CoinGeek Conversations

A little over a year ago, two brothers from Australia presented their application idea to a group of investors at the Bitcoin Association’s Pitch Day conference in London. Their proposal for a picture-sharing app powered by Bitcoin SV was then called Memento. It is now open for business, as Relica. 

In this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, Charles Miller catches up with co-founders Jeremy and Daniel Street to ask about their journey — how Relica came to be, how it’s doing and where it’s heading.

For most of the past year, both have still been working their day jobs. And they live on different continents – Jeremy in the UK and Daniel in Australia. Developing their idea into a viable startup business has been hard work, but the brothers are determined that what Relica offers today is just the start of their ambitions.       

What is Relica?

Simply put, Relica allows users to share their pictures - and profit from them. It may sound a lot like Instagram, but there is more to it than meets the eye. “The platform treats everyone equally, where users can upload and share photos and videos: liking and commenting will result in monetized rewards” Jeremy explains.

How does it work?

Just like Instagram, the majority of the photos on Relica are stored on the server base. What makes it different from Instagram, Dan points out is that the hash of individual photos is stored on the BSV blockchain, serving as a proof of identity and proof of ownership. In addition, he says interactions that take place with the photos on Relica are purely on the blockchain.

How do users profit by using Relica?

Relica’s users need to sign-up with a MoneyButton (or in future also a Handcash) wallet, then pay a tiny amount to post a photo. As Dan explains, they lost a few users because of the current payment requisite so they’re working on a new system that would entice users to post and keep sharing. “What we’re going to do is integrate a new system which is very unique to BSV apps - allowing users to post their first photo for free and having almost an ‘achievement system’ within Relica so they can earn money through sharing through their socials.” 

As for users having to pay for content they like, Jeremy says an incentive model as such is debatable. “Charging people too much money for a basic interaction that we’ve all know to come and love or to like or comment is debatable and we’ve had lengthy discussions on whether or not that’s an incentive model that’s going to exist in a few years.”

Unlike Patreon and other similar websites where people pay for other users’ content, Dan says they are building something completely out of the box that’s never been done before. “What we’re planning for phase two, isn’t even on the existing Internet itself so Relica is pretty much a revolution in the [BSV] apps that they’ve built.”  Jeremy adds that their end goal is to lower the entry barrier to the BSV ecosystem.

Relica launched in late November 2020 but it wasn’t until a month ago when they fully opened the app to its users. The response has been a positive so far, Dan says. Relica has 800 users and they expect more to come on board after releasing their marketing campaign. “We haven’t started a marketing campaign, which involves onboarding a number of influencers to reach out to their followers,” Dan says. “We want to refine the product first then start marketing Relica full time to influencers.” 

At present, Relica is self-funded. But, as mentioned, they have exciting new ideas in the pipeline to present to its potential investors. “Things have changed a little bit since pitch day during the last 12 months. I think we have more focus as to where we want to be, so our plan is to continue to develop, continue to self-fund for the time being and reach out to investors within the next two to three months as we have some exciting new i

Can blockchain technology which streamlines and secures supply chains operate across widely different industries?

‘Yes’, says Stephan Nilsson, founder and CEO of the Oslo-based enterprise blockchain platform UNISOT. ‘Well, I might be persuaded,’ says Sukhi Jutla, co-founder and CEO of MarketOrders, a London-based online platform for the gold and diamond jewelry industry.

The two entrepreneurs were brought together for this week’s episode of CoinGeek Conversations, in which Charles Miller invited them to compare their respective fields – jewelry for Sukhi, and, as his first case study for UNISOT, Stephan’s experience with supply chains in the Norwegian fish industry.  

The discussion revolved around how blockchain would be utilized to establish faster and cost-effective transactions, as well as boosting transparency levels within the supply chain.

At MarketOrders, precious stones and jewels are constantly being moved from one location to another and because of this, Sukhi stresses transparency is key. “When something goes wrong during the process, who is to blame? There is no transparency in the industry.” To address the issue, MarketOrders is exploring blockchain solutions.

MarketOrders published a white paper last year detailing the use of blockchain technology. One use case Sukhi mentions is the technology’s ability to provide tools that could help the company speed up payments hence avoiding large transaction fees. “We've got as far as creating MarketOrders Tokens. We envision this is to have an ecosystem on our platform whereby our suppliers and our customers actually settle payments using the tokens.”

Stephan couldn’t agree more with Sukhi when it comes to blockchain and transparency. UNISOT specializes in the use of blockchain to efficiently manage supply chains, starting with the seafood supply chain. He outlined some similarities between UNISOT’s objective and what MarketOrders wants to achieve. “There's a lot of the same thing here, we have to take care of a product that is being moved around in the world, and today there are a lot of problems encountered while doing that, and that's where this technology can help.” 

Stephan goes on to describe his experience working with Bitcoin SV, UNISOT’s preferred blockchain technology. He almost refers to it as the gold standard when it comes to scalability. “With this blockchain technology [BSV], it's so scalable and so low cost.” 

As he points out, scalability is essential for a growing business. “You must have a system that is scalable because you don't want to rebuild your application or your whole system every six months when a couple of developers decides to put in a new function.”  

Sukhi admits not having heard of BSV before but after speaking to Stephan about its scalability and micro-payment capabilities, she was ready to explore further with Stephan, to find out about his UNISOT solution.

Stephan didn’t shy away from speaking his thoughts on Ethereum, which Sukhi had been looking at: “It doesn’t scale: Ethereum offers a lot of solutions but none of them are in production. No one has actually been able to run this production using all the functionality of the Ethereum blockchain because it's simply not scaling.”

The podcast capped off with a brief discussion on cryptocurrency and its price volatility. Sukhi reacts to the recent publicity around BTC stating, “the price volatility is a huge distraction and my focus is always on the application of the technology… blockchain is actually a technology. It's an application. It's a different way of doing something. And in my opinion, it's a far more trustworthy and efficient way to do a process that's already existing.”

Stephan ended his interview with a recommendation for Sukhi and people who are interested to learn more about BSV. He suggests watching ‘The Bitcoin Theory’ with Ryan X Charles on YouTube. “It has e

Steven Walt, General Manager of Fabriik Markets describes the business as the digital assets service arm of the Bayesian-owned, Fabriik group. He highlights the company’s three major offerings - market making, liquidity provision and its OTC or over-the-counter desks.

“The focus of the company is trading” Steven says. As he points out, digital asset prices change every second. To address the volatility, clients are provided a stable fixed price of up to 15 minutes. This would essentially allow payment processors the ability to provide their customers time to transact. 

“What we do is we use really outstanding algorithms ...to forecast volatility and fix the price of up to 15 minutes.”

Steven was talking to Charles Miller on this week’s CoinGeek Conversations podcast.

In addition to trading, Fabriik Markets is positioning itself to be a one-stop-shop for liquidity. Steven describes their liquidity plan as disruptive, stressing they will be the first in the space to temporarily absorb price risk.

Furthermore, Fabriik Markets takes great pride in their OTC desks. Also referred to by the company as a ‘white glove service,’ this is where they assist their clients in the buying and selling of digital assets. This type of service will be made available to institutions and individuals that are looking to make trades of $100,000 US or more.

Fabriik Markets’ OTC desks will have more to offer compared to others in the space, Steven explains. For instance, customers will be given more variations and approaches to execute an order.

“Most desks out there, they quote a single price which is also what we do, but what we plan to do as well is offering additional ways of entering into and exiting out of a position.”

Having worked in the traditional financial market, as well as the digital asset space, Steven notes, there are many similarities between the two industries.

“I think ultimately where the digital assets is right now is maybe where traditional asset was 20-30 years ago, it’s very early days in my opinion.”

In light of this, he believes a lot can be taken from the traditional assets space and applied to the digital assets space. One of them, is algorithm. At Fabriik, he says customers will be able to use some traditional algorithm but more catered toward the digital asset space. Ultimately, they want to build simple products that people understand.

“What’s familiar is what works the best.”

Charles and Steven also touched on other topics such as tokenization. This is where Bitcoin SV is believed to make an impact. As Steven explains, they see massive potential in the BSV blockchain when it comes to creating tokens.

Fabriik Markets has committed to dealing with decentralized digital assets, such as BSV, BTC and BCH.

“We believe there’s a lot of power that comes from the BSV ecosystem. The blockchain is extremely scalable. And we’ve chosen it, for example to support tokenization.”

Imagine signing up for a website, start sharing links and, voila, you’re earning money! That’s just one of the scenarios that could happen when you create an account with TonicPow and start participating. 

On this week’s episode of Coingeek conversations, Charles Miller talks to TonicPow Founder and CEO, Luke Rohenaz about his startup and its potential to go after the tech giants.

TonicPow allows its users to earn Bitcoin, advertise a business or do both. You can sign-up and choose to be a promoter and/or an advertiser. How? Well, a promoter can copy one of the display ads, share the link and instantly get rewarded in Bitcoin SV. Whereas an advertiser can display an ad for promoters to pick up by simply creating a campaign.

Luke and his partners first presented TonicPow at the 2019 Coingeek Conference in Toronto where they won second place in the first Bitcoin Association BSV Hackathon.

Since its inception, the site has gone through many phases, Luke says. What started as a peer-to-peer advertising solution, now includes a pay-per-click model where users can see results a lot quicker. The aim is to help advertisers achieve “conversions” – when users end up spending money on the product or service advertised. “What we want to do is not just be paying you for clicks, we hope that you share things, really looking out for this conversion.”

While the goal of the 2019 hackathon was to onboard people to BSV, Luke points out the challenge at the Cambrian SV Bootcamp in Bali was to increase on chain transactions, and that again changed TonicPow’s thinking: “why don’t we report every click that goes on chain, solve different problems with transparency but also the concept of these real time micropayments, which show off the real capabilities of Bitcoin SV.” 

In the interview, Charles quotes what Luke has said in the past— “As it develops, TonicPow could go after tech giants with the ‘network effect’ of the shared database of the BSV blockchain.” When asked to expound on this, Luke describes the ‘network effect’ as having the ability to use shared protocols to ingest data from other services. Luke brings up the concept of ‘coopetition’ where competitors share content online through the use of agreed common protocols.

“That’s what I mean by the shared network effect, you don’t have to be the mega giant to compete with the mega giant. You just have to be a participant in a mutually beneficial coopetition scenario.”

In relation to other social networks on Bitcoin SV, Luke visualizes TonicPow as potentially evolving to an open protocol. But unlike other existing ad models that revolve around knowing about people intimately, TonicPow’s targeting strategy makes use of individual promoters who share to their audiences and followers. As Luke emphasized “they’re doing the targeting without spying.”

So, what makes TonicPow stand out from other social media marketing campaigns? It’s in the special powers of Bitcoin SV: “where we end up shining is when you start to count up the various little edges that Bitcoin gives you.. it’s a better place to build something like this.”

The pharmaceutical industry or Big Pharma is no doubt a multi-billion-dollar industry. Whilst extremely profitable, pharmaceutical companies have a long-standing history of fraud cases often resulting in billion-dollar pay out settlements. These cases generally stem from purported illegal marketing strategies and the company’s failure to report safety data. As a result, trust remains to be an issue, widening the gap between pharmaceutical companies and its consumers.

Veridat, a company that uses bitcoin blockchain technology, offers a solution to the problem. It describes itself as a TaaS or Trust as a Service for data integrity. Speaking to Natalie Mason on this week’s episode of Coingeek Conversations, Veridat Director, Phillip Runyan says the company allows auditors to access information on clinical trials, on a transaction to transaction basis. This altogether eliminates the likelihood of overlooking or dismissing valuable data pertinent to the general public.        

“There is massive value to this [Veridat]” Phillip says. “It’s not that they’re worried about somebody coming in and committing fraud, it’s really more of, we have this service that allows us to backup a ton of information… they also have all the benefits of showing this immutable chain of custody, immutable data ledger.”

Natalie and Phillip also discussed companies that mislead its consumers through its falsified marketing campaigns. For instance, Johnson and Johnson spent years in litigation over its opioid marketing practices culminating with a 4 billion-dollar settlement offer. As Phillip explains, an incident as such would result to someone taking the fall or getting fired. The company however, stays in tact moving along with the same practices. Phillip sees a potential to change the system. “With billions of dollars at stake there are people who functions as bad actors, but as we’ve seen with our Pharma partner, it’s less about being a bad actor, it’s about streamlining audit processee.”

The idea of using blockchain technology in big pharma is currently being studied by the FDA and industry professionals who operate in data integrity, as well as consultants who work for the contract research organizations of pharmaceutical companies. Veridat has managed to move the conversation from “Why would I” to “Why wouldn’t I?”

With Covid-19 vaccines rolling out in countries worldwide, the service offered by Veridat if utilized, can prove to be beneficial to both big pharma and its consumers. With its use of Bitcoin SV blockchain technology, Phillip explains every transaction is verified against a public blockchain while reaping the benefits of its massive scaling capability and secured network. So, the question reverts back to “Why wouldn’t I?” The answer is simple. Phillip attests, BSV tech is cost effective, fast, scalable and secured. “It’s an insurance policy that keeps on giving.”  

The Bitcoin SV Academy has launched a new course, Introduction to Bitcoin Theory, which is designed for anyone, even those completely new to Bitcoin. Its 13 sections are expected to take nine hours to complete and there’s an exam at the end to make sure you have absorbed the knowledge. The course covers the design of the Bitcoin blockchain and the node network, with an emphasis on its security features.

CoinGeek’s Charles Miller recently completed the course and in this week’s CoinGeek Conversations he talks to Brendan Lee, one of the instructors on the course and the Bitcoin Association’s Training and Development Manager, about what he learnt. 

In particular, Charles asks Brendan to talk him through what happens when an ordinary user makes a small transfer of Bitcoin from one wallet to another. Using a block explorer, Brendan analyses the transaction that Charles made between two of his own wallets, to see exactly how the payment was made, Including features such as the return of ‘change’ from one wallet to another. Each transaction can be traced, showing precisely how the payment leaves one wallet and arrives in the other.

When making a transaction, Brendan says a user would want to spend one coin at a time. As he points out, a coin which has a million Satoshis in it, is enough to make a transaction. After a user sends a coin, Brendan explains that the input will create several outputs, each one containing various amounts of Satoshis. One of those outputs will go to the address provided. As for the rest of the coins Brendan says, they go back into the user’s wallet as change which can then be used for another transaction.    

In the conversation, Brendan also goes into a detailed explanation of how a Bitcoin address is generated. He says Bitcoin addresses are derived from a private key. “You start with the private key and then you do the elliptic curve maths on the private key and you get the public key. You take the public key and you hash that…. and we take the public hash and we put it through. Basically we change the format of how we present it and we put a one on the front and we call that a Bitcoin address.”

On whether Bitcoin transactions are more intangible compared to the normal financial system, Brendan says “Satoshis don't exist except as a record on the public ledger and when we perform a transaction, what we're effectively doing is, we're taking an existing record that we can assert ownership over and redistributing its contents… But for the first time in history, we're able to do that using a digital medium in a way that can't be duplicated or undone. And that's the unique aspect of Bitcoin and I think is what actually does make them almost a tangible thing.”

When emerging technologies collide, the effects are game changing. Those at the forefront of augmented and virtual reality have already transformed multiple industries. But what happens when you apply blockchain technology, putting both the 3D and real world on chain? It allows for unparalleled personalization of data and most importantly, profitability that anyone can build on, reaping just rewards.  

 Robert Rice is the founder and CEO of Transmira Inc. the developer of Omniscape, an XR platform seamlessly blending AR and VR. He also happened to coin the term XR, the umbrella term for mixing the two mixed reality technologies. I was pleased to bump into Robert at an investment summit in Dubai, where he was giving a presentation on how the BSV blockchain allows him to augment smart cities in a way that is safe and secure. We sat down to record the latest episode of CoinGeek Conversations.

Having started out as a comic book store owner, Rice was the first to use PC components in arcade games and was noted as an Internet Gaming Pioneer by Advertizing Age magazine in 1996. Flash forward to today, he explained Omniscape’s unparalleled advertizing offer to brands. “Starbucks for example can do a campaign and geolocate 3D Starbucks coffee cups all over the place.” Imagine Pokémon GO, but once you’ve found your coffee cup you can redeem it at the nearest Starbucks for an actual cup of coffee. So, what’s in it for Starbucks? By placing objects where their customers are, they are able to target audiences on an individual level, driving them straight into their stores. 

“Imagine watching a Superbowl and a Doritos commercial comes on TV. Well, whip out your phone because there’s probably going to be a 3D bag of Doritos that you can grab.” Triggering content from live streamed TV, Robert explained the super impressive part. “Let’s say there’s three people sitting on a couch watching the football game and the Doritos commercial comes on TV, we can deliver a different experience to each one. Maybe I’m getting the free bag of Doritos, the guy next to me is getting an offer on Dr. Pepper… now that I can deliver it that way, I’m also getting data back.” He is taking targeted advertizing to the next level by allowing for data to be broken down to each individual household member’s preferences, tracking and changing content in real time. 

 Another industry that Robert and his team are shaking up is global digital real estate. And he’s keen to see individuals having a fun experience which allows them to profit from ownership. “For 2 or 3 Dollars, you can go onto Omniscape and buy a location somewhere. And that space is yours for 2 years, just like a Domain name.” You then have the power to trade your space for profit. And for those wanting to make a social impact, Robert is also hoping to create space. For example, by buying a piece of the ocean, Omniscape hopes to donate the profits to charities that are fighting to protect the world’s oceans. 

 Like the data offering for advertizers, the virtual real estate platform will exist on the blockchain. And Robert is adamant that this is only possible on BSV. “There really is no choice when you compare the technical pieces: the size, speed, scale, cost; you’d have to be an idiot in my industry to do something else that’s not Bitcoin SV.” 

For Robert, it’s important to not only build things for the benefit of businesses and brands. But for individuals too. “I think that, if we can make it easy for anybody: business, brand, consumer, content creator to make things and monetize it quickly, I think we’ll destroy everybody else.” 

 Check out this week’s episode of CoinGeek Conversation to learn more about what Robert is doing in the space, his predictions for game changing industries over the next couple of decades and his comic character alter ego. Robert Rice. You’re a hero.  

Craig Wright is a lockdown sceptic. Masks and isolation policies “don’t make a difference”, he says. Dr Wright, the Chief Scientist of nChain, says he’s studied epidemiology and is convinced that, despite appearances and government claims, death rates are no worse than usual because “everything else has gone down equal to the number of Covid deaths”. He had the disease himself “months ago” and dismisses the experience as “terrible for a day”.

 The real damage from government response to the pandemic, he says, is long term. The disruption in trade affects developing countries: “if you look at the people in Sri Lanka who are not getting fed, the increases in poverty in African countries, the increases in poverty in Bangladesh etc., what we're seeing is individuals who now are being marginalised and pushed into poverty for the first time in a long time.” 

 As the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, Dr Wright is also sceptical about BTC’s recent dramatic price volatility, dismissing it as “purely manipulation”. He says that it would take thousands of times the amount of currency inflows seen in the crypto market to change the price of gold to the same extent. With BTC, “what we have is a very small market and it’s easy to be manipulated”. 

Dr Wright was talking in a wide-ranging interview for the CoinGeek Conversations podcast. In looking back to Bitcoin’s early days, he said that around the time that he released the Bitcoin White Paper in October 2008, he had just returned to Australia from a trip to Microsoft headquarters in Seattle where he’d been discussing a possible role in the Bing search engine and click fraud team.

The 2008 financial crisis put an end to all hiring at Microsoft so it didn’t come to anything but, he said, “I had a whole lot of ideas which Bitcoin would have been part of”. He wanted Microsoft to introduce a Bitcoin-based Internet as a competitor to the ad-based model:  “I thought rather than the way Google's doing things, if they could implement micro-payments and have all this run that way, that would actually be a far more effective methodology.”

So does he regret not being able to develop Bitcoin at Microsoft? Wright says that there would have been advantages to him personally in terms of resources and remuneration but that it would have been “an easy life versus something better but more challenging.”

Around that time Wright wrote an essay as part of what he calls this “self-reflective” period in his life. Only published last year, Sisyphus Impenitant refers to the Greek myth of Sisyphus who was punished by Zeus for trying to defy death by having to push a rock uphill, only to have it always roll back to the bottom. For Wright, it was a way of examining personal pressures: “Warrior. Father. Husband. A trilogy of competing stresses.” He rated himself more highly as a warrior and husband than a father. 

Wright is known for his long list of academic qualifications and love of acquiring more. He referred, for instance, to an essay he wrote as part of a Masters in English Literature, about one of Shakespeare’s sonnets in which he speculates about the poem’s relation to Elizabeth I and contemporary historical events. In a previous interview he said he was taking 25 degree courses simultaneously. Now he says he’s finished some of those, but that last year he read 2400 books. That works out at an average of six and a half per day. Asked how that’s possible, he says, “I read very fast” and “some books are smaller than others”.

A staunch critic of Silicon Valley, writer and journalist David Gerard offers a stinging critique of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project: “Libra is not a story about cryptocurrency; it’s a story about Silicon Valley hubris and people who think they can start their own money and take over the world that way.”

Known in the crypto world as a Bitcoin and blockchain critic, in his new book Libra Shrugged Gerard offers a comprehensive analysis of Facebook’s Libra project. Speaking to Coingeek’s Charles Miller, he characterizes the Libra team as “a group of people who think they can take advantage of the system without getting called out on it.”  

When Facebook announced Libra back in June 2019, “its original plan was to run a currency basket-based token on blockchain.” Gerard explains. The project, however, was met with fierce criticism from regulators around the world. 

Regulators’ biggest concern, Gerard says, is to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis which was brought about by the kind of structure Facebook’s Libra was proposing. Regulators fear that a monopoly could threaten global financial stability - as happened in 2008 when a few companies were purported to be ‘too big to fail’:

“Regulators around the world are frightened of one thing and that’s another 2008 happening. And Facebook came along and presented them with a plan for ‘here’s how we could do a 2008 all by ourselves’.”

Following opposition and backlash, the social media platform floated a new plan for a series of currency substitute tokens such as a dollar token, pound token, and Euro token. But as Gerard explains, this plan didn’t go down well with regulators either. “The real objection the regulators have is the scale of it.” The currency reserve needed to fulfill Facebook’s plan would have been worth over a trillion dollars - posing a major problem for global financial stability in itself. 

In October 2020, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was summoned by members of the US Congress to a hearing to explain the company’s plans. Gerard observes Zuckerberg to be a good talker, serving up well thought-out statements, however lacking substance. Zuckerberg has since made it clear that Libra would not move forward without proper regulatory compliance. But one by one, large companies dropped their support for Libra, leaving a select few onboard.

In December, Libra was renamed Diem. In an attempt to win over regulators, Diem presented a simpler and revamped structure. Its launch date was initially set for January 2021. As Gerard explains, it’s the same Libra group proposing different technologies to solve problems, except that now it’s the Diem Association instead of the Libra Association.

You can buy David Gerard’s Libra Shrugged here: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/libra/

If you launch a company called BIG - the handy acronym of the Vancouver-based Blockchain Intelligence Group -, you need big ambitions. And the co-founder and President of BIG, Lance Morginn has plenty. They’re centered on the idea of using the blockchain’s public face in a more user-friendly way, by creating tools that more easily ‘read’ the information it contains.

Beginning with a tool for law-enforcement, the company has already expanded to create software that provides a reputation score to guide decisions about Bitcoin transactions.

BIG’s ability to analyze and present clear representations of blockchain transaction histories has already had results, including in court, Lance says: “we’ve defended some of the largest exchanges on the planet successfully.”

With more interest in Bitcoin and blockchain from regulators, the prospects for BIG look good. With regulation, Lance notes, people are required to carefully monitor transactions they make: “it’s no longer a nice to have, it’s a must have.” 

A veteran in the technology sector, Lance has witnessed the crypto space grow exponentially. With vast amounts of data stored in transactions, he asserts that ‘search and analytics’ are a necessity.

QLUE or Quantitative Law Enforcement Unified Edge 

Since the company’s inception in 2015, Blockchain Intelligence Group found its niche catering to law enforcement through its first product QLUE – for Quantitative Law Enforcement Unified Edge.

QLUE is a visualization engine that allows investigators to follow the money flow. With QLUE, every transaction can be viewed in a matter of minutes unlike other tools which could take months, Lance explains.

A great advantage of QLUE he notes, is its ability to identify different entities in the visualization, allowing law enforcement to see who people are interacting with. This information enables law enforcement to subpoena the KYC information and de-anonymize a pseudo-anonymous person. 

QLUE is also being used in court cases involving Bitcoin. The tool simplifies the information presented to the jury by using graphics or an excel format. This in turn, helps the jury make confident decisions without having to fully understand the way crypto works. Compliance officers subpoenaed in such cases also make use of QLUE to expedite a report.

While QLUE has made significant appearances in courtrooms around the world, in the US, BIG has been recognized at the Federal level as an expert witness testimony provider.

Bit Rank Verified

Wanting to further provide a ‘search and analytics’ oriented service, Lance developed Bit Rank Verified. The tool helps assess the risk of cryptocurrency transactions by providing an easy-to-understand risk score. “It’s a crypto equivalent of a credit score,” Lance says.  

Bit Rank Verified is used by digital banks, exchanges, ATM operators, financial institutions or just about any organization seeking confidence that funds being received did not originate from illicit, immoral or unethical sources. The software checks an address before allowing clients to transfer funds. This reduces the workload on compliance officers.

Online Certificate Course at BIG

The company also offers online courses to anyone who wants to learn about Bitcoin and blockchain, the dark web and how tools like theirs can aid an investigation. A series of modules and a culminating exam awaits eager learners, who are rewarded with certificates to show they are BIG Certified Cryptocurrency Investigators.

Collectively, the Blockchain Intelligence Group works with different blockchains. However, Lance admits Bitcoin SV’s mandate on regulation and transparency sets it apart.  “Of the top 20 cryptocurrency based on market cap, BSV was an obvious one for us, just based on the other objectives and missions that they've got around the appearance of Bitcoin SV.”