Cryptocurrency should be available to individual users in the "real world"

Could you share with our readers a brief history of TenX for those who do not know it yet and the idea that stood behind its creation?

Three cryptocurrency enthusiasts, Toby Hoenisch, Paul Kittiwongsunthorn, and I founded TenX in 2015. We met in 2014, in Thailand, and we talked about cryptocurrencies: what they are, the way they work, and decided that if we want to get into this ecosystem, we need to make the cryptocurrencies spendable and usable, because up until that point, this was not really possible.

Therefore, in 2015, with this project in mind, we flew to Singapore, to take part in a hackathon held by DBS where we pitched our idea and won USD 15 000. The prize was used to start TenX. In 2016, we received our first USD 100 000 investment and got into the PayPal incubator for 9 months. Additional funds came in March 2017, when we received another USD 1 million, and in June, when we got USD 80 million from our token sale.

In our first year, we started with four people; at the point of our token sale in June 2017, we were eight people, and now, four months later – October 2017, we have tripled our numbers and we are close to 30 people. Nevertheless, our office has space for 100 people, so we plan to grow even further.

Which are TenX main products and how would you describe your target audience?

Whether used online or offline, TenX aims to make cryptocurrency spendable anytime, anywhere across the globe. Currently, we are the only company in the world that uses the same card for multiple cryptocurrencies – you do not need different cards for different cryptocurrencies. To achieve our goal, our business strategy focuses on three steps to make cryptocurrencies spendable.

Firstly, we aim at serving best our target audience. This audience consist of either investors, who have invested in cryptocurrencies, or people that want to use cryptocurrencies on a daily basis because they do not trust their local currency as much.

Then, at the beginning of 2018, we plan to add a new feature, which is the possibility to deposit fiat money (USD, EUR etc.) into your account with the option to get cryptocurrencies instead, all with a click of a button, in your app. We hope to attract more people, that are interested in crypto, but have been put off by seeing how complicated it is to get in.

The third step is going to happen in mid-2018, when we will make cryptocurrencies more stable. Hatching mechanisms are going to be implemented to avoid cryptocurrencies fluctuations, to the benefit of the users, because these days cryptocurrencies are too volatile.

Of course, all these plans are based on our business partners as well. We collaborate with Mastercard and Visa’s issuing partners, one in Singapore and one in Europe, and at the moment we are signing up partnerships with two other companies, on plans that we are going to announce soon. Additionally we are working with several distribution partners and in the future, we plan to do cobranded solutions. TenX is looking for companies to collaborate with.

Congratulations on the successful initial token sale! Could you give our readers more insights into further investments and developments of TenX after this funding?

As mentioned before, this summer we received USD 80 million equivalent in cryptocurrencies in our token sale. The team will use the funds to continue developing TenX, and to build COMIT (Cryptographically secure Off-chain Multi asset Instant Transaction network).

Additional business plans include getting a banking license for Europe and achieving financial stability over the next couple of years. We aim to have a million users by the end of 2018.

There have been many discussions around ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) and their legality, especially with the Chinese banning ICOs. What is your take on this?

In China many people called ICO tokens “tradable air”, which gave a very negative connotation on even the ICOs that were done properly.

I’ve been very critical on how the most ICOs are run. Most of them are very speculative, there is no team, no product, no roadmap. Hopefully China will use this opportunity and will introduce fair regulations. I personally expect China to create its own regulated version of ICOs. Other countries will probably not take such drastic measures as China has done by prohibiting ICOs, but I believe and actually hope that more governments will begin to step in and introduce certain regulations.

It will be interesting to watch the potential fall out of this crackdown on the market for ICOs, and cryptocurrencies in general, given the prominent role played by China. Long-time crypto watchers will recall 2013, when China banned exchanges from allowing people to buy cryptocurrencies using the local yuan currency. The result was a huge price drop, but support for yuan deposits did return and the price of bitcoin has soared to new highs.

Will this issue affect TenX? No. When the news broke, we at TenX had done our research, spoke to our legal company, advisors and investors as well as the community. Based on these conversations it is our understanding that it will not affect TenX. While there is a lot of speculation, we at TenX are focusing on our product-milestones and our community while being constantly in touch with the regulators and our legal advisors to react immediately if necessary.

Looking towards the future, what changes and opportunities will the second planned fork in October 2017 bring for cryptocurrency enthusiasts? What other trends in the cryptocurrency space do you anticipate?

For TenX, the Bitcoin fork means that the block size is going to double. I am not sure about the challenges and opportunities that might occur, but I believe that scaling needs to happen off the blockchain and not on the blockchain. There are going to be a lot of discussions for this November’s split but I think it is going to be way less important than the SegWit discussion. The Lightning network or the COMIT protocol will take a lot of transactions off the blockchain after the split, and the scaling debate is going to be less important. In 2018, taking things off chain will become crucial. That is why we have been working on the COMIT protocol to route transactions off chain, and cross-chain. From a technical perspective, the crypto mass adoption is going to be sustained by this blockchain agnostic technology, so that people will not have to worry that much about the individual blockchains, but will to focus on getting access to cryptocurrency space.

Julian will be speaking at the Australian Payment Summit that takes place on December 13th in Sydney, and he will also join the European Payment Summit (EPS), 14-15 March 2018 in Hague. EPS offers a unique 2-day program featuring key developments ‘for-by professionals’ in the payments/transaction space, combined with key sessions on international security & fraud.

Julian Hosp is the co-founder of TenX, the only company worldwide that makes multiple digital currencies instantly spendable anytime anywhere by offering a debit card payment system to its users.

Julian was named one of the top Blockchain and Cryptocurrency experts in the world. He is a frequently invited speaker at global Tech/Fintech events as well as a regular commentator in the media on current blockchain trends, the future of cryptocurrency and best ICO practices.