Cygnus Investments primarily focuses on projects in the telecommunications, oil, financial services, energy, and music industries, and currently has two projects related to cryptocurrency and blockchain. The first is a book titled "Cryptocurrency for Teens," a glossary of frequently used terms in the crypto and blockchain spaces that is geared towards youth, teenagers, and college students. Dr. Mansour's goal is to get this book in the hands of as many students as possible, believing that cryptocurrency and blockchain have the ability to create a significant number of jobs for today's students. An educator, Dr. Mansour believes that students of all ages are able to understand the dynamics of this space, and will come up with use cases that the rest of us have never thought of. Cygnus Investments is also working with a popular rap artist to launch his own cryptocurrency, which will be used to fund a wide array of his products, including clothing, music, food, and more. Ultimately, they hope that this move will allow everyone to get involved in this space, and show people what can be accomplished when you never give up. Ali welcomes questions and discussions by email at [email protected], or by phone at 281-203-2906.

One of today's biggest problems with the threat intelligence market, which encompasses companies such as McAfee, Symantec, and others involved in keeping computer viruses and malware at bay, is the cyclical nature of the market–a newcomer arrives and innovates with a new idea, then relaxes, and another newcomer must come in to keep innovation alive. PolySwarm hopes to change this by creating a decentralized marketplace that rewards security experts, end-users, and ambassadors like McAfee and Symantec with Nectar tokens when they correctly help to predict and determine whether potential malware is actually a threat. Providing this economic incentive will help to tighten that cyclical loop, as well as encourage experts to continually be improving their skills and anti-malware machines. PolySwarm is currently running a malware bounty contest, awarding up to $300k in Nectar tokens for users to upload suspect files that their malware detection program can read as malicious, with higher amounts of tokens being awarded for more unique malware strains. They hope to release a full version of their marketplace by the end of the year. For more information, visit www.polyswarm.io.

One of the least-discussed issues with the cryptocurrency space currently is that there are very few, if any, guidelines for how to report crypto gains and losses on your yearly income taxes, and because of the sheer number of exchanges that exist, there is no seamless interface to see how your transactions are doing. TaxToken has set out to solve both of these problems by creating a suite of accounting software built on the blockchain. The capital gains and losses tracker integrates with 8 exchanges to automatically record your cryptocurrency gains and losses throughout the year, and fills out the appropriate tax forms for you. Because records are written to the blockchain, they can be verified by third parties, which ultimately reduces costs for everyone. Though their first application is cryptocurrency-specific, the rest of their accounting software can be used by anyone. They will be offering a beta version at the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Blockchain Superconference in Dallas, Texas February 16-18, and individuals who subscribe to their newsletter will receive a discount code. Their cryptocurrency accounting software will be launched on March 1st, just in time for this year's tax season. For more information, visit www.taxtoken.io. You can also interact with them directly on Twitter at @taxtoken.

In the current world of search engines, one company controls over 90%of online information. This affects how we interact with information that we find online, how we shop for goods and services, and more. Presearch is a decentralized search engine that is designed to be more transparent, and that levels the playing field for everyone online. Presearch will allow users to search not only online information, but data sets and data bases, different interfaces, CRM software, and more. Users can earn tokens for using, promoting, and contributing through designing different interfaces for others to use, creating algorithms to search for content, curating content, and more. Users will be able to customize how and where they search for information, to find the specific answers that they need quickly without having to sort through unnecessary information. Currently Presearch is operating a closed beta test, which has has over 2.5 million searches, and soon will be opening a public beta. In the future, they hope to have partnerships with groups such as Bitcoin.com, in order to better engage with their users. For more information, visit www.presearch.io. To sign up for their public beta, visit www.presearch.org.

Bread is one of the largest and fastest growing cryptocurrency wallets that offers users of all knowledge and skill levels the opportunity to easily and securely participate in cryptospace. Having just hit 1 million users, their goal is have 3 million users by the end of 2018. In order to do this, they plan to focus on onboarding new users, and in particular creating a product that is simple, easy to use, and completely intuitive. Because Bread requires that users hold their own private keys, this adds layers of complexity, which can easily be made simple by the Bread team. Listening to clients is key for their goals–they plan to focus on the questions, concerns, and comments that they receive from their users, and then set up Bread to either guide users through their questions or make sure that these questions never materialize by taking care of it on the back-end. Aaron and Alex also discuss what they see as the future of cryptocurrency and the wallet industry, in particular how users will interact with wallets, and what this means specifically for how everyone, not just Bread users, will interact with money in the future. For more information, visit www.breadapp.com, or take advantage of their Telegram channels @breadapp and @breadchat to interact directly with the community.

Currently, many of the IOT devices being sold on the market rely on cloud technology–this is not very secure, and can provide points of failure that hackers can take advantage of. Instead of relying on cloud-based technology, Blockchain of Things has created the Catenis integration platform, a rapid integration layer that allows companies to leverage the global blockchain for decentralized communication, control and provenance of goods, and auditing functions. Because this is a horizontal integration layer, and through the use of their intelligent contracts, developers in any modern computer language are able to build decentralized applications on top of it quickly, without needing to know all the intricacies of blockchain technology. Blockchain of Things already has many users who are using their product in a pilot capacity. Andre also discusses the challenges they faced in the creation of Catenis, the future of Blockchain of Things, and its relationship with the cryptocurrency and blockchain spaces. They currently have a presale running for their token, which will be used to unlock features in the Catenis platform. For more information, visit www.blockchainofthings.com.

BlockchainOS, or BOScoin, is a platform that is comprised of trust contracts built on Time Automata Language and Web Ontology language, and its goal is to provide a user-friendly framework for creating and executing contracts on the blockchain, ultimately linking the blockchain with IOT devices. Trust contracts are written in a format that is readable for most people, in order to encourage more individuals to move into the blockchain space. BOScoins are awarded through the platform and can be used to operate a node that also gives the holder the ability to participate in votes regarding the platform. Over the next year, their roadmap includes adding a governance model. BOScoins also allow the holders to vote on projects that are submitted through the platform for funding, which they hope will attract interested parties from around the world, making this a truly global platform. BOScoin held a successful token sale during October 2017, and are planning on a full launch in May 2018. Look for them at the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Blockchain Superconference in Dallas, Texas February 16-18. For more information, visit www.boscoin.io.

One of the biggest problems with the mortgage industry is that in order for a mortgage to be finalized, hundreds of documents need to be validated by a third-party–hiring an auditor to do this is costly, and can take up to 45 days for each mortgage. Factom Harmony was designed to solve this problem, by storing and validating these documents on the blockchain. This makes documents quickly and simply auditable by any third party, and can easily alert the necessary people when documents are missing, which will ultimately reduce the cost of getting a mortgage, and can lead to more people being approved for mortgages. David also discusses what he sees as the adoption trends of blockchain technology by large enterprises and government agencies, crossovers to other industries, and what trends we might see in 2018. Factom will be present at the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Blockchain Superconference in Dallas, Texas February 16-18, and David gives us a sneak peek at what he will discuss at the conference, including the power of blockchain to decentralize enterprises and industries that are traditionally centralized, and give us some real-world use cases. For more information, visit www.factom.com.

Exmo is an international cryptocurrency exchange based in UK and Russia that has seen an explosion of users over the last year, from 400,000 to over 1 million. This is in part due to the fruition of blockchain technology, which has made possible the use cases and products that were not possible before. Exmo is similar to many cryptocurrencyexchanges, but Simon notes that the exchanges that will thrive are those that provide excellent customer experiences, particularly when it comes to being proactive about customer problems and questions. In order to do this, Exmo provides 24/7 customer service, with staggered staff workdays to accommodate their users both Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in the US. Simon discusses his hopes for new regulations that are being announced almost daily around the world, primarily the ability to remove some of the scams that are currently operating, which in turn will attract institutional money. Simon also discusses how interested individuals can learn more about the crypto and blockchain spaces, including good resources, and gives a preview of his panel topics at the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Blockchain Superconference in Dallas Texas, February 16-18. For more information on Exmo, visit www.exmo.com. To chat with Simon personally, find him on Twitter at @simoncocking, or on LinkedIn as Simon Cocking.