.
The first stage to reaching this future is a central money management account. This means a platform where you can deposit your existing money. You forego the interest and cashback fees you would typically accrue on spending/savings from your account and instead you are rewarded with the digital currency detailed above. Immediately this will be worth the equivalent amount you should have received in interest — i.e 1 token = £15 (1 token paid for every £1,000 stored on the platform for 30 days, 1.5% interest = £15 hence initial token value).
For those willing to speculate that the value of the token will rise, all they have to do is hold the tokens in expectation of future value. Naturally, the token will rise in value as the currency is deprecatory instead of inflationary. This rewards early users as they will receive more tokens per £1,000 saved than those who adopt later.
The money accrued from interest will be used to seed an investment fund which invests in asset classes reserved for the Richest 1%. That means commercial/international real estate, private equity and startup investments, among other things. We are already forming partnerships with the leading figures in each of these industries to operate alongside.
In order to proceed with this plan most efficiently, we are proposing a Token sales alongside the Proof-of-savings mechanism which will be how all future tokens are created. The initial sale will involve around 2,500,000 tokens at a sale price of £15 per token. The majority of this money will be invested immediately in the asset classes above with the rest reserved for the innovations listed below.
Stage 2 —Data Analysis to Enable Savings
The first product we will create will harness the power of data each of the users on the platform provides. Right now there is no way for you to know you are getting the best deal on any product or service you use, out with asking family and friends. We will leverage the intelligence we are able to accrue, match that with tokenisation and acquire unimaginable quantities of actionable data providing revolutionary transparency to consumers. Right now banks know how much I pay for a specific service and how much you pay for the same thing. What they don’t know is if that is a fair comparison based on the different packages each of us might have.
What we can do at Nexves is fill that knowledge void by acquiring the data needed to make the comparison. Through token payments, we can pay you and everyone else on the platform to provide it, where your reward is higher ownership of the investment fund. This means for every recurring monthly expense you have, we can tell you how much you should save based on what other people on the platform are paying. Eventually, we will create a service that does this automatically on your behalf, saving you a lot.
Stage 3 — Earning Platform
The next thing that Nexves will enable is a platform to earn. This will take advantage of human nature, which calls each of us to act rationally in mutual self-interest. The massive innovation here is that by acting selfishly the whole platform benefits and profits.
- You are paid to do certain things which grow the investments in the fund
- This grows the value of the tokens you have yourself
- At the same time growing the tokens that everyone else has
Imagine the power of 10,000 people going to their local supermarket to request they begin stocking a product that we are invested in. Consider the influence of 100,000 people sharing a message about an international destination we own on their social media accounts. Now imagine that influence when it is spread across millions of people doing the same thing. That is the power of platform scale that you can become a part of.
My goal is to build something bigger than any of us can alone. That means for Nexves to succeed we need the collaboration of everyone using the platform. We believe we can harness that power while influencing and developing the world to become one we want to live in. By encouraging every individual to act selfishly, we can achieve the best result for everyone. That means you get paid to help grow everyone else's investments, including your own.
Ultimately, what we are seeking to become is the largest super-aggregator in history. Collective bargaining on an unprecedented scale.
Stage 4 — Establish a Token Economy
The liquidity attained from higher frequency of transactions will be critical to establishing Nexves as a viable digital currency. To achieve this there has to be a market economy for which people can transact upon. This means building out the system which enables people without tokens to acquire them. They have the means to participate above by earning them, which is a way to provide the unbanked with access, while also creating an opportunity to acquire future participants at a far younger age than is currently possible.
A digital currency means building out an entire ecosystem for consumer purchasing. This means making investments in things which can be purchased or used. A simplest example of this is International real estate. The value of the property would remain an asset for the value of the currency, while rental could be paid in tokens. The innovative aspect of this would be what happens to the spent tokens. Where you purchased your stay entirely in tokens, 90% of them would be burned and10% would be kept for expenses resulting from your stay. Transacting in tokens would mean you received a lower price than is possible in traditional money, while your remaining coins become more valuable because the ones you paid in are destroyed.
Wider adoption would enable the currency to be utilised for purchasing in almost any domain. The more users that utilise the platform, the larger potential market for peer-to-peer transactions. Decentralisation becomes the platforms superpower as other Nexves users open the doors to their other products and services on the platform. Through the universal mechanism of trust, your account, bad behaviour can be punished, controlled or prevented.
Stage 5 — Erosion of Marketing as a form of Revenue
My boldest contrarian belief is that advertising as a form of revenue on the internet will be extinct in the next decade. The rise of a decentralised internet where everyone owns everything but nothing simultaneously is inevitable. This will enable us to reclaim the data we are currently providing companies for free, preventing the targeted invasive advertising we are victimised by and stalked across the web relentlessly by.
If you’re not paying for the product you are the product, will evolve to become you being the product that pays with a currency you control — attention
This is in recognition that we should control our own destiny — why should multi-national conglomerates commoditise our attention by turning us into zombies whose only contribution to society is the accrual of capital to drive purchasing?
Digital taxation
In the same way Napster was a precursor to Spotify, what is the next route to revenue for products/services online? A digital taxation will be achieved by using your CPU/GPU to mine a currency which is distributed to creators as per the volume of attention you provide their product, service or content.
Nexves will allow the consumption of content/products /services without the necessity for users to pay creators or service providers directly. For low CPU usage tasks — watching video, reading articles, social networks, photo sharing, almost every task you undertake online — these services will tax you a % of your CPU usage and use that to mine Crypto which will be distributed to the creator according to how long you spent watching, reading or using what they made.
The Future
Imagine the replacement of the internets largest institutions with ‘free’ alternatives, that includes Facebook, Netflix, Google and every other £Billion multi-national conglomerate you can imagine. These services won’t be paid for by exploiting the data you provide and advertising to you, instead their revenue will come directly from you, and your contribution to the upkeep of the worlds most sophisticated and widest distributed blockchain. A digital currency will emerge which grows directly from attention. Attention will evolve to become the cash of the internet because eventually, it will become the only thing that matters. There will be a direct correlation between engagement and payment for online services.
Your Nexves accounts becomes the central hub from which this will emerge.
Stage 6 — Universal Trust Mechanism
A universal mechanism for trust is critical to enable the third wave of the internet.
Web 1.0 gave rise to internet
Web 2.0 gave rise to the giants who dominate it
Web 3.0 will give rise to distributed networks that take it back
Airbnb has its review system, Uber has it’s stars, but there is nothing which straddles the breadth of the internet to provide a holistic snapshot of why people should trust you. Your money management account becomes a passport for the web, where you have full control over the information available about you on it. This will enable you to monetise your data and set controls on when it is appropriate to reveal which information. This mechanism can ensure trust in an environment where without it, it is impossible to do anything.
This allows each person to sell their own attention. This, in many ways, is the only commodity in the world which is still scarce. Being advertised at becomes a conscious decision of which you are the beneficiary. Furthermore, there are effective controls which mean it is beneficial for companies to participate in this new system. Instead of paying to advertise on specific words or phrases, if you’re money management account was used as a constraint for which companies could search for leads within, they would be able to target adverts directly to the source without the need to pay an intermediary. The most powerful aspect of this is that you are the person who decides whether you want to give these companies access to your customer profile, or not.
Stage 7— Platform Service Layer
The ultimate vision for Nexves is to become the critical piece of infrastructure for the realisation of a more decentralised world. It becomes the backbone of your digital identity, a route to monetising your actions online, and a way to accrue wealth by enabling savings on an unprecedented scale while putting your money to work. Proof-of-savings becomes the mechanism to enable the emergence of an asset-backed digital currency, where your tokens provide tangible ownership in real assets. That is revolutionary.
On top of it, a whole world of possibilities emerge. My annoyance with the way the internet has evolved doesn’t stem from the monopolisation of our attention, it increases with the exploitation of a world without permission. In order to take back control, we must insert mechanism which enables us to protect our data. This doesn’t mean hiding it, or cutting down the content which we release about ourselves, it means being more sensible with the ways we share information online and have switches which we can turn off when we want to detach. In a world where we have been manipulated to vote in certain ways, through the consumption of news and propaganda that often proves to be false, this isn’t just smart it is critical for ensuring that we maintain control of our own sensibilities.
Ultimately, we want others to interact with our platform. That means creating distributed services and products which integrate within our own. Your current account is a dumb account. Once you put your money to work in a way which exploits the available technology of the day, while marrying it with the influence of platform scale, we can establish a digital currency which enables us to realise a vision for the internet which is fairer for all.