Fintech
Horizon Launches $5 Million Series A Round to Support Build Out of Global Trading Venues Powered by Horizon’s Blockchain Technology
New York, NY, Dec. 03, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — via NEWMEDIAWIRE — GlobexUS Holdings, Corp. (Horizon), the Blockchain-as-a-Service solutions company, today announced a $5,000,000 Series A funding round to further develop and scale the operations of its proprietary full-stack digital securities issuance, compliance, and secondary trading technology which it markets to licensed, regulated financial institutions globally. This common stock investment opportunity is now open and can be found at https://horizon-globex.com/invest.
Horizon is a fintech company that develops defensible IP solutions and licenses its suite of turnkey blockchain software solutions to regulated financial institutions. The proprietary platform, which is live and in use today, supports the full lifecycle of a digital security, from primary issuance all the way through to secondary trading. This Series A round will support the expansion of Horizon’s software licensing business and its trading-operations services. The Company has signed an agreement with a U.S. broker dealer working to build an SEC-registered ATS. In addition, Horizon has signed agreements with regulated entities in Brazil and Australia, and an MOU with the Antigua and Barbuda Ministry of Finance & Corporate Governance, to build secondary trading venues using Horizon’s fintech solutions.
Horizon’s agreements provide the Company with software licensing revenues and a recurring trading-fee revenue-stream from its flagship blockchain trading solution, Open Order Book. Open Order Book offers regulated entities a compliant order-driven orderbook, on-chain matching engine, and instant trade settlement. The technology is coupled with a user-friendly app allowing users to trade digital securities directly from their smartphone.
Horizon products are also expected to power industry-specific blockchain trading venues that, if successfully launched, would allow large affinity groups such as sports and music fans to trade securities that represent a share of their favorite sports teams or music catalog royalties. Management believes that its unique integration of asset tokenization, KYC & AML, custody and secondary trading could lead the way for regulated specialty marketplaces to be created for fans to trade with one another.
In addition to Open Order Book, Horizon also licenses its compliance software to issuers, broker-dealers, banks and other financial institutions: Tokenetics offers asset tokenization and digital securities creation on a blockchain; KYCware offers a white-label onboarding app to streamline identity verification and suitability; AMLCop screens user details against our proprietary database of global sanctions, watchlists, and Ethereum wallet forensics; CustodyWare provides SEC-registered Transfer Agents, such as VStock Transfer, with digital securities custody, dividend payment services, and cap table management tools.
“We’re gearing up to help power a globally connected network of regulated blockchain-trading venues which we believe have the potential to drive the next generation of secondary market liquidity,” says Horizon CEO Brian Collins. “We are thrilled to give investors the opportunity to own a stake in our fintech business as well as in any future growth in our software licensing business.
“Capital markets are evolving right now, and we believe that Horizon is at the forefront of this evolution with our proprietary end-to-end suite of blockchain solutions and services that deliver a harmonized rule-book for transparent secondary trading of securities using a blockchain,” says Collins.
Horizon seeks to raise up to $5,000,000 pursuant to Regulation D Rule 506(c) to fund the global expansion of digital marketplaces, further research and development, strategic acquisitions, sales, marketing and operations. Horizon also intends to invest a portion of the proceeds to establish and power a MiFID II compliant Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) to service European issuers, institutions and investors looking to list & trade digital securities on a blockchain. To learn more about the offering and to invest, please visit https://horizon-globex.com/invest.
About Horizon:
Horizon offers a suite of integrated blockchain software for compliant issuance through secondary trading of digital securities. Truly a compliance-first business, our solutions combine Wall Street and Silicon Valley to power the next generation of exchanges and securities offerings in the U.S. and globally. Current product solutions include asset tokenization through Tokenetics (tokenetics.com); a white-label KYC smartphone app to onboard and verify investors through KYCware (kycware.com); anti-money laundering screening against a database of global sanctions, watchlists, PEPs, and blockchain forensics through AMLCop (amlcop.com); transfer agent custody and dividend payment tools through CustodyWare (custodyware.com), and an advanced retail trading app for secondary trading on digital securities marketplaces using Open Order Book (openorderbook.com). All software applications can be utilized independently or integrated with one another. Learn more at https://horizon-globex.com/.
Press Contact:
Vanessa Malone
(805) 637-1963
Forward-Looking Statements:
This press release may include ”forward-looking statements.” To the extent that the information presented in this press release discusses financial projections, information, or expectations about our business plans, results of operations, products or markets, or otherwise makes statements about future events, such statements are forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as ”should,” ”may,” ”intends,” ”anticipates,” ”believes,” ”estimates,” ”projects,” ”forecasts,” ”expects,” ”plans,” and ”proposes.” Although we believe that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, there are a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of the document in which they are contained, and GlobexUS Holdings Corp. does not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements except as may be required by law.
The Company entered into a software license agreement with Tripoint Global Equities, LLC to provide them with software to support their BANQ® ATS digital alternative trading system, together with a smartphone mobile user application, which they are currently developing. The owners of TriPoint Global Equities are Mark Elenowitz and Michael Boswell, both officers and shareholders of Company.
Fintech
How to identify authenticity in crypto influencer channels
Modern brands stake on influencer marketing, with 76% of users making a purchase after seeing a product on social media.The cryptocurrency industry is no exception to this trend. However, promoting crypto products through influencer marketing can be particularly challenging. Crypto influencers pose a significant risk to a brand’s reputation and ROI due to rampant scams. Approximately 80% of channels provide fake statistics, including followers counts and engagement metrics. Additionally, this niche is characterized by high CPMs, which can increase the risk of financial loss for brands.
In this article Nadia Bubennnikova, Head of agency Famesters, will explore the most important things to look for in crypto channels to find the perfect match for influencer marketing collaborations.
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Comments
There are several levels related to this point.
LEVEL 1
Analyze approximately 10 of the channel’s latest videos, looking through the comments to ensure they are not purchased from dubious sources. For example, such comments as “Yes sir, great video!”; “Thanks!”; “Love you man!”; “Quality content”, and others most certainly are bot-generated and should be avoided.
Just to compare:
LEVEL 2
Don’t rush to conclude that you’ve discovered the perfect crypto channel just because you’ve come across some logical comments that align with the video’s topic. This may seem controversial, but it’s important to dive deeper. When you encounter a channel with logical comments, ensure that they are unique and not duplicated under the description box. Some creators are smarter than just buying comments from the first link that Google shows you when you search “buy YouTube comments”. They generate topics, provide multiple examples, or upload lists of examples, all produced by AI. You can either manually review the comments or use a script to parse all the YouTube comments into an Excel file. Then, add a formula to highlight any duplicates.
LEVEL 3
It is also a must to check the names of the profiles that leave the comments: most of the bot-generated comments are easy to track: they will all have the usernames made of random symbols and numbers, random first and last name combinations, “Habibi”, etc. No profile pictures on all comments is also a red flag.
LEVEL 4
Another important factor to consider when assessing comment authenticity is the posting date. If all the comments were posted on the same day, it’s likely that the traffic was purchased.
2. Average views number per video
This is indeed one of the key metrics to consider when selecting an influencer for collaboration, regardless of the product type. What specific factors should we focus on?
First & foremost: the views dynamics on the channel. The most desirable type of YouTube channel in terms of views is one that maintains stable viewership across all of its videos. This stability serves as proof of an active and loyal audience genuinely interested in the creator’s content, unlike channels where views vary significantly from one video to another.
Many unauthentic crypto channels not only buy YouTube comments but also invest in increasing video views to create the impression of stability. So, what exactly should we look at in terms of views? Firstly, calculate the average number of views based on the ten latest videos. Then, compare this figure to the views of the most recent videos posted within the past week. If you notice that these new videos have nearly the same number of views as those posted a month or two ago, it’s a clear red flag. Typically, a YouTube channel experiences lower views on new videos, with the number increasing organically each day as the audience engages with the content. If you see a video posted just three days ago already garnering 30k views, matching the total views of older videos, it’s a sign of fraudulent traffic purchased to create the illusion of view stability.
3. Influencer’s channel statistics
The primary statistics of interest are region and demographic split, and sometimes the device types of the viewers.
LEVEL 1
When reviewing the shared statistics, the first step is to request a video screencast instead of a simple screenshot. This is because it takes more time to organically edit a video than a screenshot, making it harder to manipulate the statistics. If the creator refuses, step two (if only screenshots are provided) is to download them and check the file’s properties on your computer. Look for details such as whether it was created with Adobe Photoshop or the color profile, typically Adobe RGB, to determine if the screenshot has been edited.
LEVEL 2
After confirming the authenticity of the stats screenshot, it’s crucial to analyze the data. For instance, if you’re examining a channel conducted in Spanish with all videos filmed in the same language, it would raise concerns to find a significant audience from countries like India or Turkey. This discrepancy, where the audience doesn’t align with regions known for speaking the language, is a red flag.
If we’re considering an English-language crypto channel, it typically suggests an international audience, as English’s global use for quality educational content on niche topics like crypto. However, certain considerations apply. For instance, if an English-speaking channel shows a significant percentage of Polish viewers (15% to 30%) without any mention of the Polish language, it could indicate fake followers and views. However, if the channel’s creator is Polish, occasionally posts videos in Polish alongside English, and receives Polish comments, it’s important not to rush to conclusions.
Example of statistics
Wrapping up
These are the main factors to consider when selecting an influencer to promote your crypto product. Once you’ve launched the campaign, there are also some markers to show which creators did bring the authentic traffic and which used some tools to create the illusion of an active and engaged audience. While this may seem obvious, it’s still worth mentioning. After the video is posted, allow 5-7 days for it to accumulate a basic number of views, then check performance metrics such as views, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), signups, and conversion rate (CR) from clicks to signups.
If you overlooked some red flags when selecting crypto channels for your launch, you might find the following outcomes: channels with high views numbers and high CTRs, demonstrating the real interest of the audience, yet with remarkably low conversion rates. In the worst-case scenario, you might witness thousands of clicks resulting in zero to just a few signups. While this might suggest technical issues in other industries, in crypto campaigns it indicates that the creator engaged in the campaign not only bought fake views and comments but also link clicks. And this happens more often than you may realize.
Summing up, choosing the right crypto creator to promote your product is indeed a tricky job that requires a lot of resources to be put into the search process.
Author
Nadia Bubennikova, Head of agency at Famesters
Fintech
Central banks and the FinTech sector unite to change global payments space
The BIS, along with seven leading central banks and a cohort of private financial firms, has embarked on an ambitious venture known as Project Agorá.
Named after the Greek word for “marketplace,” this initiative stands at the forefront of exploring the potential of tokenisation to significantly enhance the operational efficiency of the monetary system worldwide.
Central to this pioneering project are the Bank of France (on behalf of the Eurosystem), the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. These institutions have joined forces under the banner of Project Agorá, in partnership with an extensive assembly of private financial entities convened by the Institute of International Finance (IIF).
At the heart of Project Agorá is the pursuit of integrating tokenised commercial bank deposits with tokenised wholesale central bank money within a unified, public-private programmable financial platform. By harnessing the advanced capabilities of smart contracts and programmability, the project aspires to unlock new transactional possibilities that were previously infeasible or impractical, thereby fostering novel opportunities that could benefit businesses and consumers alike.
The collaborative effort seeks to address and surmount a variety of structural inefficiencies that currently plague cross-border payments. These challenges include disparate legal, regulatory, and technical standards; varying operating hours and time zones; and the heightened complexity associated with conducting financial integrity checks (such as anti-money laundering and customer verification procedures), which are often redundantly executed across multiple stages of a single transaction due to the involvement of several intermediaries.
As a beacon of experimental and exploratory projects, the BIS Innovation Hub is committed to delivering public goods to the global central banking community through initiatives like Project Agorá. In line with this mission, the BIS will soon issue a call for expressions of interest from private financial institutions eager to contribute to this ground-breaking project. The IIF will facilitate the involvement of private sector participants, extending an invitation to regulated financial institutions representing each of the seven aforementioned currencies to partake in this transformative endeavour.
Source: fintech.globa
The post Central banks and the FinTech sector unite to change global payments space appeared first on HIPTHER Alerts.
Fintech
TD Bank inks multi-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud
TD Bank has inked a multi-year deal with Google Cloud as it looks to streamline the development and deployment of new products and services.
The deal will see the Canadian banking group integrate the vendor’s cloud services into a wider portion of its technology solutions portfolio, a move which TD expects will enable it “to respond quickly to changing customer expectations by rolling out new features, updates, or entirely new financial products at an accelerated pace”.
This marks an expansion of the already established relationship between TD Bank and Google Cloud after the group previously adopted the vendor’s Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for TD Securities Automated Trading (TDSAT), the Chicago-based subsidiary of its investment banking unit, TD Securities.
TDSAT uses GKE for process automation and quantitative modelling across fixed income markets, resulting in the development of a “data-driven research platform” capable of processing large research workloads in trading.
Dan Bosman, SVP and CIO of TD Securities, claims the infrastructure has so far supported TDSAT with “compute-intensive quantitative analysis” while expanding the subsidiary’s “trading volumes and portfolio size”.
TD’s new partnership with Google Cloud will see the group attempt to replicate the same level of success across its entire portfolio.
Source: fintechfutures.com
The post TD Bank inks multi-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud appeared first on HIPTHER Alerts.
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